To me, one of the best feelings in the world is to get my hands on a baby.  When the little person relaxes, trusts you, and puts its head on your shoulder it’s pure bliss.  I’m grateful that so many of my children live close by, because at church, or when they come visiting, I can usually find a baby that I can take off its mother’s hands and give her a rest while indulging my own sense of pleasure.  In a nutshell, I like babies.

Lately I’ve had some highly interesting experiences with babies which have caused me to realize that they’re not really the cute, miniature people that we think they are.  They’re actually grown up spirits temporarily housed in little bodies.  Let me tell you about my experiences.

Last year I was doing family history research on my Barrows line.  It was all original research from the present back to about 1800.  From there back another 200 years the work was all done.  Out of curiosity I paged through generation after generation to see how far back the work went.  It went back to the early days of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, and from there back into England.  I then looked at the source material, which were church records of the Plymouth Colony.  I noticed that one family had two babies named Anne.  A common practice in those days was to use the name again if a baby died.  This was the case in this family.  Little Anne Barrows died before reaching her first birthday.  A later baby was also given the name Anne, and this one lived to adulthood.

I flipped over to New Family Search to see if the temple work had been completed for the family.  Everything was completed, except that only one Anne was listed.  The birth date shown was that of the first baby Anne, and the death date was that of the adult Anne.  The original researcher had not realized that there were two babies named Anne.

It came over me very powerfully that baby Anne Barrows had been overlooked and forgotten, was the only member of the family that hadn’t been sealed, and that she very much wanted that work to be done.  I also realized that probably never again would any researcher happen to look at the records in the way that I had, and that, therefore, no one would ever realize that this little girl had been overlooked.  I straightened out the mixed up birth and death dates, prepared the name, and saw to it that Anne was sealed to her parents.

I was aware that I had done something very significant.  After 300 years this little girl had finally been sealed to her family.  I was aware that I’d been guided to discover this oversight and that I’d brought great joy, not to a baby, but to an adult person who was very much aware of me and of what I was doing.  It was probably not happenstance that I’d looked at the records the way I did.  There was guidance from the unseen world.

The same thing happened as I went through the records of the Masonic Cemetery in Eugene, Oregon.  Many of my McCornack relatives are buried there.  I knew each one, through my researches, and could tell you where they fit into the family.

I scrolled through the list of burials to see if by any chance there were also any Condons there.  There was one:  Seymour Condon, born 19 July 1891, and who died 13 months later, the son of Seymour and Dorris Condon.  No other record lists him.  No one knew he’d ever existed.  He, too, was anxious to have his sealing performed.

Marjorie has a cousin, Janeen, who stops to see us once a year when she passes through the area.  Twenty years ago she told us a story that I’ve since used to illustrate the value of keeping a journal.

Janeen said that she had a dream.  In the dream she was in a sealing room of the temple with her father.  Standing behind her father was a man who looked a lot like him, but who she didn’t recognize.  The man looked at her and said, “Thanks, Sis.”

The only people in the world who called Janeen “Sis” were her parents and siblings.  This dream was very troubling to Janeen.  Who was this man, why did he call her Sis, and what was he thanking her for?

Janeen went to her mother’s journal.  All her life she’d been told that she had a brother who had been stillborn.  Janeen found an entry in her mother’s journal that recorded the event.  It said, “Little ________ was born today, but he didn’t stay with us very long.”

The baby hadn’t been stillborn at all!  He’d come to earth, gotten his body, and a couple of hours later laid it aside and went back to being an adult spirit.  He was the only member of the family not sealed, and he wanted the sealing to be done.  Janeen had the sealing performed in the temple.  She didn’t see her brother, but she knew that he was there, and that he was saying, “Thanks, Sis.”

Years after Janeen’s telling of this story, I thought of it, and on her next visit I asked her to tell it again so that I could straighten out the details in my mind.  Janeen couldn’t remember it!  She had no idea what I was talking about.

I wondered if I’d imagined it.  Later, however, I was paging through my journals when I came upon an entry where I’d recorded Janeen’s story when she first told it to us.  I had it all right there.  I could remember it because I’d recorded it.  Janeen forgot it because she didn’t.  Her brother got his sealing performed because his mother had recorded his birth in her own journal.  It’s important that we write.

It’s also important that we remember that the little people we hold in our arms are mature spirits.  They’re just as mature as we are, but have a temporary handicap of being little, young, cute mortals.  We soon cease being cute, but our handicap of mortality may last for 100 years or perhaps for only 100 seconds.

I’m grateful for the little people in my life.  They’re some of my best friends.  Joshua Bradford was happy to see me yesterday.  We’re always happy to see each other.  He rushed over to me and reached his hands up to be held.  It was his second birthday.  He held my head between his hands and lovingly stroked and stroked and stroked my cheeks.  He was thrilled to see me.  I was thrilled to see him.  His little body felt so good in my arms.  I love him.  He loves me.  We’re best friends.  We were probably best friends before we ever came to earth.  We now belong to each other, and because of sealings, we’ll belong to each other through all eternity.  What is more precious than that?

Pity the people who don’t have babies in their lives.  Happy is this man who has his quiver full of them.