2026-02 Feb - Follow the Spirit in Genealogy

Feb 8, 2026 seek revelation Great African American Genealogy Story

Read time: Summary 0.1 minutes | Expanded section: 5.1 minutes | Entire message 5.2 minutes

Summary

Expanded Message

Receive Revelation from the Holy Ghost on How & When to Serve God

I cannot tell you to always do Temple & Family History just because it is the area where I serve.

Instead, follow the patter of seeking revelation from the Holy Ghost about where you should focus your efforts. God’s is a house of order.

Temple & Family History is one area always open to you to serve your fellow mankind, direct ancestors, and extended family of cousins. Ward T&FH consultants are ready and willing to help you hands-on when you decide to serve in this part of His vineyard.

Familysearch.org also has many resources to learn how to effectively serve in Temple & Family History work.

The work beyond the veil is also part of the accelerating gathering pointed out during the Sat evening session of Stake Conference.

When the Spirit whispers to you to focus here, Ward TFH Consultants are ready to help you grow your skills to meet the challenges, which is a pattern that reduces anxiety. Drop by the Family Search Center at the Stake Center.

If you’re already expert in TFH and experiencing boredom, we can also help you with more advanced Family History work that can raise the challenge to your skill level. There are more and more records flowing into Family Search that need to be linked to people’s pages on familysearch.org. We can show you how to apply the FAN approach (friends, associates, and neighbors) to find out more about your people. Interestingly, this approach increases the network effect, making more connections easier as the number of relationships grow. So even this phenomenon assists the work.

When you decide to serve in Temple & Family History, we’re ready to assist you. If you’re serving elsewhere in the Kingdom for now, thank you.

Story Time - How Genealogy Gave Me Back Pieces of My Family’s History

In this story she reports that “not everything you discover will match what you’ve been told”.

I started seeing missing pieces from both sides that I hadn’t thought to question before. I realized that if I didn’t start digging now, parts of our story could disappear entirely.

The author describes the unique challenges of family history for a large portion of our society. And the author reminds us all that “not everything is online”. This may seem surprising to this generation, yet it is true. It is “easy to assume that if it’s not online, it doesn’t exist.”

My mother’s family has deep roots in the small town where she grew up, which helped preserve stories and physical records. But even then, the oral history passed down can morph over generations.

Then the author recounted the passing of her father and the challenges of having captured little while he was alive.

After he passed, all we had were his parents' and siblings' names, a rough idea of birth years and the parish where he was born. I expected a dead end. My own father unofficially went by two different first names, one of which was on his birth certificate and the other unrelated to his government name.

She also described other facts, that to me help explain the reasons why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints tries so hard to help countries digitize their records:

There were challenges: records in the Caribbean are often incomplete for multiple reasons, including humidity and natural disasters, such as hurricanes and volcanic eruptions. Many items aren’t digitized yet.

She closes with this:

Reclaiming family history isn’t just about filling in boxes on a tree. It’s about finding names, places and stories that shape who we are. It’s about honoring survival and seeing the bigger picture of how our ancestors endured, migrated, built and raised families against unimaginable odds. There’s still more I want to uncover. For years, I thought I knew my history. Now, I understand that what I had was just the beginning. It’s also given me more of a sense of pride. Because my lineage didn’t just survive; it grew, moved, resisted and created. And I’m committed to carrying those stories forward for future generations.

Her story was so well said that I wanted to share it with you to encourage you in finding your own people.

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.