"Thank you, Joyce"

I noticed something in my behavior over the Christmas holiday. Some of our adult children visited and more than once I paraphrased my mother, saying to my daughter, “Thank you, Joyce.” My mother used to invoke her father’s name when she observed his behavior in me. And now I invoke my mother and father’s names when I see their behavior in my children.

I don’t pretend to know how behavior moves from one generation to another. I assume it is mostly learned, and the behaviors of my parents in my children come because I modeled those behaviors. But some traits do seem to be born with the child, just like certain physical features. My wife does not exhibit the Swedish stubbornness of her grandfather, but some of our children do, for instance.

We are quick to tell these stories in our family, especially when we see the likenesses, mostly because we want the stories to stay alive in our children’s hearts. My mother left a personal history with many stories of her life as a child and with my father, and some of mine. I’ve written a similar history of my first half-century. My mother-in-law gave us for Christmas an electronic volume with similar histories for her and my wife’s father. We treasure a collection of family stories my wife’s grandmother compiled of Mormon Pioneer relatives. And I lament that I do not have written stories of my father’s American (though not Mormon) pioneers of the Pacific Northwest.

The oldest revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants is Section 2, Moroni’s recounting of Malachi’s prophecy of hearts turning from children to fathers to the still boy prophet Joseph. Before the restoration of the priesthood, before the coming of the Book of Mormon, before the organization of quorums and presidencies and building of temples and moving of people there was a promise for linking eternal families.

Very cool.

BTW, check out a discussion of this year's study of the Doctrine & Covenants in Gospel Doctrine at Real Intent here.

Resolution report

My father was big on new year’s resolutions. His birthday was also January 1, so for him it was really setting his next year’s agenda.

He was also big on personal examination. My first Sunday home from my mission, Dad spoke in our ward’s conference about the value of taking a personal inventory from time to time to determine how we are measuring up against what the Lord would have us do. (He’d just spent a few years with my mom in West Africa on a work assignment, far away from the organized church, so he’d had plenty of time for his own introspection.)

Last year I didn’t set too many resolutions, but one was almost cliché: I wanted to lose weight.

I’m happy to report that I succeeded. I dropped about sixty pounds in the first half of the year and managed to keep it off (even through this most recent holiday season).

I have not yet written resolutions for this year, but I have a few mulling about my head.

A friend suggested that since I’ve increased my exercise regimen as part of my weight loss / maintenance program that I should put a race or two on my calendar for this year. (Did I mention I hate running? My exercise is usually on my elliptical machine or my Nordic Track skier. But while on business in November of last year, I discovered I could run about 5K a day without dire consequences.)

Of course there are repeating ideas around improving my scripture and gospel study, and I’m thinking carefully about that idea. I’m especially trying to think about ways to enhance my gospel study, particularly in this year of church history in Sunday School.

I’ve also begun to feel more yearning to do family history. This happens from time to time with me, and not just when there’s a youth temple trip on the horizon. But I have some sticky problems with a few of my lines that tend to bog me down until I collapse whimpering in the corner. Maybe this is the year I move past the sticky lines to something else.

Happy to hear your thoughts about resolutions (and any suggestions you may have).

By the way, you can read my New Year's post on testimony at Real Intent here.

On personal history

In 2009, one of my Christmas gifts to my children was my personal history. Mine was modeled after my mother's which she gave us as gifts, too. Both my mother and I wrote our histories when we were each about 50, though mine took a couple of years for editing before I finally gave it away.

When I was much younger, I assumed personal history writing was for the "old" folks. (Of course when I was much younger, I thought 30-year olds were old!) But I'm glad that I wrote my first volume at 50. I was old enough to have made significant choices in my life and seen the impact of those choices, and young enough to remember them!

I'm thinking about this, because I recently re-read my history. As I began, I was struck with a horrible thought, that the whole project had been a little presumptuous in the first place. After all, who was I to think that someone would actually want to read it? And yet I did (and do) enjoy reading my mother's history. And my children and wife have been kind enough to be complimentary of mine.

My process of writing took me quite some time. When I began to write, I went chronologically, and began writing what I could remember. I found the more I wrote, the more came back to me, and often I'd go back and add another story to what I had already written. I also used family letters (which we've written since we were married) as source material, but I really focused on what came to mind while writing. My intent was not to tell every detail of every story, but to get the broad arc of the story of my life with enough details to reveal who I was at various life stages.

In my earliest draft I wrote everything – the good, the bad and the ugly. And that process was highly therapeutic. But as I edited, I made a conscious choice to let this be my story, and not someone else's. So no airing of anyone else's dirty laundry – or clean laundry, for that matter. Where I included others in my narrative I tried to focus on my interaction with them. Of course there are many actors in my life, and I tried to include them fairly and in a way that would not cause them embarrassment of any kind. This is particularly true for my children (and I hope I succeeded; that none of them has resigned from the family is a good sign).

Someday I hope to write a second volume. My mother never did, and I wish she had. But the good news is that when she published her first volume, I was an adult, old enough to know her and have solid memories of her. My youngest children may not be there yet for me. So I suppose I'll have to think about the right timing for Volume Two.

Have your written your own history? Have enjoyed reading others’ personal histories?

Hearts of the Children Turned to Their Fathers

My mother-in-law has just completed a mission at the Genealogy Library in Salt Lake City. Her service was a great blessing to the patrons of the library, I'm sure, and it was a great blessing to us, as well. For instance, she helped me advance one of my Norwegian lines a few more generations by pointing out to me available online Norwegian church records. She also supplied lots of names for baptisms that my son and daughters could do when they visited the temple, and that my wife and I have been able to do work on, as well.

One of the greatest gifts, however, is more than the tabulation and processing of names for ordinance work (though that, too, has been important and rewarding). She took advantage of the vast resources of the new Church History Library to research and compile individual histories for some of her ancestors. She the developed a number of blogs on which she has included the results of her findings.

In the process, she sought to find "true" stories, not family folklore. She learned, for instance, that Ann Ratcliffe's (her great-great grandmother) story was different from the family fables she'd heard. The family fable said that Ann had married Thomas Karren against her father's will, and had jumped out of a second story window to do it, injuring her leg and walking with a limp for the rest of her life. Very colorful, but not true. Instead (and the story is recorded at Thomas's site, not Ann's), Ann's father died and twelve-year-old Ann (somehow encouraged by her grandmother) hired Thomas Karren (who was six years her senior) to help in the family bakery (he had been working for a competitor in Liverpool at the time). Several years later they determined to marry (against her mother's wishes, but with her grandmother's approval). He joined the church in Liverpool and immigrated to Nauvoo, and she went with him, though she did not join the church until February 1846, just before leaving Nauvoo for the west; she was baptized and endowed on the same day.

My mother-in-law was able to read journals and contemporary accounts of many of these early members, and use their own words in many cases, or accounts of those who knew them personally. She also in the process became aware of similar work being done on her relatives by others and has linked to some of those, as well. And rather than producing books that would have been a prohibitive expense, she compiled the information in a series of blogs that will allow for updates as further information is learned.

What a great gift!

Are there nuts in my family tree?

Mormons are big fans of family history research. As a church we've invested great resources in genealogical research. Our family history centers are in stake centers and other church buildings around the globe, making our vast resources of microfilmed and microfiched records available for researchers in and outside the church.

The church is in the process of launching New Family Search (www.new.familysearch.org) around the world – an online computer resource for church members for tracking family history, and (even more importantly) easily allowing people to link their research with research that others have done to avoid duplicate work.

For church members, one reason for family history research is to allow for saving ordinances of the gospel to be performed in LDS temples. There deceased family members can receive physical ordinances like baptism and confirmation by proxy. We believe that those who died without the opportunity to hear the gospel in this life will have that opportunity in the Spirit World, where Christ preached to the spirits between his death and resurrection (see 1 Peter 3 and 1 Corinthians 15).

Old Testament prophet Malachi (see Malachi 3) promised that hearts of the children would turn to their fathers, and hearts of the fathers would turn to their children. I have felt that turning in my own life as I've dabbled in family history work and as I've taken names of my ancestors to the temple. In fact, it happened again the other night.

As I was checking family records and comparing them to the online records in New Family Search, I realized that certain work for my uncle – one of my father's brothers -- had not been completed. I left the temple holding that blue card with my uncle's name on it, and suddenly also felt close to my father who passed away two years ago, and I wondered if the two of them have already met in the spirit world, and if my father, a convert to the church when he was in his 40's, has taught him the gospel.

Our doctrine teaches us that the fact that we perform ordinances in temples for our deceased relatives does not compel them to accept those ordinances. They will hear the gospel and choose whether to accept it. So while I complete ordinances for my uncle, his decision will determine whether those ordinances will be effective for him. But by our providing the ordinances, he then has the opportunity to choose.

Family history research is more than just connecting me to my uncle. It's also the excitement of discovering names of relatives generations back from Norwegian church records now available online. It's discovering familiar immigrant names on ships' manifests. It's connecting names from one census to another. It's making those connections through time to sort out our heritage, and to learn about those who came before us.

My own genealogy has its challenges. One line goes to Pennsylvania in the 1830s and 1840s. That's a notoriously difficult place to find records, as our family's fruitless (so far) search has confirmed. But another line traces clearly to the American Revolution and earlier to France. My wife's brother's wife discovered a common link between her family and mine – not blood relatives, but families who travelled together west to Washington State to homestead that frontier when it was new.

Family history is daunting to some, and confusing to many. It doesn't help that when we get "training" in family history, we often get training on how to use a specific computer program instead of actual research. But for me, the first step is interest. The second is to start where I am, wherever that is.

Some say their work is "all done." I don’t know what that means. My mother-in-law works as a missionary at the church's Genealogy Library in Salt Lake City. She's worked her own lines (Mormon pioneers, many from the British Isles) and her husband's (from Sweden), and she has binders full of the results of her research, but she's never proclaimed it finished.

I go in fits and starts – I'll work a few weeks and then get busy with other things, and then spend a few weeks again many months later. Recently, I'm discovering that genealogists far more diligent than I am have completed work that applies to my family history, too. On the other hand, there is a certain thrill at finding a name after combing records (online, in the microfilm reader, or in dusty old books) for hours or days.

Family history is one of those pursuits where the journey is as exciting as reaching the goal.