Mormonopia» Mormon Church Family History (Genealogy)

Sealing work at the temple

Graham — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:26:01 +0000

Last night was our monthly ward temple night. Instead of going through an endowment session, we had arranged for a couple of sealers to be available, and 16 of us did sealings. I’ve attended several sealings, and have done work once before for the deceased, but I had never done sealings for an hour and a half. It’s tough work!

The sealer that was with our group (we divided into two sealing rooms) spoke almost non-stop for the entire time, and only coughed or cleared his throat once. I told him I was impressed, and he just laughed. I had forgotten that the entire ceremony (including the pronouncement of blessings) is repeated, not just the basic initial part. This makes the sealing of spouses kind of long. The sealing of a child to their parents is relatively quick, but even that is about 4x as long as the baptism prayer (I went over it in my head as the sealer was speaking).

As my wife and I finished up the sealings we were doing, the sealer said we could kiss each other. Apparently I made a funny face. It just caught me off guard. It’s not that I don’t like kissing my wife, but I didn’t know we were done, and in my head I was trying to figure out what a kiss had to do with anything, and I didn’t know if he was joking or not. Thankfully my wife has already forgiven me for the look

Overall, the 16 of us did about 400 sealings. It was a nice evening.

Toronto Ontario Temple at night We have a Ward Temple Night on the 3rd Thursday...
The temple recommend of a prophet, seer and revelator I mentioned before that back in March, Elder M Russell...

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Another family history cartoon…

Graham — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:53:40 +0000

This is a Frank & Ernest cartoon from Friday:

View the Genealogy category to see the other cartoons…

Huge “Official web sites of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” update I’ve done a pretty major update to my Official web...

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Baptisms for the Dead

Graham — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:00:01 +0000

I know there has been some discussion on various Mormon blogs recently about baptisms for the dead, and how other church’s perceive the practice. I’m not interested in debating that right now, but I figured I’d just share a little about our most recent trip.

My ward is about 120km away from the Toronto Ontario Temple. We try to take the youth there 4 times a year. Last Thursday night was our first trip of 2009. Overall we had 43 people from the ward there that night (I think we had at least two other people there earlier in the day).

16 youth (12 YM, 4 YW)
1 YSA
8 men on “team” (2 bishopric, 2 YM leaders, 1 EQ presidency, 1 ward clerk, 1 WML, 1 seminary teacher)
3 YW leaders
5 members of the ward serving/working
10 other ward members doing some form of temple work

All of the baptisms that were done were family file. The couple “running” the baptistry that night said it was the first time during their time of service (I’m not sure how long that has been) that every baptism was family file. Apparently there were over 250 baptisms and confirmations done.

After going to the temple, the tradition used to be that we’d all end up going to some fast food joint (usually McDonald’s) and get something to eat. A couple of years ago one of my counselors suggested that we use the cafeteria at the temple and bring our own “treats”, so that we can stay together and still feel the spirit of the temple. It has worked out great. It obviously is less expensive than having 20 extra value meals purchased by the members. The ward foots the bill for the food now which is always less than $50 for all of us. The treats are healthier. We usually get away earlier than we would if we had to pack up, drive to a restaurant, and pack up and leave again. But like I said, the best part is we are still in the temple.

The youth love going to the temple. It’s great to see. Hopefully we keep having positive experiences with them so they are strengthened, and have that desire to return often.

Meeting with Brother Adrian Ochoa In April, the YM General Presidency was changed. Brother David...
Toronto Ontario Temple at night We have a Ward Temple Night on the 3rd Thursday...

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The cost of tracing your family tree…

Graham — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:00:29 +0000

Here is a cute Wizard of Id cartoon/comic from Friday, February 20, 2009 about the cost of tracing your family tree:

Interestingly enough, on Saturday, February 21, 2009 there was a similar theme for The Other Coast:

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Recent Family Search training

Graham — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:27:27 +0000

As I mentioned before, I get emails that go to the Family History Consultants. An email I got a while ago had a link to an address that Elder L. Whitney Clayton gave to Family History Consultants in the Salt Lake, Jordan River, and Bountiful temple districts in late 2007. The email includes a link to the watch a video of the address online.

Being the curious person that I am, I poked around the site. I tried different directories, and they weren’t protected, so I could see what else was in them and came across all sorts of interesting videos that have to do with New Family Search. For those who are interested, here are a couple of them:

New FamilySearch Rollout Video (there are 4 sections to the video)

Addresses from the 8 November 2007 fireside (including Elder Clayton’s address)

All of the files are in the Just In Time Training section of the website. There are PDFs that explain how to set certain things up, and more. As of the time of this writing, the directory is open to browse, but it may get closed at some point.

A recent Sacrament Meeting Talk – Conversion and The Ship of Theseus One of the things that does separate us from other...

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Request for Family History Consultants to Find Evaluators for the New FamilySearch.org Web Site

Graham — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:52:03 +0000

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is developing a new version of the FamilySearch.org Web site. This new Web site will help individuals identify ancestors and link them to families, and it will help Church members perform temple ordinances for their ancestors.

Can you volunteer an hour of time to help evaluate this new Web site? Do you know someone else who might be interested? We are looking for feedback to help make the Web site as easy and enjoyable to use as possible. We are especially interested in feedback from individuals who are new to family history.

Anyone over age 18 interested in participating in this evaluation is invited to go to the following Internet address to sign-up: http://labs.familysearch.org/temple/static/signup.htm

Thank you for your interest and enthusiasm. We greatly value your time and opinion.

Sincerely,
The FamilySearch User Experience Evaluation Team
Family History Department
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

More FamilySearch domains Here are a couple more links that I’ve added to...

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FamilySearch Record Search

Graham — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:56:11 +0000

The Church has a nice genealogical records search engine that they are testing. You can view it here or here. There are dozens and dozens of different records to search.

More FamilySearch domains Here are a couple more links that I’ve added to...

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