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!