Picture Niagara Falls . . .

. . . and picture yourself standing at the bottom of the torrent, trying to get a drink of water. That's what us poor trainees feel like as we finish our third week of training. There is so much information to give us, and it's coming at us so quickly, that we all feel half-drowned and not very knowledgeable. Fatigue is our watchword -- you can usually spot the trainees by their appearance (red eyes, lots of material, a sort of confused expression) -- or maybe that's just the poor Zorneses. In fact, Matt had a very good description of our early morning attitude. We keep plugging along with these two encouraging factors in mind: Our setting apart blessings, and the fact that every single person we've talked to has been through the same thing, with the same feelings. But they all "got it" and a lot of our trainers have been here a relatively short time. I should put in a third factor -- the Elijah Choirs; Men's, Women's and Mixed. It makes getting up at 4:45 a.m. worthwhile (I can't believe I just wrote that), and I mean that. So I know we'll make it, and we hope that by the end of our 4th and last week of training we'll know enough to be turned loose on the poor patrons. I know that a lot of the patrons know much, much more than I ever will, but there are constantly folks coming in who have never been to the Library before, nor have they ever done a lick of genealogy research. My comfort is that perhaps we can learn together, under the gun, as it were. As long as they don't want their lines traced back to Adam before the end of the shift. (That's a joke, I think.)

Does that sound whiney? I don't mean it to! We really are having a wonderful time and are so very glad to be here. It's beautiful here right now, and we have a great group. I'm even learning some of their names -- we've had to introduce ourselves about eleventy-eleven times, before every class and training exercise. We've begun saying "We are still Elder and Sister Zornes, from Dallas," and everyone sympathizes. Also this was a very good waker-upper: I had been feeling rather smug about my first four generations, and then I discovered how much wasn't done, how poorly it was sourced, and how much work there is still to do. I'm really glad I'm learning all this stuff -- it's been very helpful. Now if I could just learn the other 99.75 %!!