My Purpose In Life?

"Let Adversity Make You A Better Person"

October is upon us now and finally the weather is starting to turn a little cooler.  I'm happy with that.  I like the cooler weather.  Spring and fall are my most favorite seasons.  I thought fall was coming early this year, but the hot weather lasted alot longer than I had hoped.  Now that it's cooler, I sure hope that it doesn't jump right into winter.

I spend alot of my time at home, alone, trying to keep myself busy.  The past several years I have worked most days on Family Research.  Hours and hours of searching through pictures, contacting relatives, and searching internet sites for birth records, death records and census records of those who have gone before.  I am driven to find those in my own family and in Jeff's family who carved the way for us and for our children.

 Check out my Family History Links to the right for some of what I've been up to.........

Rachel Ellen Woolstenhulme & James Thomas Beard

My Grandparents on my father's side

Anita Larsen & William John Burgener

 My Grandparents on my mother's side

Frances Anne Withers & Otto Henry Muench

Jeff's Grandparents on his father's side

Marion Katherine Hallett & Raymond Ward Pillsbury

Jeff's Grandparents on his mother's side

As I find a family in a census, my heart turns to them and smiles and I want to know more about what they went through in their lives.  Did they have it hard?  Did they live close to other family members?  Were they business owners?  Were they farmers?  What was it about them that was handed down to me that I might be able to hand down the line to my kids and grand kids to make them better people?

 1870 Census Record of James W. Withers Family

 Living in Porter Township, Cass County, Michigan

Seems I got distracted.......
The past couple of weeks I have been working on a new project and have become a little obsessed with it.  It's called Indexing.  All of these records that I am looking for in the internet have to be scanned-in so that I can find them. Somebody has to make that possible.  So how is it done?

There is a project called Indexing.  The key events of billions of people(birth, death, census) are being preserved and made available to everyone through the efforts of people like you and me.  Volunteers from around the world are able to transcribe the records--all from the convenience of our their own homes.  The indexes are then posted for Free so that we can find them when we are doing our research.  Check out Indexing for yourself

I started working on Indexing and it is so fun, and addicting.  I'll work on it awhile and think I'm going to quit, then say "oh, just one more", and just keep going.  I have also been helping other people, like my little neighbor lady, who is in her 80's.  Her husband has Parkinson disease and she spends a lot of her time helping him.

The other night as I was crawling in to bed I ask Jeff, "what is my purpose in life?  What is it that I am suppose to be doing with my life?"  He said, "You're suppose to be helping people like ____(my neighbor)".  The next day I spent all afternoon with her.  It took quite a bit of patience, because she's kind of slow with computers and remembering, but as I left she said, "Becky, this is the most fun I've had in an afternoon in a very long time."  I had to turn away so she wouldn't see my tears.

As I have been contemplating why my mind was turned so much to Indexing lately, I really feel like I needed to learn the program well enough so that I could maybe help others.  How many little ladies, like my neighbor, or disabled people, like my friend Afton, or stay-at-home Moms, need that little extra "something" to make them feel like they are accomplishing something worthwhile today? With the long winter days soon upon us, will Indexing help them to pass the time and feel like they are contributing to life?  Can my purpose be to help someone else feel like they have a purpose in this life?  Hmmmm......who knows? 

Until next time.  Becky