I recently heard some statistics concerning family history.  I can't remember where I heard them but I think they were about as follows:

A survey showed that if no one in the ward leadership is involved in family history, only 4% of the ward is doing it.  If one person in the ward leadership is involved in family history, the involvement of the ward doubles to 8%.  If two in the ward leadership are involved, then 11 or 12% of the ward will be.  If a stake leader becomes involved, the percentage rises even more.

This morning it dawned upon me that I am part of the stake leadership, and that I ought to share the experiences that I'm having.

The danger of doing so, however, is that I've noticed that every talk that I've heard on family history is boring, and puts people to sleep.  I think I can keep that from happening.  Family history and temple work is one of the most exciting things that I do.

The thing of greatest interest and of most value to me is my children and grandchildren.  It occurred to me that the same is true for my grandparents of every generation.  More than anything I want every one of my children and grandchildren to be faithful in the gospel, and to receive their temple blessings.  I want every one of them to be eternally sealed to me and to their heavenly Father.

My grandparents of every generation want the same thing.  I have learned that on the other side of the veil they are aware of all my doings, that they're praying for me, and that they are very anxious, and are depending on me to see to their sealings.  They know who I am, and that I have the power to save them and all of their children.

There is a line in a hymn that grips me every time I hear it.  Our hymns are scripture, so I know the concept that the line teaches is true.  The words to High on the Mountain Top came to Joel H. Johnson as he sat in his wagon waiting his turn to unload his offering at the tithing office in 1853.  The last line says, “For there (in the temple) we shall be taught the law that will go forth, with truth and wisdom fraught, to govern all the earth.  Forever there his ways we'll tread, and save ourselves with all our dead.”

All our dead?  Can I be a savior?  Can I be a savior for all my dead?  Obadiah tells us that in the latter days, “saviors shall come up on mount Zion.”  (Obadiah 1:21).  It's verily so.

I have a family history story where a deceased person came to his living brother to ask him to do his temple work.  He said to the living brother, “You are watched closely, every move you make is known there … We are all looking to you as our head in this great work.  I want to tell you that there are a great many spirits who weep and mourn because they have relatives in the Church here who are careless and are doing nothing for them.”  (The diary of Frederick William Hurst, as recorded in My Favorite Stories, by James E. Kerns, pg. 264).

Once upon a time I wanted to see how close my Barrows line came to being one of the first European families to immigrate to America.  I knew they had been in the Plymouth Colony.  In Family Search you can click on the name of a person's father, see his information, click on that person's father, and go back as far as research has been done on that family.

I was doing that.  As I examined one family I realized that the listed information was wrong.  I had opened up that family's information in a different way than I normally would have done.  Because of the unusual way I'd opened the information on that family, I realized that the family had two little girls named Anne.  Back in those days it was a common practice to give a subsequent baby the same name as one that had died.  Researchers had combined the birth date of the deceased baby Anne with the death date of the Anne who lived to maturity.  The family's temple work had supposedly all been completed; but because of the confusion, baby Anne had never been sealed to the family.

It was as if Anne was right there directing my attention to these things.  I'm certain that she was.  She wanted her sealing to be performed.  She'd waited 400 years.  No one would ever again go into the records like I had.  I was her only chance on this side of the Millennium for her sealing to be done.  It was a very meaningful and great pleasure for me to be able to go to the temple and for my wife and I to be proxy parents as Anne was sealed to her family.

I had a goal to check, verify, and correct all of the vital statistics of all of the descendants of all eight sets of my second great grandparents, and to make sure the temple work is completed for each person.  More than anything my great, great grandparents want that work to be done for their grandchildren.

I completed the goal.  It was very satisfying.  It took a long time, but it was very easy to do.  My children say that I'm technologically challenged.  It's so, but even James Kerns is able to get on FamilySearch.org and do the work.  On the Family Search website you can click on “Find A Grave” and actually see your relative's headstone and get the birth and death dates.  You can click on the person's death certificate and see what he or she died of.

One young man was killed by a shotgun blast as he crossed a fence while hunting.  I could see exactly how that happened.  Every gun safety course instructs you to lay your rifle down on the other side of the fence before you cross it yourself.  Another was drowned while on a canoe outing on a lake.

The death certificate of a 30-year-old woman states that she died of burns from the explosion of an oil can in her home.  What could possibly have happened?  She never had the opportunity to even be married.  How sad.  After getting her information in order I began looking at the family of her next sibling.  Lo, and behold, there was a 7-year-old girl in that family who had the same cause of death listed on her death certificate—“Died of burns from the explosion of an oil can in her home.”  They died on the same date.

I know exactly what happened.  Before electricity came to our farm, my parents used to light the house using kerosene lamps.  My mother had a rule:  Always fill the lamps during daylight hours, and never, never fill them after dark when the lamps are lit.  Many people were killed, she told me, by violating that rule.  This 30-year-old woman and her 7-year-old niece were victims of that very thing.

Imagine the joy of people like that who get their temple work done.  Imagine my joy in being able to do it.

I found a young man who was lost at sea in the Pacific Ocean in World War II.  His name is on the memorial at Pearl Harbor.  He was a cousin of mine of some degree.  Since he was born within the last 110 years I could only do his temple work if I had permission from one of his close, living relatives.  There were none, so I requested permission from the temple department.  Permission was granted.  One of my grandsons was baptized and confirmed for this man who gave his life for my freedom.  I was then able to do his initiatory work, his endowment, and his sealing.

I found the picture of a young man that my heart went out to.  He was wholesome looking, handsome, and obviously had a gentle spirit.  He got a law degree.  He got married.  He enlisted in the war effort as an officer in the U.S. Army.  In November he was shipped to France.  In January he was killed.  In March his wife gave birth to their baby.  He never got to see the little boy.  Two years later his wife died.  The boy has since passed away, also.  That wonderful man gave his life for the country, and there is no one left who will do his temple work.  I requested permission from the temple department to do his work, and was given permission.  There was joy on both sides of the veil when my grandson did his baptism and confirmation, and when I completed the other ordinances.

I had such wonderful success tracking down all of the descendants of my second great grandparents that I started doing the same with my 3^rd great grandparents.  We each have 16 sets of 3^rd great grandparents.  That's enough to keep anyone busy for a long time.  I estimated that I probably worked through over 500 individuals in the first set of 3^rd great grandparents that I undertook.

My 3^rd great grandparents were all born in the decades just before the year 1800.  The records for people born then are sketchy and sparse, and, oh, my goodness, how tangled are the records that people have entered on FamilySearch!

After I'd completed my eighth or ninth set of 3^rd great grandparents, I listed the remaining couples on a page and prayed to know which family was most anxious for me to work on their lines.  The Johnson family jumped off the page.  I had been avoiding doing that family because there were so many hundreds of descendants, and so many obvious errors in what had been done.

But I began.  I first looked at the couple and their statistics.  That grandfather was shown as a son in two families.  He had two different sets of siblings, and they both looked right.  What was wrong?

In my mind's eye I can see what took place as I stared at the information before me.  Unseen hands took hold of my head, turned it, and an unspoken voice seemed to say, “Look here.  There are four boys in this family, and they were all born in 1782.  That's ridiculous.  Look at this one.  He was born in North Carolina.  The rest of the family was born in Virginia.  Detach him from the family, and put him over here.  This other one is the son of the father's brother.  Detach him, and put him with his proper family.”

There was a similar problem with the third boy.  Every other researcher had seen the problem of the two families with different siblings, but the problem looked insoluble, so they simply left it and moved on.  Because of prayer, and because of the intense interest in the project by those on the other side of the veil I managed to straighten the tangle out.

Sometimes it takes hours of thinking, studying, praying, and pondering, but eventually the lights come on, and I've been able to untangle dozens of such conundrums.  I'll leave it to your imaginations to know how I feel when I've been able to set the records straight and to see to the people's temple work.

Family Search keeps track of what I've accomplished in the temple.  It says that I've completed 1,115.  I'm not sure if that means that many names or that many ordinances.  It also says that I've shared 263 names with the temple system.

I foresee a possible danger in what I'm doing.  Joseph Smith said that when we get to the other side these people will “embrace our knees.”

If you're doing your family history and temple work, prepare to be tackled when you get over there.

I'm doing something grandiose, just because I have the time, and because there's little else productive that I can do during winter months when I can't work outside.

Your family history and temple work doesn't have to be grandiose.  You just have to do something.  It's easy.  Shortly the spirit will grab you as you see how easy it really is, and sense how important it is.

A day is rapidly approaching when the 10 tribes will arrive.  They're going to occupy our temples and keep them running day and night.  I'm already having trouble scheduling all the temple appointments that I want.

I spent 10 years being a temple ordinance worker.  It's the most rewarding calling I ever had.  But there was a problem.  As an ordinance worker I had to defer to any patrons that came to the temple.  I might carry my own sealings around in my pocket for months before I'd get a chance to do them.

Now that I'm a patron instead of an ordinance worker the entire sealing session might be devoted just to my names.  Last week Marjorie and I each did an initiatory session, followed by an endowment session.  The temple wouldn't let us make a third appointment.  But we went upstairs, and they let us do a sealing session without having made an appointment.  We accomplished 36 ordinances that day.  Our record for one day's work was something in the 40s.

Think of all the happy people!  We're two of them.  It's hard to say who the real benefactors are.