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.