Month: December 2021

I started watching a video from the BYU Family History Library about a FH concept called The Timeline Grid. It is a way to organize data as I search for sources to expand my Family Tree. I need to finish watching it and get started.

I finished watching the video on the Timeline Grid and I have started a copy for Hannah McKean, however I don’t think I can use the census names in the top column because she was born in the 1700’s. Not sure she was still alive in 1841 Census.

Well, I have made a copy of both the US and the UK timeline grids.

I am including links for some of the slides that had great information:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zLKfWzFXcDZvqAAPPoFZLJpd5lOSxQ_yKCxDwxqUhMk/present?slide=id.g1c58e078a_0112 This is slide on using hyperlinks, comments, etc.

This slide summarizes the uses of Timeline Grids.

This slide has the website for Designing Timeline Grids.

Tonight, I took some time to work on Hannah McKean. I think Mary Haining is her mother and I found a David McKean who is the right age to be her father and neither of them are attached to anyone’s family tree at this point. I am going to pray about it and work on it in the morning when Gil is not watching some weird Netflix show that is very distracting.

I am learning a lot about how to Search in Family Tree. Now, I need to learn how to attach persons to my Family Tree. I might need to contact our Ward Family History Consultant.

This post is a day late. I attended the Oquirrh Mountain Temple on Thursday, Dec. 9. I did initiatory work for five women Nancy, Norvella, Mary Catherine, Mary Elizabeth and Florence. I was able to request the endowments, sealing to parents and sealing to spouse for Nancy, Mary Katherine and Norvella. I have an endowment session scheduled for next week on Tuesday.

This post is a day late but I did the work yesterday just didnt get time to post. I checked out the Family Tree app on my phone. I was able to go to Family Groups and set up Max and Serena Watt Family as a text group for FH info. That will be fun to use.

Then I went to Family History Activiites and clicked on Famous Ancestors. That was very interesting to say the least. The first person it showed was Massasoit, a Native American Leader. He shows as my 10th great grandfather on the Baldwin/Hatch line. I am excited to explore that story more.

There are also multiple presidents including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln that I am related to distantly.

The activities page is a lot of fun and very informative. I am excited to explore more.

This is going to be quick because it is 11 pm. It has been a great day. I got to spend time with my parents and Linda, Ryan and their family. I was able to attend my great uncle’s funeral, DeLyle Dance and meet extended family members. It was a very nice celebration of his life and a wonderful reminder that time is fleeting.

Dad, Mom and I stopped at the Riverside Cemetery and placed a wreath on Allison’s grave and a little pine tree replica on Taylor’s grave.

I was able to help Dad get on Family Search and get a name to take to the temple tomorrow. I also showed him Hannah Mckean and we decided that I will talk to my ward FH consultant and see if I can add Mary Haining as Hannah’s mother.

Tonight, Cassandra came over and we all had dinner together..Thai Noodle with Broccoli (Cassandra’s request). Then we decorated the tree and the living room. What wonderful traditions and memories we have and continuing to make! I am truly so blessed. I will post pictures in the morning as it takes a while and I am going to sleep

I am at my parents home in Idaho. The flood of memories as I attended the Thomas Church building next to Snake River Junior High (now called Middle School) has been constant today.

My family and I lived in a rock house just down the street from the junior high until I was about 6 years old. My mom says she has pictures of the rock house. It is still there but has been extensively remodeled and now has siding, one can’t see the rock.

I drove home along the Thomas Road and past some old friends houses, people I babysat for, Tamara Gillins home where she cut my hair on regular basis, and a home where my Aunt Diane and Uncle Dick lived and I remember visiting.

I had an amazing childhood and have been so blessed to be a part of this wonderful community.

Art Kelly, he was our family’s home teacher for many years, taught Sunday School today. He looked at me sitting with my parents and said, “So nice to have Shelly here, now it feels like home.”

I listened to Elder Nelson’s talk from his October 1994 Spirit of Elijah this morning as I drove up. Almost as an aside he said this, “I would add that the daily building of happy memories in our families is an important part of making family history pleasant. Each day on earth can bring a little bit of heaven.”

That means so much to me because it helps me recognize that spending time with family making memories like today is a form of family history.

I had a great time just talking to Mom and Dad after church while we waited for dinner to warm up. Then we went to town to Delyle Dance’s viewing. He is my Dad’s uncle on my Grandma Margaret Watt’s side. He was the last living sibling of my Grandma. I remember his infectious laugh at family reunions and gatherings. He told great stories but unfortunately, I don’t remember details of them just that they made everyone laugh.

I met my Dad’s cousin Ella Gorder there and we exchanged numbers and determined to get a family gathering in St. George together. Ella and her husband and their son Eddy and a grandson live in St. George.

We met Katherine there and then came home and Dayna and Brandon and Isaac, Amelia, Noah and Peter were here. Linda and Ryan and Jackosn, Jake and Olivia showed up around 8:30 from Salt Lake. I truly enjoy spending time with my family.

I missed yesterday. Just ran out of time in the day. I didn’t do my Family History first thing so it just kept getting bumped by things that seemed more important at the time.

Tonight, I have been looking for the mother of Hannah Mckean in the Watt Family line. I think I might have found a person who could be her..Mary Haining christened in 1748, November 21. She doesn’t appear to be attached to anyone in Family Tree. I am going to sleep on it and pray about it some more.

I read a blog post from Family Search about how to use the Search feature in Family Tree. It was very helpful.

I also listened to this article in December 2021 Liahona magazine this morning on my last drive to the University of Utah Hospital for N342 clinical.

Help the Hastening

In Doctrine and Covenants 88:73 the Lord said, “Behold, I will hasten my work in its time.” Some of the clearest signs of this hastening are:

• Increasing numbers of temples and their proximity to Church members.
• Missionary work throughout the world.
• The explosion in the availability of information about our ancestors.
• The development of powerful technology to find, organize, and share this information.
• A real and rapidly increasing desire among God’s children on earth to discover who they are and connect with their families—past and present—as well as their ancestral homelands.

As President Nelson said, “Our message to the world is simple and sincere: we invite all of God’s children on both sides of the veil to come unto their Savior, receive the blessings of the holy temple, have enduring joy, and qualify for eternal life.”⁷

What a blessed opportunity we have, as Church members living in the latter days, to be Heavenly Father’s helpers in gathering together His children!

I really wanted to just check out tonight and lose myself in a the latest episdoe of “The Wheel of Time” series on Amazon Prime but I remembered that I hadn’t done my Family History today and came downstairs and started on the computer. I know that 27 days ago I would have chosen the TV show. I am changing and growing as I use the time the Lord has blessed me with to help gather Israel.

It has been a great day! I had time today to listen to Talking Scriptures podcast on Doctrine and Covenants 137 & 138. As I have already written about..I am inspired to do better at being curious and asking questions..seeking for personal revelation. Mike and Bryce’s podcast was very enlightening and the following quote by Elder Maxwell really hit me.

On the other side of the veil, there are perhaps seventy billion people. They need the same gospel, and releases occur here to aid the Lord’s work there. Each release of a righteous individual from this life is also a call to new labors. Those who have true hope understand this. Therefore, though we miss the departed righteous so much here, hundreds may feel their touch there. One day, those hundreds will thank the bereaved for gracefully forgoing the extended association with choice individuals here, in order that they could help hundreds there. In Gods ecology, talent and love are never wasted. The hopeful understand this, too.^[34]

My sister, Allison, died of cancer just a few months shy of her 30th birthday. I have never doubted that she had work to do on the other side but this quote adds to that perspective and understanding. She had severe rheumatoid arthritis and maybe her ability to share the Gospel, to be an example and a missionary would have been impeded by her physical limitations if she had continued on this earth bound to her body? It gives me comfort to know that her amazing ability to listen and to teach (she was a trained teacher while on earth) are being utilized in heaven to help bring the Gospel message to a few of those 70 billion.

Bryce Dunford, one of the instructors for Talking Scriptures, shared a story about how he taught a grieving student to think of her deceased father as the one who taught the person in heaven for whom she, the student, was performing vicarious ordinances here on earth. So, today while I attended a sealing session at Oquirrh Mountain Temple, I thought of my grandmothers, Allison, my nieces Taylor and Lila Rose being the ones who are teaching the women who were sealed to their parents today or for whom I will do endowment and initiatory work in the next two weeks. CONNECTION is such a powerful motivator and catalyst for good.

I have also realized that I need help more than ever from the other side of the veil but, they might be too busy teaching the people there to give me much help. I need to do a better job on my side searching, praying and asking for revelation, for dreams that will help me continue connecting people to my Family Tree.

Today I studied more about the redemption of the dead from Doctrine and Covenants sections 137 and 138. I listened to Pres. Ballard’s talk given in October 2018 General Conference titled: The Vision of the Redemption of the Dead. I think sometimes I get too caught up in the many facets of doing Family History and I forget the big picture. The big picture being that redemption of the dead is a key part of the Plan of Salvation and a clear sign of how much Heavenly Father loves each of us. He loves the child born in 600 B.C., the child born in 1300 A.D., as much as He love me.

D & C 138: 23-24:

23 And the saints rejoiced in their ^aredemption, and bowed the ^bknee and acknowledged the Son of God as their Redeemer and Deliverer from death and the ^cchains of ^dhell.

24 Their countenances ^ashone, and the ^bradiance from the presence of the Lord rested upon them, and they ^csang praises unto his holy name.

I am so grateful for the knowledge I have of this magnificent work and the testimony I have that this is truly the Lord’s work…”to bring to pass the immorality and eternal of life of man and women.” I am humbled by the magnitude of this work and the way that it makes life “fair.”