Service

Today I got to teach 2 classes at church. I'm the 2nd Sunday Relief Society teacher and the every-other-Sunday 12/13 yr. old Sunday School teacher. Once a month, I get to do both! It's always great fun. Today was no exception.
I especially enjoyed teaching Relief Society today. The lesson was on Service. I was glad I got to teach that lesson because I recently learned of a super mega uber cool website that's run by the church where you can sign up and do service projects for the church. The theory is that there is way too much work for the church to do officially, but if every member volunteers a little, then piece by piece it will get done. The projects are mostly stuff like digitizing media or helping prepare church publications, but you can also set up an account and become a certified indexer for the church.
In case you've never indexed before, here's the ridiculously oversimplified synopsis:

The church goes all over the world and asks permission to copy civil and religious records from different governments and churches. They let us, because we photo copy/scan the info for free, thus preserving old/fragile/important data. We take that data and transcribe it into huge geneological databases. The problem is from scanning to database, someone has to actually *look* at the info and type it in digital format. This is often difficult to do because the old records are scrumbly (that's a common word in our family... it's a hybrid of scraps, scary, and crumbling) and written in old fashioned swirly twirly calligraphy. So even though the church has professional historians who do a lot of this, we have way more scanned stuff than people to transcribe it.
Indexing is simply transcribing handwritten records into a digital database.
End Scene.

That means that the church lets any member who is in good standing transcribe the records! Yes. It's the coolest thing ever. I had no idea this was even an option, or else I'd have been doing this for a long, long time. You can pick the projects you want to work on, and you can select the difficulty level. Last night I spent over 2 hours deciphering baptism records from a Catholic church in Mexico City from 1749. I only went to bed because I HAD to, otherwise I could have stayed up all night. Yes. I find it that enjoyable.
Think about it. It combines pretty much all my favorite things (except for dogs and gardening): church, history, families, babies, computers, old stuff, handwriting, records, Spanish, names, data, and stories.
Today, I'm back at it.
If you, too, are a complete and total History nerd, or even if you just like doing service, you should check it out. You have to create a church user account using your membership number. Be careful, though, it's extremely addictive.