Labor Day--Monterey, CA

My older brother, KC, lives in Monterey, CA and is a retired Coast Guard.  His oldest son, Seth, is 15 and he and KC found one of the coolest Eagle Projects I've ever heard of.  There is a forgotten Coast Guard graveyard in Point Reyes, CA--literally right on the coast.  This graveyard had 4 family graves, 4 Coast Guard graves, and 1 unknown grave.  This graveyard has been in disrepair for several years and had become a regular grazing area for cows.  Seth organized a group to take up to this site--which was a 2 hour drive from Monterey--to camp overnight and then repair the graveyard the next day.  Camping overnight IN A GRAVEYARD?!?!  How could we miss that?!  So we made the trip over the Labor Day weekend.

My mom and dad also flew up for the project.  My mom had to stay in Monterey so that she could receive her dialysis session--which was my job to take her to and from this appointment.  But it was fun and we had lots of fun girl-cousin time while the boys went to work.

Girls:  We went shopping at the mall, ate lunch out, and then hit the beach!  It was funny, we couldn't figure out why no one was going in the water.  Upon closer inspection we discovered the water to be infested with JELLYFISH!!! So the girls opted to play in the sand instead--except for brave cousin Cali.  This girl has NO FEAR!  Check her out with her jellyfish catches!

Boys:

The boys got to be together--Ethan, Max, & Seth are the BEST of friends/cousins--so that was AWESOME!  And they got to do hard work and they did AWESOME!  Check out some of the before/after pics of this place:

They actually slept in these old fire station barracks.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

So we had a really great weekend all around.  While we were looking through the photos of all the boys hard work, I had a distinct impression.  I heard, "No one is looking for these people...get their work done!"  I wish I could say that I immediately said "I will go and do..." but my first thought was, "I don't know how and I'm not related..." but then a distinct memory came right to mind when a lady in my ward had told a story in relief society about a time that she was indexing and came across the name of a lady that died a horrific death and was buried in a common grave--no one was looking for her either.  My friend had to wait a year before doing this lady's work because of the 110 year genealogy rule--and she did wait and did complete her work.  So I knew it could be done.  My nephew had a temple trip the next weekend so I had to hurry and figure this out.  After some research, I found that no, no one was looking for any of these people.  I had enough information from their headstones to create ordinance slips for them.  After a couple emails and a phone call to Salt Lake, I had been granted permission!  It was an AMAZING feeling!  I learned something new and I was so glad that I recognized the prompting AND was able to act on it.  I emailed the names immediately to my sister-in-law and now they are currently working on completing the work.  So even though I didn't get to go to the actual project, I did get to play a small part in making it a full-circle Eagle project.