Joy Tippetts of Brigham City, Utah

By Lawrence Cummins

Last year when nine-year-old Joy Tippetts’ stake president called her to work in the Church’s name extraction program, she was delighted. For even before she was six years old, Joy had been helping her mother by sorting index cards and doing other simple tasks at the extraction center.

Joy has been trained to read Old German script, and according to Wilma Taylor, a Germanic language trainer, “Joy is unusually accurate and does fine work. She is fantastic for a ten-year-old!”

Microfilms of religious and civil records in Old German script that contain information about persons who have died are examined on a microfilm reader. (Information is extracted from microfilmed records from other countries besides Germany.) Joy then copies, or extracts, the deceased persons’ names, birthplaces, and the names of their parents and grandparents from the microfilm record, as well as their birth, christening, and death dates. This information is then written on index cards and sent with many other cards to a Latter-day Saint temple where the necessary ordinance work can be completed for those persons. The majority of names for which temple work for the dead is completed are supplied by the name extraction centers.

Joy and her mother, Roxanna, are best friends, and they look forward each week to the three hours that they spend together at the extraction center. Joy says that she “loves to read the records and figure out who the people are.”

Joy’s father, James, works as a laboratory technician for a national corporation.

Social studies, spelling, and reading are Joy’s favorite subjects in school. Away from school she enjoys swimming, bike-riding, playing football with her older brothers, adding to her Book of Remembrance, and working on her hook rug. After school Joy often helps in her mother’s preschool held in the Tippetts’ home.

Playing the piano and singing with her mother or the Homespun Singers—a forty-member choir of youngsters four to sixteen years of age—allow Joy expression for her musical talents. Last winter she performed a Frosty the Snowman specialty dance with the Box Elder Symphonic Choir.

Whatever Joy does, her given name suits her well, because she brings a bright, happy spirit wherever she goes.

Photos by Dick Brown

Joy Tippetts—one of the youngest specialists ever called to work in the Church’s name extraction program.

Getting ready to hike the football to brother Joel (16) while brother Jimmy (21) gets ready to run, and niece, Tanna Maddox (3), looks on

Examining records in Old German script on microfilm reader with Wilma Taylor, Germanic language trainer

Copy exercise of Joy’s translation of Old German script into contemporary German and then into English

Another length of yarn worked into Joy’s hook rug

Joy Tippetts and Hayley (5), Hans (11), and Heather Peterson (16), practicing with Carolyn Petersen, director of Homespun Singers Choir

Sharing a read-aloud story with her niece, Tanna

Making piano practice a pleasure with her mother’s encouragement