E-Books of Remembrance

The meaning of a Book of Remembrance is changing in our digital age.

SCRIPTURE: “But the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works; consequently, the books spoken of must be the books which contained the record of their works, and refer to the records which are kept on the earth.” --Doctrine and Covenants 128:7

Joseph Smith was explaining Revelation 20:12 in a letter to the Saints in 1842, where he was talking about directions on baptism for the dead and it began to clarify what these "books" were.

THOUGHT: Those of you who have done some family history research have used some of these books or records to identify a specific individual in order to provide temple ordinances for them. These books or records might include census records; birth and marriage registries (these once were actually recorded in large legal registry books;) death records as well as church and cemetery records; land, probate and county court records; and lastly family bibles, histories and biographies.

            You, as a member of the Lord’s church, will be judged from your own books  (journal, personal and family histories) and your compiled Book of Remembrance. Remember, Nephi wrote more than what we find in the compiled record that appears in our Book of Mormon.

            Now, ponder the name of my Blog. Notice the rest of the verse from Malachi 3:16.

            “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.”

            There is a very important concept to remember in our day. A book can be made using more than paper and can be written with tools other than pencil, pen, ink or print. The plates Joseph translated from were engraved on metal. The Mayans and Egyptians carved into stone tablets, stele, or onto tomb walls.

            No longer are books hand copied by monks in monasteries or printed with a hand operated printing press by a publisher, as when the first edition of the Book of Mormon was made. It was only a couple of decades ago when most of us were using a typewriter to make a document and then ran off copies on a copy machine at the local quick print shop.

            Now we have the convenience of sitting in front of a computer in our own home, entering our stories into digital format via word processing software, and printing it off on our own inexpensive printer.

If we had no fingers to type with, there is voice recognition software we could use that will translate our spoken words into a printed digital format. I have often thought how much easier it would be to read selected journal entries from over the years and family stories that I have only in print form, into this type of software program. How much faster than typing would this be?

            The rich text software that allows us to scan a printed document then allows us to edit that text, is another fabulous tool we can use. What an amazing time to be living. I suspect there will be more and more advanced technology that will help us. Perhaps some of our Latter-day Saint youth will soon be on the cutting edge of this technology, discovering and creating concepts that we, the older generation, could never have thought of in our wildest “star-trek” dreams.

CONSIDER THIS: What is a modern book? A book can now be in the form of a CD or DVD or read on an ipad, iphone, enotebook, Nook or Kindle; it can be a digital full media video presentation; it can be a website; it can be a story told in blog form; it could be found posted on a social networking site shared with other members of the family; and it might also take the form of a family tree on Ancestry.com.

            The format of a book, our books, are not what matters in the eternal scheme of things. It is the fact that we’ve compiled them…in remembrance.

QUOTE: “Let all the records be had in order, that they may be put in the archives of my holy temple, to be held in remembrance from generation to generation, saith the Lord of Hosts,” (the archives formed to hold temple records in our day is NewFamilySearch, its format is digital, and it is accessed via the internet in cyberspace.)

            “Let us therefore, as a church and as a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness; and let us present in his holy temple, when it is finished, a book containing the records of our dead, which shall be worthy of all acceptation.” –Doctrine and Covenants 128:24

This is just the beginning and I have no doubt the youth will be creating things we never dreamed of to communicate. In early February a conference called RootsTech will be held at BYU, and experts from all over the world will be sharing and dreaming and creating the future of books of remembrance...E-Books of Remembrance. For those of you young people who have the Spirit of Elijah, Go visit Helping in the Vineyard at vineyard.lds.org

Remembering is Reverence

SCRIPTURE: “A Book of Remembrance was kept,” –Moses 6:5

            On my granddaughter’s first birthday and I wanted to make sure that I would see her, so I called and asked her mom to put her on the phone. Then I told her I loved her, and said, “Happy Birthday.” I got a gurgle of delight sound from her and my daughter said she began licking and kissing the phone.

            Earlier when I’d told my husband about my plans for some balloons and a cupcake for her, he’d said, “You know she won’t know what it’s all about; she’s too young.” You might suspect my response. “Oh yes, she will!” Let me clarify this by saying that her spirit will; and the little one year old will find joy and delight in the balloons, cake and photos, and know that her grandma loves her. She’ll feel that love.

            I don’t know how many birthdays I’ll share with her, but in celebrating each one I remember her birth, an ordinance day. The first anniversary of that event will set a pattern and be an example for her parents. For convenience sake, they may choose to celebrate on the weekend, with friends and a party in later years, but I want that little grandchild to know that the day when she entered mortality is special to me.

            Remembering and reverencing should be recorded. That is what our own personal Book of Remembrance is for.

MY QUESTION FOR YOU: When we show our children the family’s Book of Remembrance is it all just pedigree charts and family group sheets? Or is it really interesting with photos, or presented as a video or DVD?

            When we turn to the scriptures for guidance and instruction, we see the Lord’s pattern of what this book should contain. The scriptures themselves, each book by each author, is a history of sacred events and revelation recorded,  as well as of genealogies and patriarchal blessings proclaimed.

            Nephi’s statement, “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents,” begins his record. He reverenced his father, Lehi, and his mother, Sariah. He said that he was taught in the learning of his father, that although he had many afflictions, he felt highly favored of the Lord all of his life. He then says, “Yea, having had a great knowledge of the goodness and mysteries of God, therefore I make a record of my proceedings in my days.

            “Yea, I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.

            “And I know that the record which I make is true; and I make it with mine own hand; and I make it according to my knowledge.” –1 Nephi 1:1-3

            We too, will write in our own words, select from our own experiences those things that we will include in our Book of Remembrance. We do not have to be a great writer; just write how we speak and our personality will show through for our descendants. They will watch us grow as we express ourselves from  a young adult’s perspective to our matured reminiscences as a grandparent.

MY SUGGESTION: Include photographs of forefathers in your book of Remembrance. Be sure to have interesting stories about each person. These stories could be humorous, giving insight into the unique personality of the person. Or it might be a story about an act of service, or how they met their spouse. Most importantly it should be uplifting, not embarrassing. Perhaps it could describe a lesson learned or have a “moral to the story,” type of ending or it could document a spiritual experience they had.

CHALLENGE: Pick one person in your second or third generation (that’s a parent or grandparent) and find a photo of them and write a paragraph about them to include in your Book of Remembrance. The idea here is to begin remembering your forefathers; turn your heart toward them in remembrance.

            Set a goal of how often you will honor one specific person in your lineage, in a “spotlight moment,” during the coming year.

            If your parents are still alive, it would be obvious to get them to select a story (see above ideas) and a photo from the time period in which it occurred, then write it up to give to you. If you set a goal of one Sunday a month to remember one individual ancestor in this way, you will have twelve delightful inclusions in your Book of Remembrance. Yes, I know Sunday is a day of rest, but what more perfect day to add to our book!!! We remember the Lord and his sacrifice for us on this day, so why not remember a progenitor for their gifts to us in our Book of Remembrance.

My Grandmother's birthday is next Sunday, January 1, she would be 123 years old. Her name was Anne Mae Gough (1 Jan 1889 Sullivan, Moultrie, Illinois - 5 Jan 1963 Clarksburg, Moniteau, Missouri)

Anne Mae Gough about 1930

Anne Mae Gough and me

I knew my grandmother loved me because even though we lived half a continent apart, she would send little cards and gifts. She affectionately called me her Lover Lady. After her death, when I lived in Arkansas, I talked with a woman who had known her when she lived briefly in Arkansas. She gave me a couple of her recipes, told me how much she loved her chickens and that she was a nervous sort of person because she was scared of thunderstorms. She would run down the street to a friends house when thunder began. But, I remember other things, like taking a bath in a large metal tub in the middle of her kitchen where she'd pumped the water out of a real "pump" in her kitchen sink and poured it scalding hot from being heated on her wood burning stove. I remember the "out house" and her garden and chicken coop. My sister and I helped her handyman, Chub, paint the house one summer. And I remember one Christmas running out to play in the snow and stepping into a drainage ditch that had been covered over with snow and how warm and comforting the big feather bed was that night in a room warmed by a fireplace. Another brilliant memory of that Christmas was Chub cutting off a chicken's head and the red, red blood all over the white, white snow. Grandma's most famous recipe of course was fried chicken. It was fabulous. Colonel...eat your heart out. But alas, she never did write that one down.