April fools

Well here it is Wednesday, April 1st I can't beilieve that time is going by so fast.b We had a "missionary conference" on Monday. Meaning we went with the other missionaries from our apartment building to a place called Callaway gardens. We went to see the Azaleas and some of the dogwood trees and other early spring flowers. We were a little to early for some but we got some beautiful pictures of the azaleas. We went and had lunch at the little restaurant there and walked around looking the different exhibits. They had a butterfly house that Daina would have loved. tried to capture a picture of the butterflies and got a close up of one of the pretty blue ones.

Other than that it is always ground hog day here. Paul and I remember the movie with Bill Murray where he did the same every day until he got it right. This is our days. Up at 6:00, shower, make a fruit soothie, pack a lunch, get dressed and leave by 7:00. Out the parking lot, down to GA 400 then onto I-285 until it meets with I-85N. Then it is drive until we hit exit, 149 and we turn left onto 98 and head to Elberton. Total time is 2 hours almost excactly to the minute. We then turn the camera and get imaging. I am in the process of taking pictures to make this into a slide show. I think it will be good to jar our memory.

While we are imaging we take turns playing hearts on the computer(no internet access) or we walk around the room to move. After a couple of hours weather permitting we take turns going for about an hour walk. We are so glad when it is nice. (It has been rainy for the past two weeks) and walking has been out. I have in the last week began going to the little gym we have in the county office. That helps to get out the kinks. About 4:00 or 4:30 it is shutting down, downloading our images, and getting in the car to resume our drive home. We usually arrive home anywhere between 6:00 or 6:30 PM. That is our day. Great yes.

Oh i forgot to mention while we are riding in the car, we listen to the radio, Paul insists on driving, I crochet, I read to him, either scriptures or books. I am the book on tape. Paul loves but I told my limit to reading wasd 1 hour after that my voice gives out. It does help the time go by fast however.

Tonight Paul is at movie night which happens every Wednesday night, but I opted to stay back tonight as I did not want to sit, and yet here I am on the computer go figure!!@!!!!!!!

12 april 09
It is Easter Sunday I cnn't believe that the time is going so fast. We went to church this morning and the choir sang. It turned out really even we did not have that many choir members here as a lot of them were out of town. I do not know what the ward is going to do when all of us missionaries are gone. We found out that the temple apartments will be closing on the 15 of July. So we can find something now, stay here, or live in hotel for 6 weeks when we leave. Decisions, decisions. What to do. We have been enjoying the beautiful landscape on our drive back and forth to work The trees are out in bloom, the flowers, azaleas, and all types of flowers I am not familiar with. it is beautiful They have a dogwood tree here that is just beautiful. It grows in white and pink. I have tried to get a few pictures but I don't know if they do it justice. We became celebrities last week. The Elberton Star did a front page article on the work that we are doing.
This is what the artile stated, the only thing missing is the photo. But it was not the best anyway. Hope yall enjoy it.
We are headed out the door to dinner at President Cheney's home so I will get back to yall later.


Missionaries working to computerize county records

By Shane Scoggins

A couple from North Ogden, Utah, sits in a dark government office documenting Elbert County’s past so that people will have access to it in the future.

Or, as Paulette Crowell - the wife half of the husband and wife team - put it:

“It helps us to know where we’re going to know where we came from.”

Paulette and husband Paul are on a year-long mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to make computerized copies of county records.

The Church’s family history website, www.familysearch.org, is working to make computerized copies of records all over the United States.

Members of the church serve for a period of 6-18 months to make the copies, working with local governments. The missionaries are unpaid and provide all of their own living expenses.

The work costs local governments nothing, and the church provides a copy of the missionaries’ work after it is completed.

The Crowell’s mission brought them to Elbert County’s Probate Office in December.

They are working on copying some of the oldest records in the probate office.

The Crowells began with marriage records that dated from 1805 - the earliest marriage records on file even though the county was founded in 1790 - through 1950.



Now, they’ve moved on to copying estate records for the county. The records include wills and supporting documents, including receipts in all shapes and sizes.

To make the copies, the Crowells carefully take them out of storage boxes and place each piece of paper on a flat board that is laid out under a couple of bright spotlights and a digital camera.

The camera is hooked to a computer.

Paulette places the documents and makes sure they are square on the board. Paul then hits a button on the computer to take a photo of the page.

Each page - front and back - are documented in this way and are stored on an external computer memory file.

When the work fills up one of those memory files, the Crowells send it off to the Church at Salt Lake City, Utah, and get another one in return to continue the work.

The couple, who commutes every day from their temporary home in Sandy Springs near Atlanta, is working five days a week now at the Elbert County Government Complex.

It takes them about a day and half to photograph each box of documents. There are 42 boxes of estate records.

When they are finished, the original Elbert County records will be searchable on computer on the Internet, a great benefit for people doing genealogical research.

“That’s the main thing, to make it accessible to everyone,” Paulette Crowell said.



The Crowells’ work is the culmination of a project that began 15 years ago in the Probate Judge’s office.

At that time, a group of volunteers worked with then-Probate Judge Jane Johnson to properly preserve boxes full of some of the county’s oldest documents - the documents the Crowells are now working on.

The records had been stuck on a top shelf of the Probate Judge’s vault for years. The records were loose and just haphazardly stored.

The volunteers at that time went through each document, placed them in folders and then stored them in boxes.

In addition to the marriage and estate records, the volunteers found documents of alcohol prescriptions, indentures and apprenticeships, sales of negroes, pony homestead exemptions and other now-arcane records.

“I’m just pleased as punch that previous probate judges didn’t throw them away,” current Probate Judge Susan Sexton said. Many other counties have disposed of such records through the years, Sexton said, and have lost the historical flavor they show.

The original records are not available for inspection by the public, Sexton said, because of their fragile nature. Now, through the work of the Crowells, future researchers can see photos of the documents.