Relatives Around Me

Have you ever sat in a room full of people and wondered if or how you might be related to those around you? If not, you will now . . . Sorry. But, there is good news! Relatives Around Me, a new feature in the FamilySearch Family Tree app, can tell you the answer. 

How It Works 

To try the new feature, you and your potential cousin both need to be signed in to the Family Tree app and within approximately 100 feet of each other. Once signed in, select More at the bottom right of the screen (iOS) or the dropdown in the top left (Android) and then select Relatives Around Me. This opens a page with a green button that says Scan for Friends. 

Tap the green button to start scanning. Anyone signed into the app and within range will show up in a list on your device, and you will show up on theirs. Selecting the person’s name will bring up a pedigree graphic showing your common ancestor and the lines through which you both descend. Pretty cool, right?

Give It A Try 

Now, you could log into the app, start scanning, and wander around until you find a cousin. But there are better ways to use Relatives Around Me, especially in group settings. Here are some of the best scenarios to give this new feature a try: 

• Church group—Find out who in your congregation is also part of your family tree. Fun at a weekday party or activity, and useful in a Sunday class. 
• Friends—Out with friends? Check to see if you are related. You may have more in common with your friends than just hiking, reading, or a love of adorable cat videos. 

Download the app today and give it a try! To get to the Android app instead, click here.

Note: If you already have the family tree app on your phone, just click the "more" option at the bottom right of the screen and then select relatives around me.

Personal Discovery

I wanted to try this app out before class, so I grabbed my husband's cell phone and ran the app for both of us.  No surprise: his name showed up on my screen.  I tapped on his name and SURPRISE: he is my 13th cousin once removed!
Disclaimer: the app is only as good as the information in family tree.  Upon closer examination, I see that the same woman has been attached to two different husbands but she is having children at the same time.  (which is better than the third husband she was attached to... in that situation she was having children after she died!)  The real question may be, whose relative is she?  I may need to go to England to investigate...

2018 RootsTech Family Discovery Day

To be held March 3, 2018

Are you passionate about family stories? Do you have an interest in learning how to discover your roots? If so, the 2018 RootsTech Family Discovery Day is for you, and you can attend or watch live from anywhere in the world.

RootsTech Family Discovery Day is a 1-day free event on March 3, 2018, designed to help LDS individuals and families discover and celebrate their family heritage—past, present, and future. Family Discovery Day originates at the RootsTech family history conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Elder and Sister Oaks will be the keynote speakers

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and his wife, Sister Kristen M. Oaks, will be the featured keynote speakers at the Family Discovery Day general session, beginning at 1:00 p.m. MST on March 3, 2018.

Elder and Sister Oaks will be sharing insights and lessons learned from their own family history, as well as the importance of temple and family history work.

In addition to hearing from Elder and Sister Oaks, Family Discovery Day attendees will:

• Hear inspiring messages and performances from special guests, including popular LDS speaker Hank Smith, America’s Got Talent finalist Evie Clair, popular singer Kenya Clark, and prominent Latin American artist, Alex Melecio.
• Attend a selection of classes designed to teach you how to find family names, prepare them for temple blessings, and teach others to do the same.
• Enjoy the RootsTech closing event, My Family, Mi Herencia, featuring Luz de Las Naciones.

Family Discovery Day is a free event but registration is required. Visit rootstech.org to register.

Watch live stream

If you can’t attend Family Discovery Day in person, you can still participate virtually! General sessions will be streamed live on the home page of LDS.org in English, Spanish, and Portuguese so that members of the Church around the world can participate.

Watch later

If you can’t watch live on March 3 starting at 1:00 p.m. MST, videos of the messages from Family Discovery Day will be archived at lds.org/discoverfamily for later viewing in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Family History at Your Fingertips

Did you know you have access to 80% more data than 50 years ago - all online!

President Henry B Eyring has said, "As you follow the promptings to learn about your family history, you may discover that a distant relative share some of your facial features or your interest in books or your talent for singing.  This could be very interesting and even insightful.  But if your work stops there, you will sense that something is missing.  This is because to gather and untie God's family requires more than just warm feelings.  It requires sacred covenants made in connection with priesthood ordinances."

Our Heavenly Father has inspired the development of many types of technology that have made this gathering faster, easier, and more accurate.

Preserving Records: 300 camera teams are spread across the globe.  Camera teams are capturing about 500 million records per year - well over one million records per day.

Once the images are acquired, they undergo a quality-check process.  Then they can be indexed, making the information easier to search and work with.  As of 2016, 320,000 people are helping with indexing, processing millions of images per year.

"Indexing taught me that some of the most important things we can do are simple, small things that make a big difference." - Ashley, Idaho

The number of names in Family Search has increased from about 2 million to 179 million in only 6 years! The speed at which records are being added to the collection is nothing short of miraculous, demonstrating that God's hand is in the work.

With such a wealth of new data, it would actually be surprising if a person was unable to add to Aunt Mary's work.  Aunt Mary usually stuck to her direct line. Opportunities may exist looking at cousin lines. For 6 generations there would be approximately 63 direct-line ancestors verses 38,000 cousins! ["Cousins" are defined as brothers and sisters of our direct-line ancestors and descendants of the above.]

Wendy Nelson, wife of President Russell M Nelson, observed: "President George Q. Cannon, who was counselor to four Presidents of the Church, taught that in these latter days those who are joining the Church are joining quite precisely because their ancestors have been praying for one of their posterity to join the Church so that they, the ancestors, can receive their essential ordinances by proxy.  Taht's whne I inviste the missionaries to consider that one of their most effective prayes might be, "Please lead us to those whose ancestors have already areceived the gospel on the other side of the veil and who are desperate to receive their ordinances."

Temple work: We should do temple work for the spouses of our direct-line ancestors.

Consider what sacrifice of time is appropriate for you to be able to do more family history and temple work this year.

See complete article in the Ensign, Jan 2018, p 56-63.

Who Is on Your Family’s Ofrenda?

If you haven’t seen Coco yet, I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s a great story of the deep and eternal bonds of family - even across the boundary of death.

Toward the end of the movie, I looked over at my daughter and saw that she was crying. She let me hold her hand for a few minutes while the story’s little hero helped repair the damage caused by old grudges, hurt feelings, and unresolved conflicts in his family. I’m not sure the movie’s creators knew that they would be teaching the plan of salvation through this story, but that was exactly what came to my mind as we talked about the movie afterward.

A few days later, my daughter asked me who would be on the ofrenda (the wall of family pictures and memories) for our family. This gave me the chance to tell her about a few family members she did not know. Thanks to the Family Tree app, I could even show her some of their pictures. I told her about my maternal grandmother, who always kept fudge in her refrigerator to share with any friend who might drop in, and my great-grandfather, who was so neat and clean that people said they could eat off the engine in his car. I told her about my great-grandmother, who had a fine sewing hand, fiery red hair, and a temper to match. The pictures and stories of several other ancestors were there at our fingertips.

By the end of the conversation, my daughter felt a deeper connection to her ancestors, and I felt a deeper connection to her. I realized that I needed to save my memories of these people for my future grandchildren so that they could also know those on our ofrenda. I also realized that saving such memories could be as easy as chatting with my daughter.

I felt a little of God’s power—at work in my own family, thanks to the blessings of family history work, the Family Tree app, and a movie.

Who is on your family’s ofrenda?

Read the entire article By Rachel L. Matheus

Family History Is at the Heart of Pixar’s Coco

By Melissa Gee

Pixar and family history? You might not see the connection right away, but check out the new movie, Coco, and it’ll make perfect sense.

Coco tells the story of Miguel, a young boy whose desire to discover and follow his great-great-grandfather’s legacy takes him on a colorful journey through the Land of the Dead. In this vibrant world, he meets many members of his family tree who long to return to the world of the living on Día de los Muertos (or Day of the Dead) to visit the loved ones they left behind. But here’s the catch—they can only do that if one of their living relatives still remembers them.

Just like Miguel’s ancestors, our own family members are counting on us to keep their memories alive. Preserving and sharing their pictures and stories can create a real-life bridge between us in the land of the living and our loved ones who have passed on. These memories enrich our family history, building a connection that goes beyond just a basic knowledge of dates and places.

For Rhonna Farrer and her family, that connection all started with a conversation. She had taken her family to see Coco over Thanksgiving weekend, and as they left the theater, many family members expressed how touched they were by the story. A few started asking questions about their own ancestors, and soon the whole family was engaged in an enthusiastic conversation about their heritage. Stories that had once seemed small and simple suddenly became exciting and compelling as personal connections were drawn between past and present. “It touched everybody—each of the generations, including the kids,” Rhonna said. “It started a whole dialogue about family history and the importance of remembering these people.”

Coco’s heartwarming story, full of tender family history messages, reminds us to remember our loved ones and tell their stories. Just as Miguel and his family learn, family history can be a powerful source of strength, hope, and healing in our lives as we do. It can help us better understand our own purpose in life, strengthen connections with our living family members, and repair family ties that have been damaged or broken. Most important, as we discover, preserve, and share the photos and stories of our ancestors, their memories can come to life for us and our families—and live on forever.

Sharing is Caring

Remember in the parable of the talents, the Savior taught that to one was given one talent and to another, another talent that all may benefit?  I find that the same holds true in genealogy.

Some have the gift of research.  They can find a name wherever it may be hiding in the leafy treetops of the family tree.  To another is the ability to recall events in great detail.  They are wonderful storytellers.  Some have the knack for taking and collecting photographs.  And as everyone in the ward knows, Dennis Preece is the man to go to if you have male endowments you want to get done! 

Dennis can do something I can’t.  No matter how many male names I find, I cannot do the temple work for them.  I need help.  That’s why they created the stake credenza so you could share your surplus names with other people in the stake.  I have 3 daughters who love to do baptisms for the dead.  It is a great family activity!  But they outnumber me 3 to 1.  Do I say to them, “Stop!  You can’t do any more baptisms until I catch up on endowments.”  Heavens, no!  This work will roll forward as a rock that gathers no moss.

But we have a problem.  There is a limited amount of space in the stake file.  If my cards are taking up three inches of space in there, then others aren’t able to share their names.  We have received a directive from the stake presidency in this regard.  They have asked that we have no more than 10 names needing work under any given ordinance in the stake file: 10 baptisms, 10 initiatories, 10 endowments, 10 sealings (40 total).  So what am I to do with my stack of names?  It’s not like collecting baseball cards; you want to share them with others.  There are temples around the world that don’t generate enough names to hand them out to patrons.  You either bring your own names or you don’t go to the temple.  We can share our surplus with them.  It’s very easy.  I go to the stake credenza and I pull out all the cards that I’ve submitted that need work done.  I then walk them over to family file and hand the names to a worker.  Done.  I will not get the cards back.  So if you are sentimental about some of the names of close friends and family members, I would hold on to those.  But if you are working on “your mom’s great uncle’s wife’s grandma’s niece’s husband’s aunt on father’s side brother’s daughter’s second cousin” and you’re not exactly sure how you’re related, then this is the way to go!    

Remember, names you have reserved are only good two years from the date you reserved them.  After that the church will release the names so the work can be done in a timely manner.

Inactive Ordinance Reservations Now Being Released

• Reservations for an individual will only be unreserved if the most recent ordinance was completed more than two years ago. (So, reservations with progress more recent than two years ago will not be unreserved.)

share with family via email

share with temple

share in stake file (credenza, limit 10/ordinance)

share with temples around the world (family file)


HOW CAN YOU SHARE GENEALOGY WITH OTHERS?

show someone how to index a batch

write your life history (or that of a family member)

collect true family stories to give as Christmas gifts

upload some photos to family tree (identify those you know)

take your family to the temple to do family names

family history story of the week

We've been talking about attaching a record.  How would you like the app to tell you where to find records that need attaching to your tree?

(They are located at the bottom of the home page in family search.  Log in and go to App Gallery.)

Find-a-record
It generates different types of research opportunities such as finding missing information, finding missing people, finding sources, fixing problems and reserving ordinances.
This "3 minute" genealogy is 100% free.

Demo: go to sources (green box).  In drop-down box, click record hints. search.
Notice that it shows how these people are related to you.
let's attach Charles Frederick's death record.
After attaching the record, click fixed.

Check out the yellow box (ordinances)

David is 55 years old and he just printed his first 3 family name temple cards.  It went something like this...
He wanted to find a direct ancestor to do temple work for.  This is very difficult to do with so many Cardons being members going back to the pioneers, so I suggested he look on his mother's side.  Using the app "find-a-record" and a Kozak name, he was able to locate three ordinances: two couples who needed sealed and a child to parents.
He requested the ordinances.
He printed them off at home.
He cut out the cards.
He took them to the temple to do the work (same night.)
I was there to witness the event.  The Spirit in the room was undeniable.  I was brought to tears as Catharina with the last name that couldn't be pronounced and had to be spelled (Hricz) was sealed to her husband.  She was originally married 8 November 1858 in Hungary.  Now on the 29 of November 2017, some 159 years later, she could be married to her husband for time and all eternity.  I knew in that moment, she didn't care if her name couldn't be pronounced.  She was just eternally grateful for the ordinance that had been performed in her behalf.
I submit to you, that the best Christmas gift you can give to someone this year is to do the temple work for them.

What other apps have you used to successfully find names?

Take a name (Android phone):
Find temple ready ancestors. Take a Name searches the FamilySearch tree for your deceased ancestors and double checks that LDS ordinances are ready for the temple. Request LDS ordinances and print temple cards – from your phone!
Take a Name typically delivers dozens of temple ready family names in a matter of minutes.