helaman 3

helaman 3

26-30 thus we see that the gate of heaven is open unto all. . . we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, . . And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven

i am teaching a lesson on genealogy this sunday and this is applied to both sides of the veil. so, if you haven't started your family history, please do. 

with that theme - i want to share a story about my grandmother. she served translating old german records and preparing them for the temple for many years. she was expert at deciphering the photos of old torn, damaged records kept by german priests. (this is before the digital age so she was working with photos of pages). she would carefully compare the handwriting from several pages so she could make out bad handwriting or damaged pages. once she spent a whole week working on a page before finally being able to process one name from it. one name!   someone asked her about it, why would she do that when others were submitting hundreds of names in the same amount of time. she told him she wasn't interested in numbers, but people. she said that to that one person who had been waiting 600 years for work to be done, that one name was everything. that is what mattered to her.

now, we have digital records, massive amounts of info at our fingertips.   we are still processing pictures or old pages, but it is much easier now.   we can work from computerized, high res pictures that we can change the light, color, and zoom on.   there are millions of people all over the world working on them all the time.   you can search through those records much easier now too.   no sifting through pages and pages or books on end.   we have handy search windows.   yay!  

https://familysearch.org/

you don't even have to be a member to use the site so use it yourself and share it with others. family history is a huge missionary tool. pray for the opportunity and it will present itself. it will come up in conversation or words will come to you or something will open up for you to talk about family history. it can be the gate to bring not only that person to the gospel, but all their generations before them and after them as well.