This past week Ron wrote up his reflections on his trip to Europe with Jacob. As some of you recall, the main purpose of this trip was to find ancestors-do geneology work, at least it was for Ron. Jacob was along for the ride. I really enjoyed hearing Ron's viewpoint and thought some of you might too. So here it is (it is a bit long): 
"Most of you have seen the movie “Second Hand Lions”. The two old timers conclude that when you’re old, you do a garden. I go one step further. I have a garden and I try to find ancestors. This won’t be an organized letter/posting but a few things I need to tell you about the Wales trip that weren’t coincidences.
1. My mission 1963-1965 was the Central British Mission. Only about 1/6 of our mission was in Wales. Our mission was mostly the midlands of England. Yet I spent 21 of my 24 months in Wales (It took me that long to understand the accent.) I had many wonderful experiences there and left my mission with no cause to ever doubt the Gospel.
2. Sunset Court – I go to the Temple every Wed with Lewis L. and Garratt C. Garratt is his ward’s Family History Consultant. He helped me get my Aunt Pauline’s ancestors names ready for temple work. I started thinking about my own ancestors and what I could do.
3. When I found out that Rich had the United Airlines internship, and that parents had flight benefits, I started thinking about where I wanted to go – Hawaii, D.C., New York, or how about Wales. I at first didn’t think Wales was realistic, but sent for my passport anyway. There’s a Welsh song, “Far away a voice is calling. Bells of memory chime, come home again…” All of a sudden it was what I wanted to do. Just going there would be great. But what if there was another reason-like finding records of ancestors.
4. I made several trips to the Family History Center and the geography department at BYU. I updated my records with names and places on maps. I started listing all the places our ancestors had; been born, been christened, been married, died, buried. I found our 30 places in Wales. We felt that we needed to shorten the list. So, we decided to concentrate on only births. Birth recordings would most likely list parents.
5. The Family History consultants we talked to never discouraged me going to Wales. But they told me that anything I found in Wales would already be on the Family Search computers. We really thought that somehow we would find names of ancestors that weren’t on computers.
6. Even though it would cost Matt, Lindy, Jacob a lot of money, they worked it out so Jacob could go with me. How important? Jacob had much more success finding names than I did. Plus, he was a terrific traveling companion.
7. On the Lyle Davis Hatch Welsh ancestral line, My 5th great grandparents had all been located except for the parents of John Williams and Ann Davis. Plus on John W and Ann D we only had approximate birth dates. This seemed quite intriguing. Except they were from a real small village Eglwys Bach, Denbighshire, North Wales. I couldn’t find it on the map and had all but erased finding those people on that village. Lindy found the village!
8. We landed in and did London. Then caught the train to the first town in Wales that I served in-Llanelly. The library was being rearranged, so we couldn’t get into those records. That seemed like a bad start. But then Jacob found a book that mentioned John David my 6th great-grandfather. He was a businessman and worked in the colliers. He is listed as a partner in the coal business.
9. We went to church in Llanelly. When I was there in 1963, we were a small group. Now, they are a ward with their own building. Sister Anthony remembers me. She remembered me getting a telegram that my brother Gary had been born on my birthday. Brother and Sister Richards invited us to lunch on Monday. We had a wonderful visit then Brother Richards drove us to Manorbrier. No buses or trains went there, so, we couldn’t have gotten there in any way (walking 10 miles from Tenby was out). Manorbrier is where some of the Cadwalladers and Marchants lived. (6th and 7th generations from me). We now have pictures of John Cadwalladers and George Marchants headstones. In Manorbrier there is an old church (1146 AD) and a very impressive castle. And that funny Jacob, he thought he had more fun in the castle than I did tramping through 3 foot high weeds in the graveyard. The weeds were wet and yes I was successful. I got soaked from the waist down. Brother and Sister Richards picked us up the next day and took us to Carnarthon-via a few sight seeing hours in Tenby. In Carnarthon we were to catch the train to North Wales. We wanted to go to Conwi but I pronounced it Conway. And that’s where we ended up. Conway Station in Liverpool. We didn’t mind. Jacob did the Beatles Museum while I went to the Slave and Maritime Museum. We didn’t realize that the one day detour in Liverpool would be so instrumental in the rest of our trip.
10. We had planned on staying in Conwi but changed our minds and decided instead to stay in Colwyn Bay where there is a branch of the Church. We went to the Colwyn Bay library and really didn’t find anything. But everyone was so helpful. One lady told us that what we wanted was in the Old Board School in a nearby town- Llandualna. When we got there, we asked about the Parish records. All he knew about was microfilm-which wouldn’t do us much good. But he asked around and he found the printing of the parish records for us. Probably about 100 page of records. We were there on Thursday-they were closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So Jacob and I concentrated on only 2 of our ancestral lines- the Cadwalladers and the Vaughns. This we did until closing time with me thinking all this time, “this is fruitless but fun because the Church must already have these parish records. They were from Llan fair Tallaiarn Parish records. But when I got back to the Family History Center at BYU, I found the opposite. None of these records were on the family searc h. Asd of now we have our 100 names for Temple work- not only direct ancestors but aunts, uncles and cousins. We didn’t have time to do the Davies, Williams, Thomas, Griffiths, Morgans, Hughs or the Conways (all saved for my future trip to Wales).
11. Back to Eglwys Bach, which in Welsh means “Little Church”. This is a town where our direct ancestors John Williams and Ann Davis were born. The church only had approximate dates for their births, John about 1760 and Ann about 1782. Eglwys Bach is none of the most beautiful little town.s We went to the Church and were looking at headstones in the graveyard. About this time Jacob suggested we go inside the church, the nicest Church caretaker joined us. It just happened (happened?) that we were there the day they were having an open house and the Parish other records were open for inspection (We were the only ones there to inspect). We saw the parish records plus a book that hadn’t been put on the parish records. In that 2nd book Jacob found our 2 ancestors birth records. Now, instead of approximate dates we now have exact dates John 24 April 1758, Ann 9 Feb 1777. But even more important we have the names of both their parents. John Williams parents were/are Richard and Ann Williams. Ann’s parents are William and Mary Davis. When I got back to BYU, Peter Hogh, (Alicia’s husband, consultant and a temple sealer) spent at least 2 hours making sure those 4 people haven’t previously been identified and preparing cards for Temple work. Baptisms, Confirmations, Initiatory, endowments and sealing are in the process of being done by their descendants – us.
12. There was another day where Jacob went to Caernarfon Castle ( one of the most impressive in all of Great Britain) I went to Llanfair Talhaiarn. It was almost like Egwyls Bach. No new information gained. The rectory where the records were was closed waiting for the new minister – a woman – would be arriving in September. I met a lot of wonderful friendly people. One man even helped me and introduced me to the caretaker of the Church. Guys, the Churches in Manabrier, Eglwys Bach, and Llanfair Talhaiarn and Llanelly were all places our ancestors worshipped in.
13. Recap. We now have our 100 names for Temple work. Jacob and I had a wonderful trip. Now some observations.
What if we hadn’t mistakenly gone to Liverpool
“ “ Lindy hadn’t found Eglwys Bach on the map
“ “ The friendly caretaker hadn’t come out to visit us
“ “ We had gone to Eglwys Bach on any other day
“ “ We had gone to Conwi instead of Calwyn Bay
“ “ We hadn’t found out about the records in Llandudno
“ “ Jacob hadn’t come with me
“ “ Richard didn’t have the United Airline internship )which led to affordable stand by flights – including business class from London to Chicago).
What if your Mom/ Ria hadn’t been so supportive of me going to Wales (although she did get her Ipad).
What if Ria had gotten as sick as she did those days before going to the hospital – if so, I wouldn’t have gone to Wales.
14.Let me digress for a moment and apologize. When I got back from Wales, I saw how fast Ria was deteriorating. I knew she couldn’t be with us another month. This bothered me more than I thought possible. I snapped at family and Church members. I am so sorry and ask for your forgiveness – even to the point that we pretend that I had never sunk to that level of turmoil. I’m sorry.15. Wales. We were there. We visited some of the most wonderful places. The people we met were all friendly and helpful. (Hmmm – they weren’t that helpful when we asked them to join the church in 1963) Names are being submitted to the temple. 4 direct ancestors and distant cousins and aunts and uncles.
Heavenly Father blessed our efforts more than we could have hoped for. He wants us all to love and be sealed as families – including to our ancestors.
Love Dad, Grandpa"
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Tonight (Thursday night) I was able to go to the Draper Temple with Matt, Jacob, Miranda, Matt's sister Laura, her husband Rand and daughter Sierra and Grandpa Hatch to do some of the temple work for these ancestors. It was an amazing experience. We've been greatly blessed. 
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