My Personal History (Part 1)

My name is McKenzie Wallace Stewart and I was born on October 1, 1986 in Westwood, New Jersey.  I have a twin brother named Graham Hart who was born just seven minutes after me.  The way we got our names is because my mom, Denise Censier Stewart, wrote a list of names and my dad, Gary Hulling Stewart, picked the top two names because he thought they were my mom’s favorites.  I was born into a family with 4 older brothers and 2 older sisters.  When I was 5, another addition came into my family.  I finally had another younger brother, Zachary Alden Stewart.

My siblings’ names from youngest to oldest are as follows: Zachary Alden, Graham Hart, Tyler Durant, Whitney Leigh, Ryan Gibson, Lindsay Heather, and Jason Crawford.

            Growing up, I lived in Demarest NJ in one house.  I lived there until I was 21 years old.  I graduated high school in 2005.  I went and worked for the next 3 years. Growing up, I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I went to church, I fulfilled my callings, but I never really gained my own testimony.  When I was 18 years old, I went to EFY and gained my testimony.  I remember reading the scriptures and feeling the spirit really strongly.  The next day, we had a testimony meeting, and again that feeling came back.  I knew right there that I had to change my life around and I also knew that I was supposed to serve a mission.

            I didn’t always make the right choices, but I always tried to correct them.  I tried my best to follow the strait and narrow path.  Something else that helped me to go on my mission, although I had made the choice to serve before this happened, was my twin brother died.  He was in a motorcycle accident and he passed away almost instantly when we were 19 years old.  When I graduated high school, I prayed to know if I should go to college, I had received a full ride scholarship to Wesleyan University, or I should stay home and work.  I received the guidance to stay home.  At this point in my life, I was thinking if I had made the right choice.  I figured that I would be on my mission and that is why I stayed home from college, but I was still living at home and not on my mission.  When my brother passed away, I realized that was the reason why I was at home was because I needed to spend the time with my brother.  While I was at home working, I worked nearly every day with Graham.  I spent so much time with him during that year and a half and that time was so amazing.  I got so close to him and after he died, of course I was upset for a long time, I looked back and couldn’t remember the last time we fought.  I cherish that time that I had with him and it really helped me to cope with losing him.

            I finally put my mission papers in and received a call.  I was to serve in the Yekaterinburg, Russia mission starting on April 8, 2008.  This was some of the greatest time of my life.  I loved serving for the Lord.  Don’t get me wrong, because it was hard.  There was a lot of overcoming trials, and a lot of discouragement, but that just helped me to grow.  I learned to the Spirit talks to me and I learned how to rely on the Lord.  I was able to see my testimony grow so much on my mission as well as see other people gain a testimony.  Although it was a difficult mission, I saw so much success.  I was able to baptize 8 people and bring them to learn the gospel.  Each of those stories is in my missionary journal, which can be read anytime.

            Something else that I am proud of is how much I followed the rules.  I came off my mission with no regrets.  I worked hard and I left nothing behind.  Although it was it was sometimes difficult to wake up every day on time, I feel that the Lord knew that I was trying and he helped me have the energy to pull myself out of bed.  I tried to be 100% obedient and I tried to work as hard as I could.  I know that the Lord accepted my sacrifice of work, because he blessed me with success.  He helped me over come my trials and struggles, and he allowed me to be guided by the spirit.  On my mission, I truly felt that I became an instrument in the Lord’s hands.

            Serving in Russia, I obviously spoke Russian.  I got into the MTC and thought that I would never learn the language.  Just a few weeks into the MTC I saw the Lord helping me learn the language.  I studied Spanish in high school for 3.5 years and barely learned anything.  Just a few weeks in the MTC I had already learned as much Spanish as I did in 3.5 years.  I know that the Lord helped me in this difficult task.  When I got to Russia, I struggled but I tried as hard as I could.  I started to be able to teach the gospel with ease.  Within only a few months, I was able to have conversations outside of the gospel topics and then a few months later I started to better understand what people said to me.  I remember the time that I understood everything that was being said to me in a lesson.  What a great experience I had with receiving the gift of tongues.  The only way that I could have learned Russian was with the spirit and from the gift of tongues.

            After I got home from my mission, I adjusted pretty quickly to get back to “normal life”.  I went on a few dates and it didn’t take me too long to meet the most wonderful woman in the world.  I remember it so well; I went to a young single adult conference and sat near Tanya.  Nothing out of the ordinary happened until about 5 minutes into the talk.  Since I hadn’t been to my home ward in two years, I didn’t know a lot of people.  I kept asking who people were and when this girl walked in, I asked who she was.  She told me that her name was Lauren and she was a nanny from Utah.  I spoke to her for a couple of minutes after the talk but it wasn’t for a very long time.  I went home and thought a lot about her.  On Sunday I got called to be young single adult FHE coordinator.  This allowed me to have access to all the YSA’s phone numbers.  I texted all the people that might want to come to an FHE at my house.  Unfortunately, it was mother’s day and I got no responses except from Lauren.  She came over and she was the only one.  Whitney and her family were at my house and we all played apples to apples.  That was when I got to know her a little and starting thinking of her if she could be more than just a friend.  Over the next week we started texting and then we went out on a date.  She was so easy to talk to and she and I got along so well.  For our first date, we went to dinner at Bensi’s, which is an Italian restaurant.  We then tried to go miniature golfing, but it turned out to be closed.  We sat in the car for a few minutes trying to decide what we should do.  Neither of us wanted the night to end.  We decided to go back to the Broadbent’s house (she worked and lived there) and watch a movie.  We watched Valentine’s Day and we started to talk a lot more.  We spent a lot of time together and finally we started officially dating. 

            I remember talking to her about our future and knowing that I could spend the rest of my life with her.  We talked about marriage and both agreed that it was the right idea for both of us.  She and I prayed together and we both felt the spirit so strongly.  Over the next couple of weeks we made plans of what was going to happen.  Before anything serious happened, I wanted to meet her family.  I kind of knew that I would be living out west, and I would need a family where we lived.  I needed to know that I would be able to rely on her parents like I would my parents.  I went out to go meet them and I told her that it was a make it or break it deal.  Obviously, everything went well and I asked her parents for their blessing to marry their daughter.  We went to the Bountiful temple and she and her sister did some baptisms while her parents and I did an endowment session.  While in the Celestial room, I asked them if it would be all right to marry Lauren and they agreed.  They shared some wonderful stories about her and the family and it was so nice that they treated me like family.

Family History Indexing Report

Indexing is the process of putting indexes, or researched ancestral information, for record collections.  This allows researchers to quickly find records for specific individual.  It gives them access to these indexes online and allows them to search through them electronically.

            Over the past 4 weeks, I spent over 7 hours of indexing.  I was planning on only spending 5, as per the assignment, but I got so into it and lost track of time.  I started off with doing the batches from the United States and found that I could do some other areas.  I started doing England and Australia and then I even did a few that were Russian.  I am not sure what record type is but I am assuming it is the type of record that was submitted.  I mainly did people that travelled on ships.  The time period varied between 1850-1945.

The screen shot above was pretty difficult.  Russian script is very difficult to read.  I actually brought it to someone that is from Russia and they were able to help me with the rest of the batch.  I tried not to reject any of the batches that I did.  I know that it doesn’t get submitted as final until a few people go through each entry and have the same entries. 

Over the past 4 weeks, I was able to submit 85 batches.  Some were longer than others and some had only one name but I tried to work as fast as I could so I could get to more names.  I never used arbitration and am still confused how to use it for submitting my indexes.  I was indexing and it seemed to be a lot of single people and then I came upon a family of 6 people.  I thought it was really nice and I thought in my head that I was helping a family find their ancestors and maybe they are able to add an entire family to their ancestor list.

A lot of the text that I came across was typed but some of it was difficult to read.  I tried to sound out the letters before it and after to make a common name.  That seemed to be the easiest way of doing it.  I would definitely recommend indexing to others because it is a lot of fun and it also has a really important meaning behind it.  It allows people to find their family members from documents that they would normally not be able to search.