I have officially been bitten...

By the family history bug!!! Wow. I just had an AWESOME experience. So some history (haha): my maiden name is Holloway and for ever our line stopped at my great great grandpa Garrett Edgar Holloway. Long story short, my great great grandma Rose married him when she was super young, they had my great grandpa Ken and Garrett turned out to be a scary drunk and so Rose left him and remarried (at least this is the story that I have been told). Because of their very turbulent marriage, no one was able to get any information about him at all. We only knew an approximate of the year he was born and where. So I started a family history class with my goal to learn how to do it to finish the Holloway line. My aunt and uncle have done a lot of family history for that side of the family but were still stuck at his name. I thought I would take on the impossible and search for him. Well, my teacher showed us where we could search the census and records people have been indexing that have just been put on the internet. I figured that since this is new, and it was not available to my aunt and uncle, it may give me a lead. So today after church I felt that I should spend the time to do family history and went to that site. I looked around for a while, typed every thing we knew about him and found nothing. A little discouraged I went to make lunch and offered a simple prayer asking Heavenly Father to help me find him. I went back to my computer and after typing basically the same thing, I FOUND A CENSUS WITH HIS NAME ON IT!!!!!! The best part of it is that he is a child and so his PARENTS NAMES WERE ON IT TOO!!! I was going absolutely crazy because I was so excited!! The neighbors probably thought I had won the lottery or something. But I really felt that I had. With this information I have been able to find more things and hopefully get farther with the Holloway line than ever before. The thing that I am the most thankful for is this: Without the faithful indexers who did their job with family history, we would still be at a roadblock. But because people were indexing, my family has been able to find an ancestor that has been unknown for years. After this experience I have more resolve to do indexing during my spare time because it is such a blessing to those who are searching!!! WOW. Also, it was such a wonderful answer to my prayer and helped me realize that family history is so important, that at times just asking can help ways come about that we can find our family names! This is so cool... :) Sorry haha, I bet that wasn't exciting for everyone else.

But, Thank you indexers!! Keep up the good work!! You have no idea who you could be helping!

All because of this...