Members Voices
Family History Work: Our Journey of Faith and Connection
Elder and Sister Papali’i reflect on the many blessings they’ve received through various experiences in family history.
“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:” (John 11:25).
As a family, we decided that temple and family history work would be a major part of our married life. We have now completed thousands of ordinances for our kindred dead, including hundreds of Samoan names, which we had learned were very hard to find because of the lack of recorded history. However, my husband Sosene Faleofe “Fe” persisted and spent many hours and days in the family history centre reading microfilms of old documents. After much effort, he was able to process the names found and link them to his family lines. When we took those names to the temple each month, it was exciting to know that we were binding our families together forever.
To expand this work, we arranged several yearly temple days for four generations of our family: my parents, my husband and myself, our son and his wife, our older grandsons, my sister, and her family. We did the baptisms, confirmations, and washings for several hundred family members on these special family temple days, uniting our extended families in a way that could never have been accomplished otherwise.
In another memorable experience, I was a temple ordinance worker when a sister came into my booth. From the first word uttered, the Spirit was so strong, and I cried throughout the whole ordinance. As she departed, I noticed that the name card was one of my own, and I knew from this experience that this dear sister beyond the veil had accepted the work I arranged on her behalf.
Maintaining our dedication to temple and family history work is not easy. We had to be personally committed and to support each other. Fe had never worked on a computer before and knew nothing about various search sites, but it did not take long for him to be blessed for his faith and good works. He continues to use his newfound knowledge in furthering his Samoan lines.
One Saturday in the family history centre, I was drawn to a drawer of microfiche, which store miniature images of vital documents. In it, I found a pile for Kent, England, which were filed under the wrong country. As I took them to their correct drawer, I noticed that they were from the same area as my extended family, so I sat down to read each fiche. Suddenly, I came across a family of parents and six children whom I was able to link as a sister to my uncle’s family. Until then, we did not know they existed. This was a clear example of how the Spirit always guides us in this sacred work.
Reflecting on my own journey, my mother said that my birth father deserted me because I was a girl, and he wanted a boy. One day, while hanging out the washing, I felt a strong prompting to complete his family’s temple work, to soften my heart towards him and release decades of the burden of rejection. I soon found my birth father’s uncle and hundreds of family names that I was able to take to the temple. When this uncle passed away, his daughter gave me permission to complete his temple work as well as that of her deceased brother, pleased that he would have a pillow to lie his head on in heaven. My patriarchal blessing promised success if I completed my family history, and I can testify that we have found much success in this sacred work.
“And now, my dearly beloved brethren and sisters, let me assure you that these are principles in relation to the dead and the living that cannot be lightly passed over, as pertaining to our salvation. For their salvation is necessary and essential to our salvation, as Paul says concerning the fathers—that they without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:15).
“The dead who repent will be redeemed, through obedience to the ordinances of the house of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 138:58).