2023-06 Jun - Restarting Family History Messages

Jun 7, 2023 family history why many hands video studies sense of identity

From your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants for June 2023:

• The prompt to restart.

  • After our recent Ward Conference, our Stake President asked why we had stopped the Ward messages about Temple & Family History. I had no good answer. I hadn’t been aware anyone was reading them. So in behalf of the Ward Elders Quorum President, we’re restarting these monthly messages.

• A different focus.

  • To those who received these Ward messages from 2019-2022, note that the restart will focus on the WHY rather than focus on the HOW, or the specific skills with the current technologies for Temple & Family History as we did in prior years. Any of the Ward Temple & Family History Consultants are willing to help you with the HOW. The how is an accretion of skills over time that is more than a brief message can accomplish.
  • Focusing on the WHY seems appropriate right now given our current prophet’s guidance about this work and the recent announcement of a temple coming soon to our area!
  • New studies show family history helps youth in these challenging times. “Family history knowledge helps American adolescents develop healthy sense of identity”

• New Members

  • I recall when I joined the church that I was surprised how much new that I needed to learn. New members, we’ve been where you are. The Ward Temple & Family History Consultants (a calling in the Ward) are volunteers who are especially happy to help new members get started and make progress. Prior consultants helped us, and now we’ll help you. Our first step will be to help you get an account at familysearch.org, the church website for your family tree. This new booklet is helpful to new members. How many elements of the digital version of “My Family, Stories That Bring Us Together” have you already gathered? Any data missing? Who in your family might know that? Perhaps you can help others later after you get better at these skills.

• What did the Prophet say?

  • President Russell M. Nelson, our current prophet of God, said, “These surely are the latter days, and the Lord is hastening His work to gather Israel. That gathering is the most important thing taking place on earth today. Nothing else compares in magnitude, nothing else compares in importance, nothing else compares in majesty.”
  • He continued, ““you were sent to earth at this precise time, the most crucial time in the history of the world, to help gather Israel. There is nothing happening on this earth right now that is more important than that. There is nothing of greater consequence. Absolutely nothing.”
  • So as each of us ask, “What can I do this year to further the gathering of Israel on either side of the veil?” and “How will I listen for what the Spirit prompts for me?”

• Given the exponential amounts of records data generated, the work is helped by many hands to progress at the speed and growing scale of the need. Each little part we can do helps another.

• Aspiration & Inspiration, NOT guilt trips.

  • Please allow me to assure that the intent of these messages is not as a guilt trip, but rather as a reminder of the grandeur of the vision and scope of the work God asks of his children as we prepare for the Savior’s second coming, and the urgency our Prophets have indicated. With our hand in the Lord’s hand, all things are possible as we keep trying and practicing Christlike love and service, uniting families through family history and temple work. Joseph Smith asked, “Shall we not go on in so great a cause?”
  • If you feel that any of these messages cause you a guilt trip, please let me know what influenced that and I’ll try to adjust. The Holy Ghost directs each of us. This monthly message is to help us look forward to the bright future that God has included us all in.

• But…

  • No matter each of our current spiritual states on our individual journeys of becoming as disciples of Jesus Christ, or if we’ve had less activity in the church, or whether or not we can attend the temple right now, or whether we don’t feel old enough for Temple & Family History (it is for youth and adults), or if others have done much work already making it hard to see how to help, the revealed guidance for Temple & Family History has identified work each of us can do as we are and as we continue to progress, at all places along that becoming journey. We can start where we are spiritually, and as we progress, we can do more including serving in the temple.
  • Even the little ones in our Ward Primary recently did some activities where the young children helped and excitedly got engaged. Thank you, Primary!
  • We’re all invited, regardless of current constraints. What we can offer can increase as we develop, grow and strengthen. Ward Temple & Family History Consultants can assist anyone willing to start or do more in the gathering of Israel, whether you’re new to this or experienced.

• How much time?

  • The time it takes for some types of Temple & Family History work is on a continuum from short to long, and you choose which things to do (how much time) based on your priorities and your time available. Short-duration activities include Indexing. Other quick actions include linking one of the many newly released sources that (a) help establish the validity of actual relationships (our linkages), and (b) help us get to know those of our families that came before (i.e., seeing your ancestor’s signature on Draft registration cards, reading their physical descriptions on the same draft cards).
    • For example, the recently released US Social Security Numerical Identification Files that provide vital data on parent-child relationships.
  • As the work hastens, new source records come out frequently, in a work that streams data as the technologies get better.
  • Rather than seeing it as a start & finish, the race that is set before us has a finish line that goes all the way to our departure from mortality.
  • Longer service includes temple trips. Actions like gathering photos from older family members, and adding them to family search can be short or long depending on what your family finds. Finding our direct lines of ancestors can take longer.
  • With so much abundance today compared to throughout history, today we are all constrained by time, having only 24 hours in a day. How will I use my time?

• Thank you

  • Thank you to the Ward for the slight increase in Temple & Family History efforts, collectively in 2023 so far.
    • We have a slight increase in members submitting names.
    • After a big drop during the pandemic, we now have had a slight increase in members completing their 4-Generation Chart on familysearch.org compared to last year.
    • More of our ward has logged in to familysearch.org on computers or mobile devices.
    • We have had slight increases in adding names to family trees.
    • We have had slight increases in adding memories (photos, stories, etc.) to the person’s page on familysearch.org.
    • Volunteers across the USA recently indexed the 1950 US Census and now those records are available to link to your people. There is more data in the 1950 census than prior census, giving you more information to better get to know your ancestors.
    • We’re flat (no increase) on indexing in the ward. Will you consider the increase in records now being digitized and the consequent increased need for indexing volunteers, and the small batches of indexing work that can allow for indexing in a short period of time? For example, the church has now digitized all the old microfilm, but now indexing is necessary so people can do computer searches for information still trapped in a digital image of a record and then find that data for their own family trees. Even as the Church adds artificial intelligence/machine learning to recognizing the patterns of older handwritten records, AI has limits and the church still needs humans to confirm or correct what the machine guessed at (pattern recognition algorithms). So even indexing is becoming “assisted” indexing in some cases as technologies improve. Humans are still better at pattern recognition of older records than computers, so our help with indexing is still needed. Danya Dale is the expert on indexing in our Ward.
    • I love this for all ages animated video. I even sent this 2.6 minute “Indexing is vital” video to my non-member parents to easily show how records help what they call genealogy.
      • Family History helps me talk to some of my non-member relatives about things we do in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints when they are not open to discussions about our gospel beliefs. Family history has been a bridge to some of them. I am grateful for that too.
  • If you like to compare your own efforts to your past self, you can now see “My Contributions” on familysearch.org to help gauge your contributions over time.
  • Later, what a happy moment when those you have helped greet you with thankfulness beyond the mortal veil for doing for them what they could not do for themselves. Our service, tithing some time here, offers the ordinances of salvation in the gospel of Christ for them to choose. How grateful I am to those people, including missionaries, who helped me find the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Joy is the reward. It is the same joy as we experience when helping people during their own missionary discussions, answering questions, and bearing our own testimony of the truth, regardless of how each person chooses to proceed. The reward in the gathering is joy that is difficult to describe and wonderful to experience.

• The Ward Temple & Family History Consultants are happy to help you with the HOW, to help you build your skills in groups (youth) or one-on-one at the Family Search Center (the new name) at the stake center (note the hours of operation posted near the door), at your home, virtually (using Zoom), helping you to use the much easier technologies today than when I started after joining the church when I was 20. What took hours then, takes seconds or minutes today. God keeps making the tools easier to use as the work hastens. We can show you HOW. You decide how much you want to help this year.

• Hebrews 12.

  • 1 …let us lay aside every weight, …and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
  • 2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; …
  • 3 lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.

Sincerely, Your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants