16 April 2011 Family History Seminar in Budapest

This particular blog is dedicated to the new Indexing program that the church wants everyone to do. It is geared as to be assessable for all members of the church who want to help further the work for the dead. We are especially targeting the youth because they are already familiar with the computer and when they have free time between studying and working, they can quickly do a batch which is about 30-50 names. We make sure they are signed on to new.familysearch.org and from there they are able to log on to family indexing with the same log on information. We are showing the youth ages 12-18 that genealogy is actually fun and interesting and at the same time, they are giving service to others. We want to get them interested before they are told by the grapevine that genealogy is for the old retired people that have nothing else to do. Wrong, it is for everyone to do. The First Presidency is urging everyone to become involved. This work is so exciting we are privileged to be working in this area of the church.
























We drove to Budapest Friday night and stayed at the Mercure Hotel downtown, a block away from the Danube River. Saturday morning we put the address of the Stake center into our GPS and got there about 1 1/2 hours before the seminar started. We took out the electrical wires, cables, chains and locks for each computer. We have to lock the computers to the tables because youth from around the neighborhood, who play basketball and soccer there sometimes, "grab and go" with them if they are left unattended. The Seminar was interesting and informative, because we want to do the teaching with an interpreter in the future, when we get settled in the job.

After the Seminar we stored all the computers in the hotel room and placed a "Do not disturb" sign on the door, hoping no one would come in the room and discover the computers. Lots of stress on this point, but the church's computers have been stolen from Hotel rooms before. Wherever we go, one of us needs to stay with the car. Sister Walters took a few pictures of the chapel, the street that it is located on and the group of people that attended the seminar. They came from various Stakes throughout Budapest. Up until a year ago, there were not any records available for the people in this area but the church has started a Hungarian project that enables the people to do extracting and Indexing for Hungary.