Two Old Notebooks

By Velma Skidmore

As far back as I can remember, my mother and father did family history research. After they died, within two weeks of each other, I inherited part of their family records and I put them in a box in my basement storeroom. The box sat there for fifteen years.

One day I brought the box upstairs. I knew that my parents had not been able to work on family history during the last ten years of their lives so it had been a quarter of a century since anything had been done with these records. In the box were two thick notebooks stuffed with family group sheets, photographs, newspaper clippings, and other notes, all of them neatly organized. I wondered if there would be any temple ordinances left for me to do.

I found my mother’s patriarchal blessing. It said, “Many of thine ancestors are waiting anxiously in the spirit world for thee to liberate them through thy work in the temple.” I was determined to help fulfill this blessing.

My daughter and I took the notebooks to the family history center. We searched for hours for the dates of the temple ordinances of my ancestors but found that temple ordinances had been performed for only a few of them. I was shocked.

With the help of our family and the members of the Salina Kansas Stake, we completed the temple ordinances in the Denver Colorado Temple for 653 of my ancestors whose names my daughter and I had found between the covers of the two old notebooks.