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Transcript

You are sons and daughters of God, children of the covenant, and builders of the kingdom. You need not wait until you reach an arbitrary age to fulfill your responsibility to assist in the work of salvation for the human family. Your fingers have been trained to text and to tweet to accelerate and advance the work of the Lord, not just to communicate quickly with your friends.

Well, it started out about mid-September. Bishop came to our house and wanted to see Cheyenne. He asked that Cheyenne would accept a calling to work on the Elijah Project. The Elijah Project is about all the youth coming together and finding their own ancestors and doing their ordinances. And it may seem hard at first, but it's a lot of fun. When Cheyenne was called, my mother had passed away about three days prior to that. We had just barely had her funeral. My parents, they were very strong, very into genealogy. So no sooner did the bishop leave, Cheyenne went straight to her grandfather that had just lost his wife. And that kind of lifted his spirits. That was something that he was very excited for. Matter of fact, the first excursion to the temple, we took all the youth. And I remember when we pulled up that morning, and immediately he came out and wanted to know how it went. So we told him, "We did over 200 names, Dad." He was just excited. He knew everything and every name. He was constantly on the computer. He never took a break, even until he passed away. He passed away eight weeks after my mom passed away. He worked with Cheyenne for about six weeks before he just couldn't do anymore. It's almost like the passing of the guard.

After my grandparents passed away, I wanted to kind of carry on their work. As I go through family history, you can learn about the time when they were born and where they lived, and you can find stories on them and pictures. And it's almost like you almost get to know them and feel compassion for them. And I was going through my grandpa's books, and we found journals. And one was about Susan Ellen Johnson. It just talks about all of her times on the plains and how she raised children that weren't hers and what kind of faith she had and how she stuck to it. And she was a good horsewoman, too. So they also had lives. We just found a lot of names and lines that just shoot out from those names. And there are a lot of names that haven't had their ordinances done. I've always just gone to the temple and done temple names, but when I got my first card, it was exciting to know that I'm doing it for my own ancestor and from my own lines. And it just feels almost like they're there. This is true. Our children are the ones that inspired us to attend the temple a little more, and we changed our temple night from once a month to once a week. And many times when we leave the home, our kids want to know which names we're taking, and they want a report. To find a card and to just wait for the card to be done and get all the sealings done is just a good feeling. To know that I can give people the same saving ordinances that I have, it makes me feel humble. It was such a blessing to me in my life when that came when it did. And now we're always going to the temple with the names that we have, and being able to do that with our whole family is such an amazing thing. It's something that has brought our family closer, and we've been very blessed.

Ordinances and Covenants - The Spirit of Elijah

Description
A young woman and her family discover the unanticipated blessings of family history work.
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