"Begin today and write in it your goings and comings, your deepest thoughts, your achievements and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies. I promise you that if you will keep your journals and records, they will indeed be a source of great inspiration to you, each other, your children, your grand-children and others throughout the generations. Remember, the Savior chastised those who failed to record important events." --President Spencer W. Kimball

February 7, 2010

Temple Work

This post brings that primary song to my head "Geneology I am doing it, my Geneology..."

My husbands parents have been addicted to the church's new geneology program and have been able to do their work back five generations now on both sides. I've always known geneology is not only important, but also so interesting to see what parts of the world you have ancestors in and to see how far back you can go.

Well, Ova and I have our temple date days every Tuesday...and this week was a little different and so so special! Ova's Dad came over that morning with a HUGE stack of temple names and gave them to me and Ova.... so that we can help our families that have past while we are keeping our goal of regular temple attendance. We were so excited and got in the car to go... as we were driving we were looking through all the names in the stack and were trippin at all the different names and places we saw. There were some names from Nigeria, some from Italy, some from Samoa, even some from China and Japan.... I was teasing Ova that that totally explains why our kids are so Siapani.... and we got a good kick out of it. We called his dad just to double check that these were really his family names, and his Dad told us yes. Some of the names were dated back to the 1700's... his Dad told us that Mom got a call from a lady in Italy last week introducing herself and thanking her for doing the geneology work. She was saying that she too was doing her geneology and she ran into mom's name and the work that she had been doing. She told mom that they were family and she can't believe that she's actually related to people from the isles of the seas, just like described in the scriptures.... it was such an amazing feeling to know that that stack of names we were holding were our ancestors from hundreds and hundreds of years ago....and that by doing what we were going to do, they would be able to accept the gospel. We were talking about it on the way to the temple and we both got a little emotional. Just a testimony to the both of us that the Lord works in mysterios ways, and that by doing temple work like the Lord and prophets command us, we are blessing not only ourselves, but our ancestors and our posterity. We usually just do a session every time we go to the temple, but we decided to start at the beginning with all the names and do the baptisms. It was an amazing and awesome experience.... you always have a great feeling when you do work in the temple, but when you know you're helping your own family with their salvation, it makes it so much more personal.

I'm so grateful for geneology work and for my in-laws for being so dedicated to searching for their ancestors and allowing my husband and I the opportunity to be a part of it. Now Ova and I are even more excited to go to the temple every week!