User:Mindikaykurtz

About Me

I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and I've lived here all my life. My mom worked as a keypunch operator and my dad was a police officer with the Omaha Police Department. I have a brother, Marc, and two sisters, Missy and Mel, and they are all younger than I am. My dad was an only child, and my mom had one sister, who died when she was 2 years old, so basically they were both only children. We had no aunts, uncles or cousins! Boring! We had a lot of second and third cousins, but only 2 of them lived in Omaha and we rarely saw them.

I joined the church when I was 17, without much support from the family. I have dozens (literally) of people on both sides of the family who were Lutheran ministers and no one took my departure from that church lightly!

I've been married twice, but the second time I found the right man - we've been married for 28 years. I have 2 children, Meg is 34, married, and very active in church. Matt is 32, married, a father of one, and he wants nothing to do with church, unfortunately. My granddaughter, Hailey, is the sunshine of my life. She will be 6 years old and starting kindergarten this fall. Steve (my husband) and I have also been involved in dog rescue and we have 3 dachshunds right now who keep me on a tight leash all day long! At one time, we had 7 dachshunds running around, but we've decided maybe that was a bit much and as we lost them, we didn't get any more! The ones we have now are 16, 14, and 12. All females.

I've done lots of jobs, from packing lasagna at a macaroni plant to being a secretary for the local police department for over 15 years, to being a medical transcriptionist. I had to quit working in 2009 and I'm on disability because of fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, but not working was boring, boring, boring. I started worknig on genealogy in about 2000, and at my last job I had a co-worker who was also interested in it, so we did a lot of cemetery walking and working on Find A Grave and our individual family trees.

In April of this year I saw an ad on Facebook about doing a mission while staying at home and working with Family History. I thought since I was spending most of my day on the computer working on my family tree, maybe it was time to help others work on theirs. I called for information, and here I am.

Since my daughter and I are the only 2 members of the church in the family we found a lot of family who need work done. I have a very strong testimony of family history and temple work. I've felt such a calm feeling when doing work for my loved ones, and I know they have accepted the gospel. My father passed away in November of 2013, and I know that he's been giving me help from the other side. There were members of his family that I couldn't find, I had been looking for them for years, but within a short time after he died, I found information I needed that led me to these ancestors. I can't wait to have his work done, I know he's ready.