45 years ago when we first began to collect genealogical data on the Schill and Erath lines, Oma and Opa told us what they could remember. Then they brought basic family information from Germany, including the Ahnentafel that Uncle Max, perhaps in charge of a postoffice in Germany, prepared to prove that he had no Jewish ancestors. We did some temple work for those ancestors when Katherine and Eric, Ted and Jess were going to BYU in Provo, Utah.

Later we did some ordinances at the Mesa Arizona Temple, but didn't finish all the cards that were prepared, so had to leave them there. We weren't sure that the ordinances were done.
Since then Gerhard has worked with the PAF program and Family Search to prepare names of more ancestors for temple ordinances in the Colonia Juárez Temple. He never had time enough to get really involved, and the Gothic script was daunting.
In Mérida, Gerhard has been spending a lot of his free time working with new.FamilySearch. The Church has improved technology so that now members have access to many family names and can track the ordinances. He can print a request sheet here at home, take it to the temple where the cards are printed, then do the ordinances and the same day check to see that they have been recorded.

The family tree of Benedict Schill and Rosa Hepp, Gerhard's grandparents, is now extended 6 generations back beyond them as shown on this printed sheet from newFamilySearch.


Gerhard chose to use Roots Magic, a program that will interface with newFamilySearch, to save information that used to be in the PAF program, but it can do much more.

We used to have to order rolls of microfilm from Salt Lake to read at our ward or stake Family History Center. Gerhard ordered one here in Merida showing families in Dietershausen where Oma's family comes from. On January 24, 2009, he found the family of Sebastian Erath and Katherina Ziegler, but the writing was very hard to read. He came up with a novel idea--take pictures of each page that has family names, then come home and import the pictures into Adobe Photoshop so he can magnify the names until he can figure out the letters.

Now Gerhard has the best idea yet. When he figures out one person in the family, he will go to newFamily Search, look for that person and get the parents or all the siblings and then verify the information with the microfilm record! On February 3 he found a child of Sebastian and Katharina--Ursula, born 1854, was not in the database of new.FamilySearch.
He loves being a family history detective and he and Rüder are collaborating on the project to make information available to their children and to extended family, so that makes it even more fun.
This builds my testimony that in the Lord's time many good things will happen and they will be even better than we could have imagined.
"Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him"(Psalms 37:7)