RED MOLD

Wednesday, we were happily working at the Archives and going along at a good pace. We were pleased to have finished preparing the documents from one town and were beginning a new town, Jumet, when we opened the first box and found "Red Mold" on all the documents. The documents were so bad that they were actually wet and smelled very bad. We checked with our supervisor and he thought they could still be filmed. We were to very carefully separate all of the pages and prepare them as usual. We didn't feel very good about this, but, as we were going to Zone Conference the next day, we left the documents from several boxes out on our tables to "air" out while we were gone.We made it a matter of prayer and asked that we would be directed as to what was the safe thing for us to do. We wanted to do our job well and wanted all of these records filmed so that no name would be left out, but we were concerned about the health ramifications.

When we returned on Friday, we again felt very hesitant to work with these documents. It was probably our imagination but we began to feel a burning in our nostrils and our skin itching. We again asked our supervisor, who then went to the head archivist with a sample of the problem. Luckily, we were given instructions to pass over these moldy documents and the archive would have them professionally cleaned and they would handle and organize the documents.

It was such a relief. We really feel that Heavenly Father is looking out for us and helping us to keep safe while still having these important records preserved.