by Sister Alice Anderson:
We have just returned from our summer maintenance break and everything is clean and updated. We had a wonderful, refreshing break with family and friends, but now we can’t wait to get back to our Family History family. We have greetings to exchange and stories to tell. We have missed one another and are eager to find out . . .
We have just returned from our summer maintenance break and everything is clean and updated. We had a wonderful, refreshing break with family and friends, but now we can’t wait to get back to our Family History family. We have greetings to exchange and stories to tell. We have missed one another and are eager to find out . . .
what each did while away. Our FamilySearch Library is not just a large group of people who happen to serve together; we are like family here. We care about each other; we share experiences and find joy together as we give and receive compassion from one another. When one of us is celebrating, everyone is celebrating. And when we have challenges, we are comforted knowing that everyone is praying for us. Many of us have family members nearby and see them often, but others of us are here in St. George far from the family members we love. Coming here each day to serve with the good people who unconditionally share their love with us becomes a great blessing in our lives.
One of the purposes we have here besides helping others with their Family History is doing our own. As we search for our family members, we not only seek for names, dates and places, but we try to become acquainted with our ancestors. Sometimes our search helps us to develop a closeness and caring like that which we gain from the dear family members and dear friends we have known. In the preface of a book I have about my mother’s family, I found the following words that help to explain what can happen as we search out our once unknown family members. These words have been meaningful to me. I hope they will be for you, too.
“We search for some parallel in the lives of our ancestors and our own along which we might walk today arm in arm with them. It is not to be found in the material things. In that respect we are richer than their fondest dreams could suggest. It is not to be found in our mode of living. Not in these things will we find the tie that binds us to them.
“Can you draw upon your imagination enough to picture the door of the log cabin swing open some morning and see John emerge with a smile on his browned countenance radiating joy untold. Seems like the birds never sang so sweetly before, the fields never were so green or the sky so blue. Why, even the crooning of the old Indian strikes his attention as never before. They named the baby James. Ah! We are arm in arm with them now. We, too, have found fields greener, skies bluer overnight than we ever saw them before for exactly the same reason. Love still is, as it was then, the greatest of human emotions.
“Let this be set apart as a token of our kinship with the same God whom they worshipped a hundred years ago. The same sun is still in the heavens, the same stars blink down upon us, who after all, are not so far removed from those whose memory we honor.”
As we continue to seek our ancestors, may we learn about them, become family with them, and learn to love them as we do our living family. They helped to shape who we are today.
One of the purposes we have here besides helping others with their Family History is doing our own. As we search for our family members, we not only seek for names, dates and places, but we try to become acquainted with our ancestors. Sometimes our search helps us to develop a closeness and caring like that which we gain from the dear family members and dear friends we have known. In the preface of a book I have about my mother’s family, I found the following words that help to explain what can happen as we search out our once unknown family members. These words have been meaningful to me. I hope they will be for you, too.
“We search for some parallel in the lives of our ancestors and our own along which we might walk today arm in arm with them. It is not to be found in the material things. In that respect we are richer than their fondest dreams could suggest. It is not to be found in our mode of living. Not in these things will we find the tie that binds us to them.
“Can you draw upon your imagination enough to picture the door of the log cabin swing open some morning and see John emerge with a smile on his browned countenance radiating joy untold. Seems like the birds never sang so sweetly before, the fields never were so green or the sky so blue. Why, even the crooning of the old Indian strikes his attention as never before. They named the baby James. Ah! We are arm in arm with them now. We, too, have found fields greener, skies bluer overnight than we ever saw them before for exactly the same reason. Love still is, as it was then, the greatest of human emotions.
“Let this be set apart as a token of our kinship with the same God whom they worshipped a hundred years ago. The same sun is still in the heavens, the same stars blink down upon us, who after all, are not so far removed from those whose memory we honor.”
As we continue to seek our ancestors, may we learn about them, become family with them, and learn to love them as we do our living family. They helped to shape who we are today.