New Service Project

So on Sunday evening I was reading through the Ensign and came across this article about the church looking for 10,000 bilingual volunteers to help with the extraction of Spanish records. So I figured, why not, I'm bilingual and have an Internet connection and it's probably more productive than playing Spider Solitaire on my computer in the evenings while watching videos with my husband.

So that's what I've started doing, and it has actually been kind of fun. I decided to do batches of a project from Managua, Nicaragua where I extract names and dates from wedding records, all hand written by some clerk in 1934. I actually spent a summer in Nicaragua, just outside of Managua in a ghetto called Ciudad Sandino so this project jumped out at me. My husband joined me last night in puzzling out some of the handwritten names, fantastic gems like Pasquala, Borges, and Efrain. Though I think my favorite was Elia, I actually thought it was pretty though my husband was less impressed. Though he was somewhat surprised at the number of grooms that listed their occupation as carpenters (and how many 16-17 year-olds were getting married).

If anyone is interested I highly recommend it as an easy service project that you can do working at your own pace. For those that are not Spanish speakers there are plenty of English projects to choose from as well as a couple other languages. The batches are easy to download and they only take 15-20 min apiece once you get use to the handwriting and where to find the information you need to extract.

All this thinking about Nicaragua is making me remember my 8 weeks I spent there. I need to dig out my pictures....