Thankful Thursday: It is Good to be Home

Whew! This summer has been a wild ride for my family. In actuality, it started in October 2013 when his company announced plans to reorganize his engineering group. It ended at the end of July with us moving back to my home state of Texas. Furthermore, I'm 1 hour away from my hometown of Sugar Land, TX. For those who know anything about Houston, we're in the Northeast side now. So, I'm truly back home, just on the other side of town.

The moving truck arrives and a neighbor welcomes my daughter
to our new home. Hello Texas!

In addition to the relocation, I have exciting news. My church leaders have requested that I serve our congregation as a Family History Consultant. How cool is that? I have even more of an excuse to teach and inspire others to do their own family history.

So far, this new responsibility has allowed me to take a peek at another person's tree using the FamilySearch.org helper feature. It's pretty cool. I'm so tempted to 'fix' their tree but a wise consultant knows it's better to teach them to do.

Additionally, I worked with a true newbie to Family Search and family history in setting up their free account. I've learned that perhaps it's best to work in people's homes on their computers, rather than my computer in a church building. Thankfully, the Get Help feature from FamilySearch had a person to contact which solved a few of our issues. Additionally, I helped her fix a few minor problems she had getting started, but I applauded her attempts. She's excited to start playing around and create her tree. I'm excited she's letting me help her along.

Apparently, there is a future conference to speak at in April, and I couldn't be more thrilled. I also need to encourage my congregation to do their part in family history, with a major emphasis on tree creation and indexing.

In the middle of all of these changes, I completed my new book 21st Century Family Historian with the goal of inspiring those not yet involved in family history to get started and to reignite the fire in those who have dabbled in genealogy but need a new reason to start up again.

I'm super excited about the changes that have taken place. It feels good to be 'home' in more than one meaning of the word. The boxes are nearly unpacked, the paint is dry, and the walls have decorations. Now it's time to get back to raising my kiddos and sharing my passion for family history.

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