Week 28: Insert Witty Title Here - August 21, 2018

Hello family and friends. If you were to judge by the title of this email, you would think that not much has happened. You would be correct. Honestly, things have been kind of the same here. Working on cases, receiving training, having classes, all that stuff. The only thing that I think really stuck out was the service project we did last Thursday, in which we cleaned up the head of the Ensign Peak trail, which was pretty fun. I mainly trimmed the plants that were getting in the way of the path, and in the end, I feel like things looked a lot better all around. I'm glad that we were able to have that service project, mainly because we haven't had one in a few weeks do to various youth groups taking them all. Hopefully their will be more service projects in the future. Other than that, I don't have much else to say. Have a great week, and remember to do some family history work, because there is always something on your tree that you can work on.

Till next week,

Elder Wright

Mom: I thought it would be nice to include a little bit of history about Ensign Peak. 

"Soon after entering the valley, President Young pointed at Ensign Peak and said, “I want to go there.” He suggested that the peak "was a proper place to raise an ensign to the nations," and so it was named Ensign Peak. [6] On July 26, 1847, a party consisting of Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Willard Richards, Ezra T. Benson, George A. Smith, Wilford Woodruff, Albert Carrington, William Clayton, Lorenzo Dow Young, and perhaps Parley P. Pratt climbed to the top of the hill. Of the event, Wilford Woodruff recorded that the group “went North of the camp about five miles and we all went onto the top of a high peak in the edge of the mountain which we considered a good place to raise an ensign upon which we named Ensign Peak or Hill. I was the first person that ascended this hill. Brother Young was very weary in climbing the peak, he being feeble.” [7] While on the Peak, the group surveyed the valley below with Heber Kimball’s telescope to confirm their earlier judgment of the valley. “They appeared delighted with the view of the surrounding country,” said one of the settlers who heard the explorers’ report later in the day. [8] From this experience, the group gained the perspective necessary to begin planning the settlement. At this time, President Young apparently also determined the location of the temple, which he announced two days later, on July 28, by planting his walking stick at the site selected for the temple and saying, "Here we will build the temple of our God." [9] https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/salt-lake-city/3-ensign-peak-historical-preview

He also wrote to me and said, "There isn't much I can tell you about this zone (meaning the work he is doing), since there is so much sensitive info about other patrons here, not to mention some of the things that we can do in FamilySearch with the tools we have." I thought that was really interesting!