99 on 9th day of 9th month 2023

Expect Miracles!

To honor our prophet, and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I quote him from his Oct 2022 talk entitled, "Overcome the World and Find Rest"

"....my dear brothers and sisters, so many wonderful things are ahead. In comng days, we will see the greatest manifestations of the Savior's power that the world has ever seen.

"Between now and the time He returns with 'power and great glory', He will bestow countless privileges, blessings and MIRACLES upon the faithful."

Journals Record Personal Miracles

President Nelson continued, "Let Him know through your prayers and your actions that you are serious about overcoming the world. Ask Him to enlighten your mind and send the help you need. Each day, record the thoughts that come to you as you pray; then follow through dilgently. Spend more time in the temple, and seek to understand how the temple teaches you to rise above this fallen world."

Why I Do Family History and Temple Work

It is in this talk that I found my patriarchal blessing's expression of my personal life mission explained.

He said, "Anytime we do anything that helps anyone -- on either side of the veil -- to make and keep their covenants with God, we are helping to gather Israel."

My Miracles Happen Quietly

As I focus on one individual in my family on FamilySearch who is dead, I find memories, photos and records or sources that mention them. My thoughts of them probably surprise them. They may have thought that their life was a hum drum plain vanilla one lived out in obscurity, but I am showing them by my love, focus and concern, that simply is not true. They matter. They matter to me and they matter to God. He knows them individually. 

More than likely, I promised them in the pre-existence that I would find them, and perform for them a work that they cannot do for themselves.

79 not 99

I was born 79 years ago into the very family lineage that would enable me to exercise my gifts and talents of solving mysteries, finding puzzle pieces, and the skills needed for researching, needed to identify each and every one. THE ONE IS IMPORTANT. Mine is a tree with messy roots, meaning many children, many with multiple marriages and all farmers. No one famous. No pioneer heritage. During the pandemic I added over 8,000 names.

 Now I quote President Nelson in his talk given April 2018 "Let Us All Press On"

"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 etrnal life."

THIS IS MY BIRTHDAY GIFT TO OUR PROPHET, PRESIDENT RUSSELL M. NELSON! 

 

The Summer of Eye Discontent

 

“The Summer of Eye Discontent”

Fix your eyes on Jesus Christ

He is my pioneer

In this the winter of my life,

He is the author of my faith

He brings contentment.

Right eye, wrong eye

Focus near, focus far, or not

Wear glasses now half-accurate

Blink, Blink, Blink

What is left?

The other eye becomes right.

Where, then will that leave me?

Content or not?

Fix my eyes on Him in

Every circumstance of my life

God will make for my good

If my focus is on Him.

Crystal clear vision

Through spiritual eyes

Brings true contentment.

The peace of God

Reigns in my heart now

The seasons of my life flee

and long far away there

I glimpse eternity.

--Bev Field 20 Jun 2023

More of the Photo Story

Shadows Define Light

Photography is the perfect medium to show the contrast between dark and light, good and evil, sad and happy, and even to tell the story of relationships.

One summer I asked local photographer to take photos of me and my grandson. The result was an amazing, fun story of our relationship.

A Portrait of me in 2015
by Linda Larson

Our Story is Worth Everything! 

When world reknowned photographer Me Ra Koh sponsored by Sony told her story at RootsTech2023 as a keynote speaker, she showed the most exquisite photos that I've ever seen, she said "Shadows define light" and "Our story is Worth Everything!" and the "world is desparate for authenticity." It rang true! She and her team ask close relatives about the person who is to be photographed, then they arrange the session and tell that person how the others described them. And the resulting photos revealed a unique voice or rather captured the resilence, that continues to inspire for years. I have had photos taken that did that same thing for me and my grandson.

Here is my favorite photo of my grandson. An enlarged copy of this photo printed on canvas, hangs on my bedroom wall so that it is the first thing I see each morning. His smile absolutely delights me. 

But we were having so much fun that summer, that to capture it, the two of us dressed up like Ninja Turtles! My mother dressed up at Halloween, so did I. I dressed up to sell fireworks in a red devil outfit while in the Jr. Woman's Club. So this was just another part of my history that tells a story. 

Many people now know me as very serious. But I have a completely crazy side too!

Ninja Turtles

Hugs

Comparing In-person and Online Experiences at RootsTech

My In-Person Experience at Rootstech
 Several Years Ago in 2015

There is no comparison for Me
Physically I am no longer able to travel. I use a walker. My knees give out even using that walker. I've lost 80 lbs since the photo of 2015. The walker is smaller, I am smaller, my budget is smaller, and so the Online experience is FABULOUS!!!!!

FOR EXAMPLE:

While watching a Main Stage Performance, I cried, learned new things and began asking myself questions that I'd never thought of before today. Like, There is now a Foster Care app for finding family members (I used to befriend a fostered girl for several years, who eventually found her parents, married and now has children):

 or when world reknowned photographer Me Ra Koh sponsored by Sony told her story with the most exquisite photos that I've ever seen, said "Shadows define light" and "Our story is Worth Everything!" and the "world is desparate for authenticity, it rang true! She and her team ask close relatives about the person who is to be photographed, then they arrange the session and tell that person how the others described them. And the resulting photo revealed a unique voice or rather captured resilence, that continues to inspire. I have had photos taken that did that same thing for me and my grandson.

 

Day Two at RootsTech2023 Blew Away My Mind

 The Innovations and Technology Forum at RootsTech2023

The first mind-blowing visual was on the Main Stage when CEO of FamilySearch International, Steve Rockwood, began doing push-ups and had MC record this act for Marco Polo. Apparently Steve had been using this app with his familly for sometime to challenge other family members to stay fit. 

I too, have been using Marco Polo's free app to unite with 16 "Inklings" friends to spiritually unite. We discuss a different LDS Conference talk and a scripture each week. 

During the Innovations and Technology Forum, MARCO POLO was the first presentation. Not only was it delightfully presented by it's UkrainianCEO Vlada Bortnik, but the purpose and moral premises of the company swelled my heart with gratitude and joy with their integrity.

Other Presentations Incuded:

FamilySearch's Computer Generated Trees

Stories with their Story Assist App

Bank of Memories their Blackchained FamilyTree, FamilyFriend DOA, and Memo

Kursame by Warren Stein from Tel Aviv

GenXT with Stanislaw Nikolsky a DNA Confidential Computing app

Ericcson Updates by Oscar Johnson with EPHAS 5G emersive imagine

MAC Family Tree by Benjamin Gunter app for iUsers that interfaces with FamilySearch

MyHeritage by Maya Lerner and their AI Time Machine This is a fun opportunity to see yourself in various past historical times as well as present and future garb. Here are a few of my own from present day frontal and side portraits used by AI to historical and future:

Side View Dec 2022 for MyHeritage AI

Portrait Feb 2023

Western Era

1970's Flower child

Recent Royalty

Portrait of Lady in Gold

My favorite of Midieval Woman

The Futuristic Me

Adding Pieces to the Puzzle at RootsTech2023

Attending Virtually in the Comfort of My Living Room

I've looked at the schedule and found the sessions of RootsTech2023 that I am interested in placing them on a "playlist." Some are "live" and others are prerecorded. My selected sessions for today, can be rewatched for the next month if not a year. These are all AMAZING! Just what I need to improve my research skills. After over 30 years of doing and loving family history, I find that there's SO MUCH more to learn. The most amazing part of this experience are the downloadable Syllabuses!!!! These include digital links to other sources like archives, libraries, databases, wiki and books.

My list of sessions today include: How to Research in the FamilySearch Wiki, Finding the Living-Reverse Genealogy, 10 Things a Genealogist Should do before Leaving a Library or Archive, How to Use a Manuscript Collection (and where to find them), Main Stage Guest: Jordin Sparks and Keynote Speakers, Innovationand Technology Forum, What's New at Ancestry, My Heritage Photo Features New Releases and to top off the day Temple and Family History Leadership Instruction. 

ALL OF THESE ADD PIECES TO MY PUZZLE

RootsTech2023 and away we go!

Finding Christ's Help in Solving the Puzzle

The serious theme for RootsTech 2023 is "Uniting" people, traditions, stories, memories, technology, innovation, communities and families.

Faith, identity, place and grace-- our stories may be our own, as we connect and belong, shared stories can unite us all. Sister Susan L. Gong said, ""the stories we preserve (in any format) and share through generations can have a lasting impact on our hears and minds."

"I hope," she continues "that we will each make an effort to discover our own family stories, record them and to share them with our children and grandchildren. I hope that we will all gain greater understanding and appreciation for the struggles, courage, faith and sacrifice of those who have gone before... and I pray that we will live lives of goodness to honor their memories and show thanks for the gift of life they have given to us."  

The FUN theme of this week of "Uniting" includes sharing other activities that engage children, youth, young adults and even other luke-warm Latter-day Saint members who view this work, and I quote: it's like "watching paint dry,"

Let's put Jesus Christ back into the center of our focus and allow Him to help us. 

Let's Come Unto Christ

Try writing in a journal, scrapbook, or create any other record of your personal or family history in your favorite format (formats could be paper, digital, audio, etc.)

● Digitize family photos or otherwise preserve heirlooms/memorabilia to share with future generations

● Tell family stories

● Make a family recipe or keep a family tradition

● Learn about the places or time periods of your ancestors’ lives

● Add sources or memories to FamilySearch’s Tree

● Interview a relative

● Study family history-related doctrine or church history (family proclamation, temples, Elijah, etc.)

● Attend the temple

● Babysit for someone who is attending the temple

● Work on your own worthiness in order to attend the temple

As President Gordon B. Hinckley used to say, just "DO IT," and I say do it with a S.M.I.L.E.

SHARING

MEMORIES

IS 

LAUDABLY/LAUGHINGLY

EXCITING

Memories are Like Wind Wolves

What is a Wind Wolf?

     In the Autumn of the year, the tall grasses dry to a soft golden brown in California's Wind Wolves Preserve. As the steady breezes ripple over the fields of grass, it creates the soft waves that the Native Americans call wind wolves. They say it is the spirits of those animals who once lived and ran over these very fields.

Our fondest memories are like these Wind Wolves, they run softly through our minds bringing back those treasured feelings we want to experiernce over and over again.

     I created this paper sculpture measuring about 3 feet wide, from 13 sided shapes designed by Hank Goebel in 1975 for the Downey Museum of Art's annual Introductions exhibit. In 2007 I received permission from his daughter to use these "Hank Shapes" for my own art. She worked at the Wind Wolves Preserve. It was here that I heard the story of the Wind Wolves and was inspired to create this sculpture in his memory. 

     This year's RootsTech2023 will focus on "Sharing Stories" using all of the digital technologies available to us including social media, such as FaceBook, Instagram and now Marco Polo. 

     The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has announced it's theme for the year:

Your Memories Can Live Forever on FamilySearch

Your Memories Can Live Forever on FamilySearch

Miss Universe of the Dead

My friend, Aaron Marie Gillett, said she may never be a proselyting missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but that she could become the “Miss Universe” of the Dead!”

I told her that with all of the new digital tools available to us we could really become experts in finding our deceased ancestors.

Everyone can have a free account on FamilySearch Family Tree and can register for free for RootsTech 2023, the online genealogy/family history conference March 2 – 4, next week. As members of the Church we have access to free accounts on affiliate sites of FamilySearch: Ancestry, My Heritage, Find My Past, Geneanet, and Filiae.

The theme for 2023 Family History Temple and Family History Consultants as well as Stake and Ward leaders responsible for this great work is:

Your Memories Can Live Forever on FamilySearch

Kazuo Ishiguro, Nobel Prize in Literature Laureate, said recently that, “The exchanging of stories isn’t just fun or desirable, it’s something essential to our well-being.”

So when your daughter says to you for the 15^th time, “Mommie, tell me the story of the Lost Opal,” you tell it one more time. She was part of that story, and it truly does mean more to her that just a fairy tale. It tells her that prayer works. When we lose something precious, the Holy Ghost will reveal it’s location to us when we pray with the faith of a little child.

I shared this story in a display for our Stake Relief Society event this past Saturday. The theme was “Let Your Light So Shine Before Men, That They May See Your Good Works and Glorify Your Father which is in Heaven.”

In 3 Nephi 18:24 Jesus Christ told the people on this continent after His resurrection, that “Behold, I am the light which ye shall hold up…”

Because He wants every person who has ever lived upon this earth to have an opportunity to hear His gospel and accept or reject the saving ordinances thereof, we as Latter-day Saints research our own ancestors and by proxy, baptize them in our temples, thus releasing them from spirit prison. This is an essential part of Heavenly Father's Plan. Note that we only do this for our own ancestors not anyone else's.

Let us all put our memories into FamilySearch and Let Our Light so Shine!

 

Let My Light So Shine!

I've always wanted to be found doing what I was supposed to be doing; being where I was supposed to be; and participating in any church event when asked to participate. So enthusiastically, this former museum curator began gathering photos, stories, ideas, craft projects that I could share when the Stake Relief Society asked for displays, food and talents. 

I wrote this lyric poem to try to share my talents, but alas, they don't want so much "stuff" now I will be limited to 1/4 round table. The theme is "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

A Tri-fold display to let my light so shine

By my good works to glorify God.

Three sides are doubled to tell the story:

My life, my talents, my gifts, my passionate focus

First love, is solving the mystery

Who am I?

Finding my ancestors

Helping to find your ancestors

A calling from God before my birth

Revealed in my Patriarchal Blessing

Now focused in FamilySearch Family Tree

Attaching sources, recording memories

Like the Tree, I branch out to

My Heritage loving AI photos of me

DNA and 17 family trees on Ancestry

Two search engines, different algorithms

Basic research now enhanced

Mountains of data, sifted and sorted

Fold3, Newspapers.com, and FindaGrave 

all reveal their hidden secrets, mysteries solved

My second love, a gift or talent?

Using art to share a story

Writing lyric poems, inspired,

Creating sculptures of paper

Sharing gospel light on social media

FaceBook, Instagram, a blog: Malachi 3:16

Bee in the Desert, symbol of my nature

Busy, Busy, Busy

Flower to flower, pollinating as I go

This symbol love began early

The Camp Fire Law said Worship God

How, I wondered?

Searched first one church then another

This lost lamb, now is found in the loving

Arms of the Good Shepherd.

Humble and meek, I pray to serve

My ancestors, then symbols become real

In temple covenants.

Family is my Trifecta

Continuing traditions by sharing

Dolls, sea shells and gem collecting

Combining and overlapping dolls, camping with an artist's eye,

Photography captures memories, creates digital art

My Spiritual DNA revealed

It brings into focus why I am here,

To Worship God, Create Beauty and Honor Family

Happy 111th Birthday Mom!

Happy Groundhogs Day!

My mother, Vivian Ruthe Utterback Eckles Gillette, was born sharing this funny holiday, and she reveled in it. Her mother called her a "Corker" on a picture postcard sent to her dad, Thomas J. Hicks in Taney County Missouri. I had to look up the meaning of that idiom from 111 years ago. It means an outstanding person or thing; one that is excellent or remarkable. The synonyms include: beaut, bee's knees, cat's meow, jim-dandy, peach, standout and sweetheart. This is the photo on that card taken in 1919, Kansas City, Missouri

ZOOM, ZOOM, ZOOM

 Zoom, Zoom, Zoom

I'm prepared

Ready to Zoom.

I see and hear

The Spirit's near

My soul uplifted

Why would I fear

God couldn't show

His love

Digitally, too

This poem was inspired by a story that appeard in LDS Living Magazine, Jan-Feb 2023, p 59 in an article by Gabrielle Shiozawa entitled, “A Pointed Prompting."

She tells the story of Gerry Schlette , a college professor in New Jersey, who had discovered “Vocal Point,” a BYU 9-member, male a cappella group. He said their songs made him feel better. After 3 years he decided to take a trip out to Utah. It changed his life. 

My poem came from the remark that base singer, Hyrum Jackson made when he said that he was able to attend Gerry's baptism via Zoom and ”the Spirit was felt very strongly, even digitally.”

My friend Brian Flores-Rodriguez, a music major at the University of Arizona, said that he'd love to set this poem to music. It would be a fun song for the youth.

Let's zoom, zoom, zoom!!!!

A Tribute To A King

 

Follow God

Love Others

Be Connected

Tragedy in Memphis

So Close to Home

Now Going Home

Why Kill someone so Young?

His Desire: To Motivate and Serve

Black or White, Those Short Lives Matter

Both Before Hate Filled Crowds

Father Forgive them,

They Know Not What They Do.

Loving Others 

Going to a Heavenly Home.

Now United He is Our King

New Year. New Beginnings. New Journal.

Remembering 1976 Rose Float that I designed

 

Now is the time to start a New Tradition!  

Use Your Patriarchal Blessing to Set Goals

1. START WITH A PRAYER

2. Read completely through and note words that "Pop Out" at you.

3. Look for things you've been blessed with. Make a List.

4. Note warning, especially look for "IF" phrases. Make a List.

5. Look for the one thing you just don't want to see, do or hear about.

THAT'S THE ONE YOU BEGIN WITH. 

Make a plan of how to overcome that dread, topic, or warning. Heavenly Father will help you tackle this one if you treat it as a NEW psychology challenge. 

Use your talents to help you develop spiritual habits and start with naming it something very hopeful like My Miracle or My Blessing.

Make it Smart:  

    S for Specific

    M for Measurable

    A for Achievable

    R for Relevant

    T for Timely