User:Mcbridejane42

I left my homeland of England in September 1963 intending to complete my undergraduate work on scholarship at Brigham Young University. After one semester, having spent all my money, not having been able to find work, and generally having found the environment in Provo overhwelming, I moved to Ogden, Utah where I continued my studies at Weber State University ("College" then!). I loved the smaller classes and was able to work and to live economically by staying with the family of one of my Northeast British Mission companions. While at Weber State I met my husband and we continued to live in Ogden as we began to raise our family.

In 1972 we moved to Tooele, Utah when my husband was appointed principal of one of the Tooele elementary schools. After my family of four children was raised, I began to teach high school English and then French. In 1993 I took a sabbatical and returned to BYU to complete my MA in Rhetoric and Composition, which allowed me to teach some high school concurrent enrollement classes for Salt Lake Community College as well as my beloved French. I loved my time at Tooele High School; however, for the last five years of my employment I did not teach but mentored all the new teachers in the Tooele County School District.

My husband and I retired in 2006 and served a full-time mission to the Edinburgh, Scotland Mission. A year after our return to Tooele, we decided to serve a Church Service Mission in the Family and Church History Mission in Salt Lake City. We are working on spreadsheets containing information about the non-conformist chapels in each of the counties in Wales. This information is uploaded to the Wiki and is available for researchers' use.

As the only member of the LDS Church, I am enthused about tracing my ancestors. It has not been an easy task (my family still lives in England and my father was killed during WWII when I was just a baby), but it has been most rewarding. I have learned much about British research over the years and the genealogy "bug" has definitely taken over any and all of my spare time. I am thrilled to be working on the Family Search Wiki as it becomes known to more and more people.