2025-04 Apr - Dynamic vs Static

Apr 20, 2025 static dynamic Temple and Family History genealogy help Missionary work Second Coming of Christ Spiritual momentum Ward family history consultants digitized historical records Indexing

Read time: Summary 0.2 minutes | Expanded section: 10.2 minutes | Entire message 10.4 minutes

Summary

Expanded Message

Our Ward is Slightly Up for Temple & Family History So Far. Thank You.

We are slightly up in Temple & Family History metrics year to date. Thank you for helping those who cannot help themselves. Thank you for your part in helping in the building up of God’s kingdom.

Flaxen Cords?

President Nelson Asks Us to “Do the spiritual work”

Do the spiritual work to seek miracles. Prayerfully ask God to help you exercise that kind of faith. I promise that you can experience for yourself that Jesus Christ “giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” Few things will accelerate your spiritual momentum more than realizing the Lord is helping you to move a mountain in your life.

~ President Russell M Nelson, April 2022, emphasis added

How Will I Help?

Story Time

I Invite You to Adjust Mental Models

A mental model is like a mindset. It is a way of seeing the world. Often, our mental models filter our thinking even when we’re unaware. We all have mental models, even if we don’t think about it consciously.

I will use analogy to point out the mental model that reflects our current reality. In engineering we deal with what we call statics and dynamics.

Really briefly (I promise to make it relevant), think of statics and dynamics like two ways of looking at how things move—or don’t move. Statics is like looking at a your house or a parked car: nothing is moving, and we’re just checking if everything (all the forces involved) is balanced and staying still. On the other hand, dynamics is all about things that are moving, like a roller coaster zooming down a track or a plane flying through the sky. Dynamics often requires a deeper understanding and the ability to analyze from different reference frames.

Imagine air is like invisible water flowing all around us. In aerodynamics, engineers study how this “air-water” moves, especially when something like an airplane or a bird flies through it. These movements are called flows. Sometimes the air flows smoothly, like a calm river (laminar flow), and sometimes it swirls and tumbles, like rapids (turbulent flow). Understanding these flows helps engineers figure out how to make planes fly better, faster, and safer by shaping them in ways that let the air move around them just right.

In engineering, flows—like air or water—are all about movement and change over time. Engineers study how these flows behave so they can design things that work well while the flow is happening, not just at one frozen moment in time.

Similarly, when we think about information, we can look at it two ways. Some people treat information like statics: once you’ve “got the facts,” you’re “done”, like solving a puzzle that doesn’t change. Like reading the scriptures once. But others see information as more like a dynamic flow—it keeps coming in, changing, and evolving, just like air around a flying plane. In that dynamics view, we aren’t finished; we’re always adjusting what we know, like a pilot (e.g., Elder Uchtdorf) constantly trimming the wings to stay on course. Like receiving impressions from the Holy Ghost while reading a scripture we’ve read many times before .

Temple & Family History, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is an example of how information has shifted from something static to something dynamic. In decades past, building a family tree often felt like solving a fixed-size puzzle: you’d gather the birth, marriage, and death records you could find, maybe write to a few archives, and when you ran out of leads, you were “done.” Get to 4 generations and stop. Like statics, that view seems easier.

With the accelerating rate of temple building and construction, the need for more information about our ancestors is greater than thirty years ago. Therefore in reality now, with accelerating digitization of millions of historical records and indexing making them searchable every year—census rolls, newspapers, military files, immigration logs, even handwritten letters—the flow of genealogical (family history) information has become dynamic. New pieces of the puzzle are constantly appearing, sometimes changing what we thought we knew. We can come to know our kin by having more information about their lives, so our hearts turn to our fathers and mothers. A “dead end” from ten years ago might suddenly open up because a new digital collection went online last week.

More members are getting temples closer to them now, accelerating the work. With so many people working on the overall human family tree (familysearch.org), the work has accelerated. Unexpectedly, the network effects of so much linked information has made finding our more distant cousins easier too.

So modern Temple & Family History work is not about getting done or finishing a fixed-size puzzle—it’s more like steering a boat down a river (or flying an airplane in the jet stream), adjusting your course as the current (dynamic flows of water or air) changes and new paths emerge. Because it is dynamic, it may seem harder at first. And, in the pattern of all things, it gets somewhat easier with practice.

Lately, President Nelson and the Apostles have been reinforcing that the restoration is happening now. Twenty to thirty years ago, perhaps things felt more static. To me they did. Reading about the preparation for the Second Coming of Christ was statics—we were looking at the early church, the historical prophecies, the doctrines, the signs.

But living in these times with the restoration ongoing, with continuing revelation, and participating in the Lord’s work is stepping into the realm of dynamics. It’s not just about knowing what has been written (past tense, static), but being aware, responsive, and engaged as the story continues to unfold to us and around us (flows, dynamic). In dynamic flows, we keep going, we adjust course, we act in faith in real time, and we help move the work forward, we help gather Israel and prepare for the second coming of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

God intends us to be participants, rather than observers. Do we let others see the light that is in us rather than hiding it under a bushel? The Spirit, current events, personal revelation, and unfolding prophecy all move like a flow—and we are invited to be part of that living, dynamic work for God’s kingdom.

I invite you to adjust mental models of his work from static to dynamic. From a fixed puzzle to a flowing river.

Then look to see where you can offer part of your time and energy.

If This Feels Hard, Don’t Go It Alone

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. ~ Jesus Christ, Matthew 11:28-30

If we try to do His work alone, it can feel heavy and hard. When we ask for help from heaven, our work (missionary or Temple & Family History) can seem lighter as the Lord helps with the burden.

The April 2025 General Conference seemed to increase the urgency of preparing for the second coming. Our Stake is focusing on missionary work on both sides of the veil.

Therefore, what can you ask for heavenly help with today as you participate in the ongoing restoration?

I plead with you to increase your spiritual capacity to receive revelation. Let this Easter Sunday be a defining moment in your life. Choose to do the spiritual work required to enjoy the gift of the Holy Ghost and hear the voice of the Spirit more frequently and more clearly.

~ President Russell M Nelson, April 2018, emphasis added

What Can We Do?

When you decide to sacrifice some of your time to help with Temple & Family History work, what can you focus on?

As a child, I didn’t like visiting certain elderly relatives because some gave wet kisses on the cheek, to the point where I had to wipe it off. To a 8 year old, it felt yucky. But as I’ve matured, my heart has turned to those, my people, as I have gotten to know them little by little from the story the records I’ve found tells about their lives. Like you, I have documented all I’ve learned about my people on familysearch.org for my children and their children to have access to that knowledge too. So they can know where they come from. Know their mortal heritage in addition to their spiritual inheritance. So they too can be grounded in knowing their people’s history.

Reminder. Current Workflow for Family History:

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. AI is still not good enough to do this by itself.
  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 attach people’s information (source data) to the right person to help us and others to get to know them better. Attaching more sources also shows our hypotheses about individuals more likely true than not true as we build a clear picture of who they were.
  5. Then, we can get names to take to the temple and offer them the choice of being linked to their families for eternity.
  6. By delving deeper, finding and attaching sources and their small bits of information about our ancestor’s experiences, we get to know our people (both direct lines and cousin lines), and our hearts turn to them. As more original sources are digitized and indexed, more puzzle pieces become available. It’s an ongoing and accelerating effort. When are we “done” knowing someone? We can all go beyond the dates of their birth and death 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.

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 staffing assignments are posted

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

P.S. - Older versions of this Ward Message (without names), with some how-to instructions, are at familyhistorystuff.com for your reference. This site is not for profit. The .com was a mistake when .org was intended, and would have doubled the cost to fix the mistake.