familysearch.org indexing

Given that I only have spurts of time here and there (when Dean decides he's ok to take a nap) and it's never a 2 hour nap more than once a day, and that 2 hour nap changes times depending on the day, I don't usually plan on accomplishing too much during my day. Since this is a time in our lives when we won't be able to make it to the temple very often without great sacrifice of everyone involved, I recently signed up to be an indexer for familysearch.org. I figured if I can't do any temple work, this is one of the easiest things I can do so that other people can do it. It is SO much fun and I LOVE doing it. I signed up 3 weeks ago and I've already indexed 2500 names and completed over 100 batches of names. It's fun to do the old censi and see how different life was "back in the day" and especially interesting to do the 1871 english census. A lot of the kids were working, which is so sad, and the ones that weren't working are referred to as "scholars". How cute!

I have been waiting for an easy Portuguese project to open up, and it was my lucky day last week sometime. They have immigration cards from Rio de Janeiro ranging from 1900-1967 complete with PICTURES..... Do you know how cool it is to index information about people when you can actually see who they are? I am obviously partial to the people from Portugal and I must admit, I often cry when I see their faces and input their information. Is it weird that I love these people as well as all of the living people I met in Portugal? I really feel like they are "our" people, since John served his mission there as well. Yesterday I indexed a bunch of Japanese that were coming in. It's very, very interesting to do indexing, but even more so when you can see their sweet faces. Oh the spirit of Elijah touching all of our hearts to find our ancestors. It truly is an amazing thing.