Monday, March 18, 2013

The Joy of Redeeming the Dead

This entry is part of my general conference application series.

The Joy of Redeeming the Dead, by Richard G. Scott
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles



About a week ago I received a phone call from my excited wife. While looking at family history, she found what looks to be a lost ancestor among the recently-digitized US Census information (which she helped index, by the way). I'm excited to help her further research this great lead—even if my "help" is just helping her have time at the computer to do what she wants to do.

If you're still waiting for your heart to turn to your fathers, I recommend you take a look at a fan chart of your personal family history. In fact, there's a site where you can get one prepared for free: createfan.com

What I love about this type of chart is that it quickly lets you see the gaps or holes in your family history research. Here's what my personal fan chart looks like; note the many empty yellow cells on the right:


In a letter from the First Presidency, we were told: "Our preeminent obligation is to seek out and identify our own ancestors." In fact, as I'm writing this on my lunch break, I just received a call from my wife. She called to report that she rode her bike (our youngest child in tow) to the church family history center to continue her research on my family line (in the yellow section of the fan above). Some may say that she's not working on her own line, but she likes me enough to consider me family.

I love my wife. I love my family. I love spending time at the temple with my wife and family. I Elder Scott's observation connecting family history research, families, and temple worship:

Receiving ordinances vicariously for one of your own ancestors will make the time in the temple more sacred, and even greater blessings will be received.

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UPDATE:
For our family home evening lesson today, my wife gave a lesson where she shared the new information she learned which she called today to tell me about. We also watched a video from the Church History Library; you can see part of it below:

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