By Debi
 |
| Debi is at the Stake Center on the second floor-temple in background |
Genealogy, we are doing it!
Remember that Primary song. Every
time I start doing genealogy I sing that song in my head.
Greg and I have had a little down time while we are waiting
for the audits to start coming in for the year end of 2012.
We decided that we are missionaries to the living and to the
dead. We have spent the last two weeks
working on our family genealogy.
The Church has a new program that is awesome. It is called
Family Tree. If you go on to the Family
Search site, you can then go to the new Family Tree program. The years of frustrating experiences of
trying to straighten out all of the duplicates and mistakes are over. This new program allows for editing of a
family’s duplicates and inaccurate information.
It has been fun and exciting but also very addictive. Once we start it is hard to stop for lunch or
for the day.
The very exciting experience we have had is that we have actual
been able to find a few names on our family tree that need their temple work to
be completed. We are so thankful to be
able to do the work for some of our ancestors.
Yesterday, Greg and I went to the Temple and he baptized me
for four of my ancestors and 6 of his.
It was a very special experience.
I then went and did some of the other Temple work for Rebecca Ann Haws. We have finally got the genealogy bug and we
are happy about it. I think it will be
awesome that when someone sees where these people’s work was done it will say
the Ghana Accra Temple!
When I was a young mother and I would hear all of the
conference talks about doing genealogy and helping our kindred dead I always
felt guilty. I talked to my mom one day
and she wisely told me during that time of my life I was doing the important
work for the living, raising a family.
She told me that there is a time and a season for everything and there
would be a time in my life that I would be able to do genealogy. Well, the time is now and I am so thankful
for this opportunity. I hope my mom, who
was a very dedicated genealogist for 40 years, would be proud of my first
efforts. I can still see my mother in my mind’s eye sitting up late at night
with all of her long family pedigree sheets spread out on the kitchen
table. As I have scrolled down the list
of family names and looked at their temple work all finished with dates in the
Ogden Temple I know that it is my mother’s work. I have felt my mother’s love and dedication as
I have followed her trial of work that she accomplished over the years. I am sure that her family will always be
grateful to her for her hard work and loving devotion.
Thanks to my mother for her example.
Genealogy, I am doing it!
By Greg:
We are studying the life of Lorenzo Snow this year in
Priesthood and Relief Society. I have
done significant research on this great man.
In the early 1870s he went with a small group of people on a world trip
that took them to Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle-east. I have even thought about retracing their
steps someday. They published their
letters (his sister Eliza R. Snow also was in the group and was quite the
writer) in a book called Correspondence
from the Palestine Tourists. One of the interesting things is that
President Snow later was the President of the Salt Lake Temple and also the
President of the Church. I understand
that he actually had an apartment in the Temple.
Well, other than President Snow, I don’t think there are
many people who live or have lived closer to a temple than we have here in
Ghana. We live just a few hundred feet
from the Accra Ghana Temple.
When I was a new missionary in Alabama-Florida, in 1971 to
1973, the Church had just announced and was building the Ogden Temple. The folks down South were not that happy that
another Utah temple was being built while they needed one. When the Washington D.C. temple was
announced, they were very happy.
All my adult life I have been just a bit more than 10 miles
from a temple; now, just a few hundred feet.
People from all over West Africa come here. The Church has built a hotel type building,
called the Ancillary Building. They have
many apartments, which is where we live (even though we are temporarily living
off campus while repairs are being made—but we will return in a few
weeks). Also, there are lots of rooms
that have many bunk beds. There is a
common restroom and laundry on each floor, and there is a big lunch room where
the people can make their food and eat it.
This is where a lot of the smells come from as they cook up whatever they
are going to eat.
The groups come in waves.
They come on buses. They travel
day and night and they have to carry their own food. When they arrive they are tired, hungry and
sometimes really dirty. They want to go
to the temple so much that most clean up as best they can and go right to the
temple. Others arrive the night before
and get up early and clean their clothes and themselves and then go to the
temple.
We usually go to a temple session on Fridays at 4:30 and
stay for a sealing session at 6:30. Usually, one of the Area Presidency
presides. This is mainly for the Area
Missionary couples. The names have
always been provided by the Senior Couples.
As Debi said, we have had some down time. I decided, after
looking at the family tree program, to perform an “audit” of my family tree. I
have worksheets, diagrams, and flowcharts.
I am combining families, deleting duplicates and joining people together
that I hope really want to be together.
It is like a major jigsaw puzzle.
This is right up my alley.
We have a saying that we use when we train priesthood
leaders about records. “If it is not
recorded, it did not happen!” This is
true in family history. If there is no
record of an ordinance, then we must do it, or it did not happen. Unfortunately, much duplication has and will
continue to occur. But, hopefully, with
the work we are doing, much of the duplication will come to an end and real
family history research will continue to occur.
As I said, some of the people come to the temple without the
benefit of being able to cleanup properly.
In the baptism area, we noted that there are showers available. We followed a large group from Abomosu and
the water was a little cloudy. Debi
almost went and got her pool test slips to test the water.
We were told something kind of funny. The temple is carefully monitored by Church
headquarters. Of course, they do not
want to deviate from the approved plan.
But, given the local condition, they wanted to provide a foot washing
area near the baptismal font. The people
here have dirty feet, and many come needing a foot wash. Well, washing feet may have another meaning
to some, so it took a meeting or two in Salt Lake before they agreed to allow
the Accra Ghana Temple to put out some tubs with soap and water.
We are traveling tomorrow to the last two countries we have
not visited, Benin and Togo. We will
have more to report next week.
I am sure that we are all cousins. Especially after looking up the family
tree. So cousin, be happy and visit a
temple.
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