Need something new and fresh to invigorate your youth family history program? Check out “Project My Story: Past and Present.” This certification program gives young people the chance to learn and check off family history skills as they go. They start with themselves, recording information about their lives, then discover and preserve memories of their ancestors, finding names for the temple as they go. Why certify youth? In our LDS ward, we’ve held many classes and activities introducing family history to our youth and teaching them skills. This year, we wanted a way for them to see just how much...
I love making little books, and that has rubbed off on my children. My six-year-old is into Harry Potter so our last book-making project was a spell book. As I have prepared for Easter and followed along with the Mormon.org campaign #PrinceofPeace, I have seen many lovely ideas for incorporating the principles of peace into our Easter celebrations. I was delighted to see a little booklet created by Emilie Ahern at AYearofFHE.net – Prince Of Peace Easter Activity Booklet for Kids! Her lovely work inspired me to create a similar booklet that I’m sharing today. It’s also based on the 8...
The Easter initiative hosted at Mormon.org this year is #PrinceofPeace – following the Savior helps us find peace. I wanted to create something for this initiative that would reflect the peace that comes from temples and being sealed together as families. I found a talk by Elder Quentin L. Cook that beautifully illustrates how families can find peace as they follow Christ to to higher ground: We Follow Jesus Christ, Quentin L. Cook, April 2010 General Conference. Following the Prince of Peace to Higher Ground Easter Family Home Evening Lesson Song I Love to See the Temple or Families Can Be Together Forever Lesson...
What is Family Discovery Day and why should you go? Designed for families and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this is a unique opportunity to introduce people of any age to family history. Nicole and I attended RootsTech for the first time last year and for Family Discovery Day held on Saturday afternoon, fifteen of my ward’s youth and their leaders joined us. The youth ranged from age 12 -17 and for some of them this was their first family history experience. They explored the expo hall, listened to inspirational speakers, and had fun just being...
Have you been trying to get your ward youth excited about family history? Do you need some fresh ideas to spark interest? For the past two years, I’ve been working with teens age 12-18. Along with my fellow family history consultants, we’ve made a lot of progress in how our youth perceive family history. They’ve gone from reluctance to genuine interest. Here are some of the things we’ve done to turn their hearts to their ancestors. Year One January – Mutual Activity to Attach Photos and Stories We decided to hold four combined activities (held on a week night, for...
Do your loved ones ever question your passion for genealogy and family history? Would you like a new perspective to motivate the youth in your ward to give it a try? Maybe you just need a boost in your own family history efforts? Try taking a few minutes to think of the blessings raining down on you because of your family history labors. Recognizing those blessings will help you share your love of family history with anyone. I recently asked Leah, one of my youth family history consultants, if she’d noticed any blessings since doing family history. Why would I ask this?...
Last month, my 11 year old nephew asked me for help with family history. As you can imagine, I was pretty excited to help! He wanted to find a name for his first temple trip in the fall. I used one of the ideas that Diana wrote about – teaching youth to research by “Adopting a Family” and following several checklists. The first two checklists help youth find a family to “adopt” and research. I used her Pandora’s Hope Chest checklist (page 2, here) to help my nephew find relatives in his family tree who needed temple work that he could research. (See my...
Have you been wracking your brain trying to figure out a way to teach your teens how to do family history? Maybe you need a fun way to involve your youth consultants in teaching others how to do family history? After I had completed the Mission Possible activity with all of my ward youth, I wanted to help them take the next step and learn how to do some research. I came up with a series of checklists that I named “Adopt-A-Family.” The whole premise of this series is to show teens, or anyone for that matter, some of the...
Today’s post is by Devon from A Patient Genealogist. If you have an idea to share in a guest post, please contact nicole@familylocket.com. We’d love to hear what you’re doing to share, teach, and encourage others in family history! When we focus on stories of the heart, we turn people willingly to family history. Ask someone to tell you a story about a father, grandmother, or aunt and many will have no problem thinking of something. A teenager can remember the funny story of how her grandmother greeted patrons to their family restaurant. A 30-something can remember a motivational story about his...
Elder Quentin L. Cook talked about the joy of doing family history work and preparing for the temple in his April 2016 General Conference talk, “See Yourself in the Temple.” I’ve created a family home evening lesson plan that you can use with your family to discuss this important topic. “The combination of increased numbers of temples and advanced technology to fulfill our sacred family history responsibilities for our ancestors makes this the most blessed time in all history.” – Elder Cook Elder Cook challenged us to “honor the Savior and make any necessary changes to see ourselves in His...
