2024-08 Aug - How do we get to know someone?

Aug 15, 2024 family history turning hearts get to know workflow

Read time: Summary 0.1 minutes | Expanded section: 10.3 minutes | Entire message 10.4 minutes

Summary

• Recent Stake Temple Focus
• What does it mean to get to know someone?
• The Current Workflow for Family History
• Story Time
• How many ancestors do we have?

Expanded Message

Recent Stake Temple Focus

• To follow Jesus Christ’s commission to take the Gospel to all the world, each of us focuses on the Savior, and then does the works He has asked us to do. Through our prophet, the entire church receives revelation from God. And, each of us can receive revelation through the Holy Ghost, the comforter, whom our Savior gave so that we’re not alone.

• Recently our Stake focused on attending the temple on a particular weekend. Ponder for a moment how your decision to participate blessed you and blessed others for whom you participated.

• The temple is place where heaven touches the earth, a place where marvelous blessings are bestowed, and a place where we can feel closer to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ as we strive to become more like Them.

As you read the following quote about temple service, how has your spirit been uplifted, or additional light and knowledge been received during your recent temple worship?

“The Lord will bless us as we attend to the sacred ordinance work of the temples. Blessings there will not be limited to our temple service. We will be blessed in all of our affairs. We will be eligible to have the Lord take an interest in our affairs both spiritual and temporal. Our labors in the temple cover us with a shield and a protection, both individually and as a people. As you prepare your family history and take names to the temple for your ancestors, you will feel the influence of the Holy Ghost more powerfully in your life. You will be strengthened to do this work and the other tasks of your life more efficiently. As you do the work of the Lord, you will know Him better and become more like Him.” Boyd K. Packer (emphasis added)

• Thank you for the participation in July by everyone in our Ward, joining with all those in the Stake. And, thank God for all the blessings that have flowed from that service.

• If you don’t currently have a temple recommend, talk with our Bishop about a plan to apply the atonement of our Savior so you can prepare to go to the new Temple, and work towards getting a recommend. Repent as needed and start now.

What does it mean to get to know someone?

Ponder that for a minute. What did you do that made getting to know another more successful? If we’ve gotten good at it, it might be hard to describe it, but reflect for a minute.

• As young adults, when we started dating we got to know people better.

• Here are a few things I found while studying this topic.

I took action immediately to get to know people. I decided that the key to breaking down the social barriers was to serve.

~ Jane Nickerson, Ensign article, Aug 2012

• In guidance on effective ministering, I found this.

Get to know them. Learn about their lives, relationships, and circumstances. By doing so, you’ll be able to anticipate their needs and either meet those needs yourself or call on your ward leadership to access additional resources.

Also this:

Make the effort to get to know people beyond superficial details. Recognize that building relationships takes time and sincere effort. ~ Liahona, June 2019

• How do we get to know our Savior?

“The only way I get to know my Savior and Heavenly Father,” she wrote, “is by praying and reading about Them in scriptures.”

~ Al and Eva Fry, Ensign article, July 2012

• How do we get to know our local Missionaries? We invite them over and find out more about them and they find out more about us.

• So what, specifically do we do to get to know another person?

  • Show Genuine Interest

    • We ask questions to find out about their background, interests, and experiences. We show that we care about their responses, and avoid dominating the conversation with our own stories.

  • Be Patient

    • Relationships develop over time, and getting to know someone is a gradual process. Be patient and give the relationship time to grow naturally.

  • Serve Them

    Service helps us to get to know the Savior, for “how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served?” (Mosiah 5:13.) As we immerse ourselves in the service of others, we find our spiritual selves and come unto Him.

    ~ Elder Derek A. Cuthbert, Of the Seventy, Apr 1990

    • Serving other people helps us get to know them too.

  • Active Listening

    • We pay attention to what they say without interrupting. Reflect on their words, and ask follow-up questions to delve deeper into their thoughts and feelings.

  • Share About Ourselves

    • We offer personal anecdotes and insights to create a reciprocal exchange. We share our own experiences, which helps build trust and encourages the other person to open up.

  • Spend Time Together

    • We engage in activities or experiences that allow us to interact in different settings. Shared experiences build bonds.

  • Observe Body Language

    • Non-verbal cues like eye contact, gestures, and facial expressions can provide insight into a person’s comfort level and emotions. Being mindful of these can enhance our understanding of others.

  • Respect Boundaries

    • Understand and respect the other person’s comfort zone. Not everyone is immediately comfortable sharing personal details, so let the relationship develop at a pace that suits both of you.

  • Be Empathetic

    • Try to understand things from their perspective. Empathy helps in building deeper connections, as it shows we care about their feelings and experiences.

  • Engage in Open Conversations

    • Discuss a wide range of topics, including values, beliefs, and aspirations. This not only helps us understand each other better but also builds a foundation for mutual respect.

  • Consistency and Follow-Up

    • Regular interactions and checking in on past conversations show that you value the relationship and are interested in maintaining it.

• Okay, okay. We’ve got it!

• Now, let’s flip the script. From the perspective of Family History, how do we get to know our ancestors, both direct and cousins?

  • Briefly look back at the highlighted portions of how to get to know the living. What patterns do you see that apply not just to the living, but to our dead?

We pray that all may be touched by the Spirit of Elijah and with it a desire to live in families forever. Please turn the hearts of fathers and mothers to their children and turn the hearts of children to their parents.

Open the way for those who are searching out the records of their forbearers. Bless them with the desire to offer the ordinances of salvation and eternal life to their family members. May those who are endowed by Thy power in this house, go forth to the world in faith to offer the gospel of Jesus Christ to others. May all those who are endowed in this house increase in their capacity to testify and teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. May they have confidence that angels will go with them in their determination to carry the blessings of the gospel to others.

~ Dedicatory prayer for the Montreal Quebec Temple, 22 November 2015

• When Elijah appeared to the Prophet Joseph, he said, “Behold, the time has fully come … to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers.”

• What does that mean?

  • Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles defined the spirit of Elijah as “a manifestation of the Holy Ghost bearing witness of the divine nature of the family” (“A New Harvest Time,” Ensign, May 1998, 34).
  • Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said, “The Spirit of Elijah affects people inside and outside of the Church. However, as members of Christ’s restored Church, we have the covenant responsibility to search out our ancestors and provide for them the saving ordinances of the gospel. (“The Hearts of the Children Shall Turn,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2011, 25–26).

• So a thought experiment:

  • For ministering visits or for getting to know other members of our Ward, if all we learned of them was their birth date & marriage date, how well have we really gotten to know them? How well have we turned our heart towards them?
  • For our ancestors, do we stop at merely the data needed to offer ordinances?

• So then, how can I get to know my forebearers better when so little information is available?

  • As more and more sources have been digitized, I have found records about nearly all of my more recent ancestors.
  • As with live people in mortality, I have found out more about them.
  • As I have gone beyond superficial details, I have found notes about their occupation, where they lived, how they had extended family live with them.
  • For those for whom I have no photos, I found their eye color, height and hair color from World War I & II draft cards, when I look at the image of the document, beyond what was indexed.
  • I feel that gradually, over time, I have gotten to know many of them better.
  • I found out from newspaper clippings (from newspapers.com) how my Grandmother enjoyed golf, and did well in competitive games. I remember as a child seeing her golf bag, but didn’t understand how much she used it.
  • When I have found the few wills so far, I have seen how they allocated their assets to their children.
  • I have seen various generations of grandparents having grandchildren in their homes during one or even two US Census periods.
  • I have found records about some of their military service, their units, and sometimes where they served. As I learn of these experiences, I get to know them a little better.

• Each of these small puzzle pieces come together in a gradual process to help me form a more complete picture of my ancestor, like when my spouse completes a 1,000 piece puzzle and it goes from odd little bits to a clear and beautiful picture.

• As I have served them, both in the temple and collecting as many sources as I can find, I get to know them better and my heart turns towards them.

• Like the testimony of two or more witnesses is used in legal proceedings to establish the truth, I have both confirmed and surprisingly have found that some family stories had gone astray from what actually happened.

• The evidence of two to 30+ sources builds into a much strengthened hypothesis of an ancestor’s life. All these sources provide more depth about their background, interests, and experiences.

For those in the 1800s, not as much is available, but for ancestors in the 1900s and 2000s, FAR MORE sources have been digitized and indexed. And the pace accelerates. Opportunities to get to know our people are increasing. How will we respond?

Some of these sources provide interesting and fun information that can be shared with children for Family Home Evening. Finding it and linking it on Familysearch.org ensures that my children have it available for their children and grandchildren too.

So, after that little journey of applying the pattern of getting to know the living to the dead too, I invite you to both focus on Christ and to get to know your people better. Look at the images of the sources (when available) and see what other little treasures or puzzle pieces you find. This service to your people both in the temple and by solidifying their page on familysearch.org (with more sources as witnesses of their story, their hearts), will bless you by turning your heart to your fathers, and will bless future generations to have more known about their ancestors than you started with.

And in the end, when it is our turn to pass through the veil, perhaps we will know our people better, like I hope I will know our Savior.

Reminder. Current Workflow for Family History:

Similar to being able to take money out of a bank (temple service), we have to put money into a bank first (researching and finding our people on familysearch.org). Think Inputs and Outputs.

1. Historical people’s information first has to be digitized (others do this).
2. We index people’s digitized information so the image can be associated with text, which can be found in computer searches.
3. We link families' data together in FamilySearch.org (each member’s initial target is 4-Generations found and linked. Later we work cousin lines too.)
4. We link people’s information (source data) to the right person to help us and others to get to know them better.
5. Then, we can get names to take to the temple and offer them the choice of being linked to their families for eternity in our own pattern of regular temple attendance.
6. By delving deeper, finding and adding more sources and their small bits about our ancestor’s experiences, we get to know our people, and our hearts turn to them. As more is digitized and indexed, more becomes available. It’s an ongoing and accelerating effort. When are we “done” knowing someone? We can all go beyond the data needed for the temple and get to know our people.
7. We can bless others by sharing with our immediate family and cousins what we’ve learned about our shared ancestors or kin, helping all of us feel more grounded, knowing where we came from. Potentially helping them to turn their hearts to their fathers too.

Story Time

• I was found as a baby wrapped in my mum’s coat – but who am I?

How many ancestors do we have?

From a news article:

Every person has two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. Keep doubling back through the generations — 16, 32, 64, 128 — and within a few hundred years you have thousands of ancestors.

My people include thousands. I’m sure yours do too. If it feels like too much, who else in your family may want to help? This is a work where we tithe bits of time towards, more often than we can do it full time while also balancing family, work and other priorities. Walt Disney’s phrase, “Keep Moving Forward” applies to Temple & Family History work too. We can get to know our people and help our kin get to know them better too, if they choose to look to them.

Other studies have concluded that the entire human family on Earth is included when you get to 50th cousins.

When I took history classes in school, I enjoyed the stories about the people more than merely the dates. Perhaps you did too. What story have the puzzle pieces you’ve found hint at or shed light upon? May we all get to know our own people better, in addition to temple worship. I testify that the blessings are worth the effort. They are all God’s children and He knows each of them as he knows you and I. He loves us and this is His work. So he is willing to bless us as we help in this work. May you and your kin be blessed as you dabble or tithe time to this important and fulfilling work as you decide how to allocate your mortal time during this mortal test with its many challenges. Whatever you’re able to do helps move God’s work along. May you have the internal peace that comes in serving the Lord.

As Ward Temple & Family History Consultants we are called to help you with HOW to do these things, the Lord has asked that we all do.

Sincerely, Your Ward Temple & Family History Consultants,

During Stake Family Search Center posted hours, our Ward’s staffing assignments are posted near the hours on the bulletin board next to the Family Search Center door.

(our contact info is in the tools app, or see us in church)