Writing – Page 7 – Family Locket

Do You Have a Skeleton in your Family History Closet?

Oct 30, 2015

We all have them – ancestor stories that tend to be hushed up: illegitimate children, desertion, abuse, mental illness, etc. We call these life details “skeletons in the closet” because we like to imagine our ancestor’s lives as near perfect and may be tempted to bury these skeletons. What do we do when our family history research uncovers something unexpected? Recording these kind of details can be difficult. How do we tell our ancestor’s story with integrity and kindness?...

Lehi’s Genealogy Discovery

Sep 18, 2015

I read 1 Nephi 5 this week and was struck by the story of Lehi searching the brass plates and what he found in them. Hugh Nibley, in his lectures on the Book of Mormon, said that Lehi didn’t have the genealogy of his fathers because the records on the brass plates were rare and secret. The law was read publicly once a year by the scribes and pharisees, and that was all the access the...