Member Voices
The Blessings of Discovering, Gathering, and Connecting Families
Getting started with family history was not easy for the Shamola family, but they’ve seen doors open and many blessings unfold as they have persevered.
Like many converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Frederick and Irene Shamola know the challenges of being the first in their family to do family history.
Frederick joined the Church at age 19 after being introduced to the restored gospel by family members. Irene also converted as a teenager after missionaries knocked on her family’s door. Fast forward some decades, and Frederick and Irene are happily married and living in Nairobi, Kenya with their five children.
When Brother and Sister Shamola joined the Church, they had not done any family history research before, and only knew the details of a few generations of their family.
They have faced many obstacles as they work to identify ancestors for temple ordinances. There are no written family history records available, so they have had to rely on the memories of their living relatives.
Communicating with those relatives has been difficult: they live hundreds of kilometers away, and few people in the remote villages of their families have mobile phones.
Despite the challenges, the Lord is blessing the Shamola family in their efforts to identify their ancestors.
Recently, Brother Shamola was thrilled to receive additional information about his ancestors from an oral interview that was conducted in his grandmother’s village in Homa Bay, on the western shores of Kenya.
The interview was given by a family member and recorded for future reference. It gave him information about seven generations of his family, and he was able to identify many ancestors of whom he was previously unaware. He has already submitted several of their names to the temple and plans to submit many more in the future.
Sister Shamola has also been submitting family names for temple work. Thousands of other families will be able to identify more of their ancestors and do temple work for them as more oral genealogy interviews become available on FamilySearch.org.
Family history has helped the Shamolas become more united.
Working together, Brother and Sister Shamola helped their children create FamilySearch accounts as part of a family home evening activity. As they do family history activities together, the Shamola family says they feel closer. The children look forward to participating.
“It is very important to learn about family history because it will help our children and other generations come to know where they came from,” says Sister Shamola.
In 2012 the Shamola family traveled almost 3,000 kilometres to the Johannesburg South Africa Temple to be sealed together. However, not having a temple in their home country made it difficult for them to return to the temple to perform ordinances for their ancestors. They were overjoyed when President Thomas S. Monson (1927-2018) announced the construction of the Nairobi Kenya Temple in the April 2017 general conference. They joyfully anticipate having a temple near their home so they can more easily perform ordinances for their ancestors. They are eager to do this work.
“We have been blessed to be alive during this time and to know the gospel,” Brother Shamola says. “There are people that will have wanted that to happen, but they didn’t have the opportunity. We can bless them with such experiences and opportunities. We can go to the temple and can have those ancestors receive those blessings.
“We feel a peaceful feeling when we think of them and submit their names and do work for them. Heavenly Father is gathering Israel, and he is using temples and family history work to complete His work. I am . . . privileged to be an instrument in Heavenly Father’s hands to be able to do that and to participate at such a great time. I am just grateful to be able to be a member of the Church, and I want my children to be able to share that as they are growing.”
Shadrack Barasa is a member of the Misikhu Branch, Kitale Kenya District, Kenya. Tyler Mills is a member of the Meadowpark YSA ward located in Syracuse, Utah, USA.