2025-06-28 Jun Fifth Sunday TFH Tour Slide Show

Jun 28, 2025 family history slide show tour

Welcome

• The presentation notes will be on familyhistorystuff.com, in a post titled “5th Sunday TFH Slide Show”
  • 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.
• So, there is no need for frantic note taking
• It was made with markdown and pandoc slidy for the slides. The notes changed the same markdown into an HTML page for posting as slide notes.

What Reasons Stop Us from Doing Temple & Family History Work?

• Balancing too many things. Current situation prioritizes other service instead (rearing small children, heavy callings, missionary work)
• Lack of interest (not willing to, don’t want to)
  • Prefer to focus on the living
  • Perceive their family’s work is “done”
  • Perceive that TFH work is for “old” people
  • Too much time & effort required
  • Emotional barriers (painful family relationships, unresolved issues, uncomfortable truths)
  • Nobody else in my family cares about it
• Don’t know how to do the work (knowledge & skills)
• Records barriers
  • Can’t understand that language (records are not in English)
  • Lack of records (especially for African Americans)
• Don’t yet know why (knowledge). Don’t yet know the Lord’s will about gathering Israel.

Temple & Family History Tour

• Rather than all about why we should, or super detailed how-tos…

• Instead let’s go on a tour of possibilities

• Let’s tour ways one person, or an entire family, can engage in Temple & Family History work (here a little, there a little)

5th Sunday Ask for Temple & Family History

• You’re not being asked try to do everything today. Just one thing.

  • One memory shared. One photo uploaded. One story recorded. Or just log in and look around.

And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order. (Mosiah 4:27)

• Consider the pattern of here a little, there a little

For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little (Isaiah 28:10)

• To inform your personal decision making, I aim to raise awareness about your options
  • We’ll expose you to it on FamilySearch.org as a brief demonstration
  • Not to build up your skill level, but for your awareness as you decide what you want to do next
  • Like a martial arts introduction, we want to interest you. Not have you earn a black belt in 45 minutes.

We’re in Service to Our Lord

Something is made holy—whether it be our lives, our possessions, our time, or our talents—not simply by giving it up but rather by consecrating it to the Lord. ~ Bishop L. Todd Budge, Second Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, Oct 2021 (emphasis added)

New Temple

New Temple Ground Breaking Soon

• The modular temples tend to be built in only a couple of years

  • See Blox Modules Video from Church Newsroom from 2:00 min to 6:15 min

  “We can’t take 5-10 years to build a temple now, and keep up with President Nelson.”

  • That 2-year-old video said 315 temples

  • At April 2025 General Conference, Elder Rasband stated, “Today the Church has 367 temples in various stages of design, construction, or operation.”

  • Keeping up indeed!

• The work is accelerating right before our eyes

If You Can’t Get to the Temple, Still See Your Impact

• For those with infirmities or who are still working on their recommend

• See Get Involved / Your Impact

  • Familysearch.org shows records you helped with, and when someone else got their name to a temple.
  • You can still help meaningfully with Temple & Family History work for the Lord
  • 

• When you can get to the Temple, you can receive additional blessings too.

What Really Happened Back Then?

• Going backwards in time means nobody remains alive to tell us their version of that ancestor’s story.

• What if nobody handed down any family bibles, or other records in my family?

• Hmmmmm

• In legal trials, they try to learn the real story from people’s various versions of what they saw?

• Can that approach help Temple & Family History work?

• Let’s do a thought experiment.

If We Were in a Trial at Court

If you’re a member of a jury…

• How inclined are you to believe a single witness?

• How inclined are you to believe 17 separate witnesses whose testimonies align closely?

• Why?

  • Why do multiple witnesses often get us closer to the real story?

If We Were in a Trial at Court

• In court trials, there are two standards

  • US Civil Law Standard - Preponderance of the evidence

    • Meaning the plaintiff must show that their version of the facts is more likely than not to be true.
    • Examples include
      • Personal injury, contract disputes, family law, etc.

  • US Criminal Law Standard - Beyond a reasonable doubt

    • Meaning the prosecution must prove the defendant’s guilt to such a degree that no reasonable doubt remains in the mind of a rational person.
    • The outcome could be loss of liberty or life, so the standard is higher

• For Family History, I’m happy just to get to preponderance of the evidence (sources attached)

  • Records may not have the whole story, just partial views into their lives
  • Much of their lives may remain a mystery in this mortal life

Whose Version of Their Story?

• More witnesses (sources attached) help all interested parties believe the hypotheses in Familysearch.org, Ancestry.com, OurHeritage.com, Find a Grave, etc.

  • Like we might as a member of a jury

• Your grandma was someone else’s

  • daughter, mother
  • niece, aunt
  • daughter-in-law
  • grandchild, cousin

• More than just your immediate family is paying attention to how well we can support our hypothesis

The Big Puzzle - Sources as Witnesses

• The more source records (“witnesses”) that agree on the story, the more likely that is the real story.

• For records with 0 or 1 source(s), continue to treat them as a hypothesis

  • hypothesis = a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.
    • Looking for another puzzle piece

• A supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence summarizes much of Temple & Family History work

• That supposition or proposed explanation is our starting point for further investigation

• Even if you personally knew grandma, you didn’t observe her early life. You suppositions are likely incomplete. You may learn more about her life.

Scientific Method for THF? It is a Pattern (with spiritual modifications)

• And you wondered what the scientific method had to do with Temple & Family History work ;)

• A reminder of the Scientific Method (with spiritual modifications), for those not using it frequently enough to memorize it

1. Ask a question (of yourself, and of the Holy Ghost)
2. Do background research (& pray)
3. Construct a hypothesis (a supposition or proposed explanation)
4. Test the hypothesis through experimentation evidence (the sources you find)
5. Analyze the data (look at the original documents) & evidence (sources)
6. Draw conclusions (based on the data now available) (and personal revelation)
7. Share your findings with others on FamilySearch.org (link your sources to that person’s page)

The Big Puzzle - If Missing Puzzle Pieces, Pivot to Another Part of the Puzzle

• When my spouse is missing puzzle pieces, she pivots to another part of the puzzle

• Sometimes I can’t find historical record sources

  • The further back in time you search, often the less record sources exist

• I move on to another person where I can make a difference

• I follow my spouse’s example on puzzles

The Big Puzzle - Patience Helps with Missing Puzzle Pieces

• Some sources have errors (FH work is frought with uncertainty)

  • I’ve seen death certificates that were wrong. Then I noticed the informant was their neighbor from a few miles down the country road
  • I’ve seen census forms that were wrong, then I remembered how sometimes the responses were oral, and the census taker did their best with what they heard.
  • Obituaries get things wrong a lot
  • I’m grateful for indexers. Yet sometimes they get it wrong too. You can fix that now in familysearch.

• Evidence (sources attached) from closer in time to their time alive may be more trustworthy than something written much later.

The Big Puzzle - Patience Helps with Ambiguity

• We do the best we can with the information we can find now
• With people doing more indexing, we may find more information later
• Be okay with a degree of ambiguity
  • Certainty may not occur until we join our ancestor in the next life and have a conversation with them

Family History is like a Puzzle

• “Have you ever held a photo and wondered, ‘Who are you?’”

• Imagine a puzzle where half the pieces are hidden in old trunks, handwritten letters, or distant memories.

• Every time you find a birth certificate, a ship manifest, or a family photo, you click a piece into place.

• The more you work on it, the clearer the picture becomes—not just of people, but of their lives, their struggles, and the choices that shaped your own story.

• This “puzzle” helps you get to know them better, and perhaps even turn your heart to them

If New to TFH, Create a Free Account

1. Go to https://www.familysearch.org

2. Sign up using your email, name, and a secure password.

3. Creating an account allows you to build and save your family tree, access records, and collaborate with others.

4. What you find on familysearch.org is available to all your direct family cousins. It makes it a candle stick on top of a hill, rather than under a basket (or deep in a closet in your home).

If New to TFH, Start with What You Know

• Begin your family tree by entering yourself, your parents, and your grandparents.

• Use full names, birth/death dates, and locations if you know them.

• Start with living relatives and go backward.

• Talk to older family members—they’re often your best resource early on. (before the window of opportunity closes)

  • Ask them who all the people are in the photos & write it down

  • Link the other people’s familysearch pages to the reunion photos

For our Youth, Their Great-Grandma Grew Up Before Digital Photographs Existed and may still have a Paper Collection of Photos

Parents can help children in this fun & sometimes engaging activity.

• For how long to do this, remember Goldilocks & the 3 bears. Not too much time, not too little time, but just right
• Perhaps you, as the Parent, take over with Great-Grandma when the children’s attention span is exhausted?

1. Ask Great-Grandma or Grandma to see any old paper photos
2. Ask Great-Grandma tell about the people in the pictures (photos bring back memories)
3. Use your smart phone to digitize the family picture (or use the scanner in the family search center)
   • Some people may not know how to take a quality picture of a paper picture, so help them out
   • I tried this once when the photo was framed behind glass, and all I got was a reflection of me taking the picture
4. Use your notes app to write down the names Grandma identifies
   • On old family reunion photos, before mobile phones, people often wrote LTR, meaning from left to right.
5. The please help everyone else in your family by adding their photo of generations past to familysearch.org
6. Then link each of their faces to their own familysearch page.

Ask a Ward Consultant for Help (Press the Easy Button)

• Our ward has multiple free Ward Consultants for Temple & Family History help.
  • You’ll find them in the Stake Family Search Center during posted hours (mostly)
  • We list their names at the bottom of the Ward TFH Newsletter sent monthly (if you’re not getting it, let me know and I’ll fix that)
  • Ward TFH consultants teach you how to fish for ancestors
  • Ward TFH consultants don’t do the fishing for you
  • Even paid genealogists can’t do the temple work for you. We still need to serve.

When Your Experienced, See the Gaps (Opportunities to Help that Anyone can Address)

• Whether for Stake Youth Pioneer Trek, or a Roadtrip…

  • Know where you are
  • Know where you want to go
  • Find aids (map) to help you see the path to get there

• The following charts can be like maps for your family history service journey:

The Fan Chart as a Map for Your Journey

• Get your Big-picture overview

  • You can see up to 7 generations at once, more intuitively than in traditional tree formats.

• Get Color-coded insights

  • Birthplaces (great for migration patterns)
  • Research helps (like missing data or record hints)
  • Sources (who has them, who doesn’t)

• Know where you are

  • Demo (if OK on time)
  • Use the fan chart to notice missing people gaps
  • Use the fan chart to see who has few sources attached (historical records as proof points)
  • Use the fan chart to see who has few memories attached

• Know where you want to go

  • Now you have map of what to do to contribute to your family’s history

Use the Pedigree (Tree) Chart as a Map for Your Journey (for Direct Line Views)

• Know where you are

  • See direct ancestry clearly – No siblings, spouses, or descendants — just the straight ancestral line.

  • Identify where it stops (for now) – You can quickly see which ancestral lines are complete and which are missing. (Fan chart shows that too)

• Know where you want to go
  • Organizing focused research – When you’re targeting a specific family line or surname.

See Cousins as a Map for Your Journey (when Stuck on a Direct Ancestor Line)

• Select View Relationship on a person’s page and Familysearch will tell you direct line, cousin, and how many times removed

• Definitions

  • 1st cousins - Share a grandparent (1 G).
  • 2nd cousins - Share a great-grandparent (2 Gs).
  • 3rd cousins - Share a great-great-grandparent (3 Gs).
  • and so on

• Removed? What?

  • “Removed” in the context of cousins is a difference in generations between the cousins and their shared ancestor.
  • “1st cousin once removed” means one cousin is a generation older or younger than the other. For example, the child of your first cousin is your first cousin once removed.
  • The number of “times removed” indicates the number of generations separating the cousins.

See Cousins as a Map for Your Journey (when Stuck on a Direct Ancestor Line)

• Use the Descendancy View to see cousins

• Menus Family Tree > Tree.

  • Change the chart type to Descendancy.

• Select a grandparent or great-grandparent.

• Expand their descendants using the little arrow icons on the left.

• You’ll now see siblings of your parent and their children (your 1st cousins).

• Keep expanding for another generation to see 2nd cousins (your grandparents’ siblings’ grandchildren).

• Or set it to show all children and spouses for a more complete cousin map.

Three Reasons Why We Might Want To Offer our Time, Talents to Temple & Family History

1. Spiritual

   • Turning hearts — Malachi 4:6 — family history connects generations and brings peace.

   And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers

2. Emotional

   • Healing and belonging — knowing our ancestors’ struggles can bring perspective and healing.

3. Identity

   • You’re part of something bigger

   • Roots, strength, and legacy.

Cousins Are Your People Too

The field is ripe and ready to harvest. Consider pivoting to cousins when stuck elsewhere. (another part of the puzzle)

• 1st & 2nd cousins 0 - 100
• 3rd cousins 150 to 600
• 4th cousins 1,000 to 5,000
• 5th cousins 17,000 - 25,000
• 6th cousins 50,000 to 200,000+
• 7th cousins 500,000 to 1,000,000+
• 8th cousins 1,000,000–5,000,000+
• 9th cousins 5,000,000–20,000,000+
• 10th cousins 25 million to 100 million+

Activities Alone or with Family

Get engaged with any of these activities

Activities / Where Am I From?

• Nice map showing number of relatives from various locations around the globe
  • By generations
  • By timeline

The Stake Family Search Center has a Scanner

• Photographs are great puzzle pieces!
• Scan heirloom photographs and documents in a batch
• Gradually link the records & pics you save to the right people so everyone else sees their likeness too.
  • This could be a family activity too, linking faces to people

Activities / Famous Relatives

• Demo

• George Washington (American President) is my 3rd Cousin, several times removed

• Sir Isaac Newton is my 3rd Cousin, many times removed

• This activity is fun

• It could spark interest in history for children

Offline - Relatives Time in History

• What was happening in the world when they were alive?

  • My grandfather?
  • My great grandfather?
  • My 2nd great grandfather?
  • and so on…

• This takes preparation

• Could spark interest in history for children

Activities / Surname Origins

• Demo

• Find your last name’s meaning and origin.

  • I, like you, have many surnames in all my family lines

• What about your big set of surnames?

  • Your father’s surname?
  • Your father’s line’s spouses surnames?
  • Your mother’s surname?
  • Your mother’s grandparent’s surname?
  • And so on…

Get Involved / Opportunities (When you’re short on time)

• Quick Name Review

  • Check what AI already guessed about long-hand writing and confirm it, change it, or say “Unsure”

• Full Name Review

  • Make sure the person’s entire name was identified and indexed correctly.

• Family Review

  • Help find all members of a family so they can be added to Family Tree together.

Get Involved / Indexing

• Help people discover their own family stories by making historical records searchable.

• The names, dates, and places on historical records are nearly impossible to find until they get indexed.

• Indexing puts these details into a digital format and makes them easy to search online.

• Watch great animated video (2:41 min) it only has music, no talking

Search / Books

• You can read non-copyrighted scanned versions online

• I have a copy of my Grandfather’s book, and he sent a copy to Salt Lake’s Family Search Center, but he copyrighted it, so I can’t view it online. :(

Thank you for consecrating some of your Time & Talents

May you be blessed by the Lord for your service to those who can’t do for themselves.

See Family Search YouTube Site