Description
The Flash Drive Miracle
This story begins in 2009. Joy and her husband had been home from serving as missionaries in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, for about a year and a half. One morning, she received a phone call. It was Marlo Anderson calling from Utah. He asked Joy if she was missing a flash drive.
Joy remembered that while she was serving as a missionary, she had downloaded some family history on an old drive and dropped it in her purse. She never used it and figured that all the information on it had been duplicated elsewhere or taken care of. She explained to Marlo that just before returning home, she had lost the drive. Figuring that it would turn up in her stuff at home, she didn’t worry too much about it, but it never did. She forgot about the drive—that is, until Marlo called.
Joy asked Marlo where he found it. He explained that he had been taking a walk along a graveled path on his mother-in-law’s property in Midway, Utah when he saw it on the ground. Joy asked him if it was in a red plastic case. He said it was, although one side was red and the other side was now clear plastic. Evidently, the drive had been out in the sun and elements long enough to fade the color from the one side.
Marlo had opened the drive and got Joy’s name and number from it, which is how he contacted her. He sent her the drive.
When it arrived, Joy wrote to Marlo to confirm that she had received it and what a miracle it was that he had found it. Marlo wrote back and among other things, he said:
“All that has happened tells me there must be something very important on that drive that people on the other side of the veil do not want lost, and/or Temple work done. It is just too incredible of a story to be just dumb luck.
I have been active in family history research 30 years and this isn’t the first time I have seen something incredible happen to preserve records, or make them available to the right person to get work accomplished…. I am glad that I was able to be part of returning it to you.”
After reading Brother Anderson’s letter, Joy decided to investigate the miracle drive further. Maybe she had missed something. She opened up the files on the drive and to her surprise she discovered family names for whom the work had not been done, including her second great grandfather. She arranged for his work to be done, along with many more.
What is remarkable about this story is that the files on that drive were PAF files—a format no longer used. The information saved on that flash drive is no longer even readable. It was discovered just in time. Joy said, “I believe my second great grandfather was desperate to have his temple work done before the files were unreadable.”
Something else amazing is that the file was found in Midway, Utah, by an experienced worker in family history who knew the significance of what he was looking at. If Joy had not lost the file, she would have dropped it into a desk drawer and forgotten it.
And one more thing, Marlo told Joy he found the drive on a gravel path in Midway, Utah. Upon hearing that, Joy asked, “Where is Midway?” She had never been to Midway in her life. How did that flash drive get from her purse to Midway, survive the elements, and just happen to fall into the hands of just the right person at the right time?
Joy summarized it well. She said: “I know our kindred dead want their temple work done.”
Source:
Joy Fife Original with the author
