7. Joy in Family History

     As a kid, I was always fascinated with the idea of where my family came from.  I loved to spend Sunday afternoons looking at the places where my ancestors came from, speculating what world events they might have experienced.  I was especially drawn to my ancestors who had walked across the plains.  I never really paid much attention to the ordinance work that needed to be done for my ancestors, because everyone in my family was convinced that our work was done.  Many of my older relatives were obsessed with genealogy, my grandfather had paid to have his genealogy completed, and many of my ancestors were members of the church in its earliest days.

     Last Sunday night, my roommate and I were talking about family history.  She had found lots of names through techniques learned in her Family History class.  I told her how lucky she was because I had no family history work left for me to do.  She convinced my that family history work is never done because you can work sideways instead of just working on direct lines.  She sat down with me at my desk and showed me a few new tools I had never used before, like Ancestry.com and Puzilla.org, which made the process easier.  We worked for an hour, looking at various lines.  Within an hour, we had found 11 names for me to take to the temple on our weekly temple visit.  I was amazed.  I was so grateful for my roommate's diligence in teaching me.  We have made a goal to work on Family History for an hour or two after church on Sunday and take our own family names to the temple when we go every week.