Did you know that many people have shared experiences about deceased relatives helping them with their genealogy research? I have four anecdotes to share today, and I think you will find them fascinating. To me, these stories show the connection of our deceased relatives to us. Deceased Grandmother Appears to Help Researcher Pyschic Roots, by Hank Z. Jones, Jr., F.A.S.G., is a collection of experiences from genealogists who felt the influence of coincidence and serendipity while undertaking genealogy research. These experiences led them to fortuitous discoveries - through hunches, intuition, dumb luck, preternatural experiences, and so forth. One of my...
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that finding the names of our ancestors, providing proxy baptisms for them, and sealing families together in the temple is essential for God's plan of happiness for his children. We love our ancestors and want to be connected to them in the afterlife. This doctrine motivates our genealogy research. Some Questions and Answers One of our readers has asked some wonderful questions on Facebook about this doctrine, and I thought it would be easier to respond in a blog post than by writing several comments on the Facebook thread....
I'm excited to be sharing a new series with you about how to find names for the temple. This follows the chapters in our new book, Find Names for the Temple: A Step-by-Step Method for Success. To view all the articles detailing each step, click here: Find Names for the Temple Articles. Here are each of the steps: Part 1: Review the Accuracy of Your Tree Part 2: Analyze Your Pedigree Part 3: Analyze Descendancy Trees Part 4: Research Part 5: Record Your Findings Part 6: Reserve Temple Ordinances To view all the articles detailing each step, click here: Find Names for...
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...
In the recent LDS General Conference, church leaders spoke about a wide range of topics that comforted, taught, and inspired us. Many of the talks focused on personal conversion and our relationship with the Savior. Many other messages were about strengthening families and how we can improve our relationships with each other. As a family history consultant in my ward, the insights shared about why we should do family history research and proxy temple work for our ancestors especially stood out to me. Here are twelve of the lessons I drew from the messages that pertained to family history: 1 - We can...
