2011 GOAL: FAMILY HISTORY (Part 2).

Yesterday, friend Katie Walker shared her love of family history. Today, she shares just how she has gone about recording and getting printed her family's history.
 
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My current ongoing endeavor with family history work is journaling and writing personal and family
histories. The most important part of journaling is to do it! Figure out what works for you and get
going. There are many ways to start writing personal and family histories. I’ve written one personal
history from memory which includes my four years of high school. I was taught that it is best to write your life story (or help a parent, grandparent, etc) in segments, and focusing on one segment at a time makes it easier: childhood, teenage years, employment, spiritual experiences, courtship, college years, etc.

Family Histories
I started to be better about recording the events of our lives when my first baby was born. I recorded
her first year very detailed, and printed it to a beautiful treasure of a book. I loved it so much I began
the project of recording the year of our family. And I intend to continue doing it every year. I can’t
guarantee that it will be as in depth, but I’ll try my hardest to do something each year.

As I work on my book throughout the year, I separate everything by month. I include milestones, journal entries, recipes, updates, pictures (tons of pictures), my testimony, traditions, spiritual experiences and lessons learned, and anything else that comes to my mind in the process. One way you could look at it is that pretty much what is normally blogged on family blogs goes into my books.

What I Have Learned About Recording My Family History
1. It is extremely rewarding—the Spirit confirms to me that it is important and worthy of my time.
2. An elephant never forgets, but I’m a human. There’s so much about our life that I would have
forgotten had I not recorded it—fun, uplifting, very dear memories and sweet moments.
3. Nephi 9:5 “Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me to make these plates for a wise purpose in
him, which purpose I know not.” –When I was wrapping up 2009, thoughts came in to my mind
of additions to make. The most important was my testimony at the end. Immediately when I
started considering 2010, thoughts started pouring into my mind of what I should include. I’m
not sure what these books will mean to my family in the future, but I can imagine…and I think
the Lord has a purpose in it.
4. Along those same lines, much like what Elder Eyring told of in his talk,  it’s probably not for me. “I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.”
5. As we leave written accounts of our lives and testimonies it turns our hearts toward our children
and we provide them with a means for turning theirs to us.

I love family history work. I tend to love whichever aspect I am prompted to be working on at the time
the most. But I’ve experienced several of its dimensions, and there is such a sweet spirit any time
I’m involved in any of them. It truly is the Lord’s work—whether it is redeeming the dead, or helping
our posterity remember righteous traditions and the faith of their fathers. I hope that if you’ve felt
prompted to incorporate family history into your life that you will follow those promptings. I know you
and your family will be blessed.

For what it’s worth: There are several online bookmakers, but I use blurb.com for my projects. When I was trying to decide who to use, they were super user-friendly and the price was unbeatable. My books
usually have about 1000 images and over 200 pages, and the most I’ve spent (using their highest quality, largest size) is $160. I would pay ten times that for these books. I LOVE them!

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Thanks so much Katie. I hope y'all feel as inspired by her endeavor as I have. I'd love to hear mamas,  how you are recording your family's history? Is it doable or is it a monstrous effort? I want to complete our family's history this year and would love your ideas.

2011 GOAL: FAMILY HISTORY.

On my list of goals for this year is to have a hard copy of our family's history. I have not quite figured out a manageable way to conquer it, but it is definitely in the works. Something tells me this family history business is important.

One of my dear friends, Katie has focused on this task over the last few years and has done a beautiful job of documenting the day-to-day life with her husband and two daughters. Along the way she has also developed a strong testimony of the importance of family history. I love what she's done.

I asked her to share what she has learned in the family history department and she graciously obliged. Hopefully, her success will motivate you, like it has me.
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I’m going to share something with you. When I learned it, I felt relieved and empowered. It changed mylife. I am passionate about it.

What do you know about family history work? I’ll tell you what I thought I knew about it. I thought it
was the tedious, time-demanding, impossible work of charting all people who have ever lived on this
earth and then doing their temple work. And, I also knew that it was for the sweet, white-haired ladies
in church.

In spite of what I already “knew” about the subject, when I was a junior at BYU, I decided to take the
introductory course on Family History. As it is with most university courses, Rel-C 261 was jam-packed with information. The instructor was a master family historian. She helped me get organized and become familiar with the research process to find ancestors. There’s a special spirit about searching for ancestors. It’s called the Spirit of Elijah. As I studied the coursework and participated, that spirit grew within me, and I was changed by what I was learning.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks gave an incredible talk on the subject. He says that we should all know that “in the work of redeeming the dead there are many tasks to be performed, and that all members should participate by prayerfully selecting those ways that fit their personal circumstances at a particular time.” I took that to heart. And, like I said, it relieved me of self-induced guilt by not having found all ancestors (and not seeing anytime in the near future when I would). Then it empowered me to actively seek the Lord’s will in how I should implement family history work in my current circumstances.

At that point in my life, I was a busy college student, newly-married. It wasn’t possible for me to allocate tremendous time to research, but I could attend the temple and perform proxy work. And I could keep my own personal journal. Then, when we moved away for our first job, we weren’t immediately blessed with children. I had time to be an ordinance worker in the temple and work in the family history center as a ward consultant. It was during that time that I found over a dozen family names that needed ordinances performed, and I became addicted to indexing. Now, as a busy mother, my personal circumstances call for a different effort in family history work that I’ll share with you tomorrow.

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Thanks so much Katie, I can't wait to share what you've done to document your family's life.

Top quote from Elder Nelson's talk, "Generations Linked in Love".