Update

We have been serving in East Lima Mission for about five months, copying records in the Lima National Archives. This is a privilege to be among the genealogical records in South America. We serve with other dedicated missionaries, Doug and Pat Lowe from Minnesota, whom also have a love for this work. Capturing records is very hard work. This week Bob and I captured 10,300 photographs of Spanish birth records and arbitrated over 20,000 names in the indexing program.

We continue to marvel that we are in Peru on a mission. Bob calls it a vacation and I call it work. We come home tired and have the normal aches and pains from being on our feet all day. We love the people we work with, including the 100 employees in the archives. The janitors keep the archives very clean and free of as much dust as possible. It is a full time job just keeping the dust from the books and papers off the floors. They paint the floors monthly with a red polishing paste that keeps the bugs from getting in the records. I love to give the janitors and nighttime guard cookies each day. These people have pride in their work and show loving gratitude for their jobs. They are very friendly and dedicated to their work.

There has been a missing book in the archives this week and an all out effort to find the book. It is a book that the church photographed a few years ago so there is a photographed record of the book, but the archive employees are bound and determined they are going to find the book. Sister Lowe has told them they need to start praying. The basement area of the archives is about the size of two-football fields and covered with books and papers stacked 20 feet high. In fact yesterday morning be had our first earthquake in the archive since our arrival. It was a 4.6 earthquake right of the coast of Lima. The basement is probably the safest place to be in the archives but it was a rolling earthquake and then a jolt. Bob and I are from California so we are familiar with earthquakes and have been in many. Sister Lowe needed some reassurances after the quake. She was up and out of the basement really fast. In this country earthquakes happen every month. Peru is in the in "Ring of Fire” and I believe there is a lot of shaking that goes on in South America. The biggest was a 6.2 quake when we first got to Lima. It was a couple hundred miles south but it rolled for a minute.

The church is going to be moving 40 cameras from the US to South America in the next few years or so and there will be a real push for more record preservation missionaries. It takes a love of genealogy work to understand the need for the preserving of these records. It is a great mission that will be carried out through out the millennium. There are about 30 missionary couples serving in the administration building, temple, support and records preservation. We have have a good time socializing and being friends. Each mission has it own challenges. The records preservation mission is a good mission if you like to do the work and come home tired and exhausted. We are only dealing with the dead every day and do not have a lot of the missionary issues of dealing with other missionaries and mission presidents. The dead want you to find them and the veil is very thin.

In General Conference in April 2012 Elder Richard G Scott used this quote from Joseph Smith:

Another example of revelation is this guidance given to President Joseph F. Smith: “I believe we move and have our being in the presence of heavenly messengers and of heavenly beings. We are not separate from them. … We are closely related to our kindred, to our ancestors … who have preceded us into the spirit world. We cannot forget them; we do not cease to love them; we always hold them in our hearts, in memory, and thus we are associated and united to them by ties that we cannot break. … If this is the case with us in our finite condition, surrounded by our mortal weaknesses, … how much more certain it is … to believe that those who have been faithful, who have gone beyond … can see us better than we can see them; that they know us better than we know them. … We live in their presence, they see us, and they are solicitous for our welfare, and they love us now more than ever. For now they see the dangers that beset us; … their love for us and their desire for our well being must be greater than that which we feel for ourselves.”1

What a beautiful quote to remember when photographing the genealogical records of the world. We keep in mine every day the responsibility we have to seek after our dead. This mission has given us a chance to reflect on the Saviors commitment to us of His atonement. Our gift to him is the presentation of our dead ancestors names and temple work completed. The Savior gave us the atonement and we give back to the Savior with our names and temple work completed for those on the other side that cannot do this work for them. It is humbling to be a part of this great work in the latter days.