Last night (about 9:00 PM), I had an uncanny experience. Earlier, “Cousin” sent another obituary and I was adding the family to my database. Obituaries are a gold mine of information and they allow me to connect with families (quite possibly) in my database. Documentation was very ordinary: Name, dates, spouse, children, “sources,” etc., etc. Suddenly the name “Hiva” came to mind. (“Hiv-a” like live-a.) Quite possibly, it has been more than thirty years since I thought of that name. I was visiting the Old German Baptist Brethren community for the first time and it was my introduction to my Frantz-family ancestry. I was invited to go to the funeral of “a member.”

While documenting family in my Ancestry.com database, I reminisced about that trip to Modesto, California, from my home in Lancaster, California. Yes, I “thought about” Hiva and the funeral. Where did those thoughts come from?  Not ten minutes later, “Hiva” appeared in my database. I didn’t remember her last name, I just remembered her odd given name. She was the sister of a person I was entering into my Ancestry.com database.

I deem this “an uncanny experience”  because my mind was working faster than my fingers. Does that make sense? My brain already knew I was working with a particular surname and would make the observation. “My mind was working faster than my fingers.”

God, the Creator of our Universe, gave us a remarkable brain. Computers constantly need to be replaced with a more sophisticated model. Our brain lasts a lifetime.