The Big Family Temple Trip

A few months ago, I started feeling curious about my family history. I asked my parents for any info they had, then made an appointment with my ward's family history consultant to help me navigate the Church's new family history website and fill in my pedigree chart as much as we could. My dad's ancestors were all pioneers so there wasn't much to do on that front, but my mom's mother was a convert and I figured there might be some work left to do on her line.

The timing of this effort was fortuitous. It happened right around Sean's baptism, and when the missionaries taught him about temple work my family agreed we wanted to go do temple baptisms together. Knowing that I had taken a recent interest in family history, Dad commissioned me to find out whether any of our ancestors still needed temple work done.

The ward consultant and I set to work. We found that only a handful of Grandma G's ancestors that were in the Church's family history database, and most hadn't had their temple work done. We also discovered in Mom's files a booklet compiled by a Catholic cousin listing the descendants and dozens of the ancestors of Grandma's paternal grandparents. None of those ancestors were in the Church's files; they were all just waiting for someone to open the book, find their names, and take them to the temple. What's more, when we were searching for one of their birthplaces on the internet, we found someone else's pedigree which verified much of what we had and added many more family members we didn't know about before. In the end, we were able to take the names of over 70 of my ancestors to the temple for vicarious baptisms.

Until this year, I'd never done temple work for a member of my own family, let alone someone I myself had researched. It was sweet to hear baptisms performed for people whose names have become familiar to me--Elizabeth, Jacob, and Anton, to name a few. This has been a special day for me, and I hope it was a joyous one for them, too.