Member Voices
99+1 Family History Activity, Nairobi 2nd Ward
The Africa Central Area Presidency encouraged all wards and branches in the Area to submit 99+1 Temple Ready names to Family Search in celebration of President Russell M. Nelson’s 100th Birthday.
In the Nairobi 2nd ward, Bishop Kennedy Mukula took the challenge, planning a ward activity for August 31, just 10 days prior to the prophet’s centennial event.
Gathering names would require many computers, and some family history expertise. Eric Onyango, the elder’s quorum president and a professional network engineer, who also served as an Area family history advisor, was asked to provide the technology. A senior missionary couple serving in the ward, Elder and Sister Arrington, were asked to assist members to enter names.
“We wanted to make sure people had a way to gather names and birthdates,” Elder Arrington said, “so we created a simple form that members could take home and use to gather names from their families. We passed the form out at church the two Sundays prior to the activity. And people came prepared!”
“We weren’t sure how many computers we would need, but we brought what we had,” said Bishop Mukula. “The bishopric each brought one, the Arringtons brought three, and Eric brought five more. In the end, we still had people waiting in line to add their names.”
The goal was to meet or exceed 99+1 family names entered into familysearch.org, so keeping track was important to the ward.
“We made up name cards by printing person icons similar to those in family search onto papers about 10 cm square,” said Sister Arrington. “Then we asked members to write one name that they added into FamilySearch on each paper and post them on a white board so we could keep count. We came with 140 blank icon papers, and they were gone well before the activity ended. Members were writing four, five, or six names on a single icon paper!”
“Everyone was working on entering names, and I loved it.” said Beatrice Kiragu, first counselor in the ward Relief Society. “I loved the feeling of putting in names, but mostly I was excited to prepare my ancestors for temple blessings.”
Many of the members in attendance got to take home a special memory. They filled in a special African family tree with their family names, and the ward clerk printed one for each family on photo-quality paper.
Mercy Kinyaka, the ward Relief Society secretary, was delighted to find even more of her family already online. “I entered in a few names, then FamilySearch connected me to a part of my family already in the system. I was so happy! That’s my family tree!”
Bishop Mukula was delighted by the result. When the activity was near the end, more than 200 new family names had been entered into familysearch.org.
Sister Arrington recalls, “We ended up staying late because people still wanted to put in names. Our last participant was a nonmember. We watched as he added 15 names from his own family. He was so happy to receive his own family tree picture!”
Bishop Mukula expressed the joy so many members felt “as their hearts turned to their fathers! And we loved helping President Nelson celebrate his birthday!”