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Family history moments: A prayer answered

Many times I had tried to talk to my non-member stepfather about the gospel, but he just never seemed interested. I tried every approach I could think of.

One day, a week before he died, as he lay gravely ill, I was prompted to ask him about his family back in Missouri. He seemed very eager to talk about them, and I began to write down the names he mentioned. When he asked why, I told him about the Church's emphasis on family history, and he started asking about the Church.Before I left him that day he asked me to please find his family and do what they needed to have done. He passed away a few days later.

My husband and I had the privilege of taking his remains back to Missouri for burial, where we met my stepfather's Aunt Lois. She agreed to help us with our family history research, and we made arrangements to return the following spring.

On our next visit to Aunt Lois we decided to see some of the Church historical sites along the way. On a beautiful spring morning in May, we stopped at Spring Hill at Adam-ondi-Ahman. At my husband's suggestion, we knelt and offered a prayer for help with our research.

Our visit with Aunt Lois was a pleasant one. We spent several days with her.

On the Sunday before we left to go home, we were making plans to visit the graveyard where my stepfather was buried and then work on the genealogy that evening so we could go home the next day.

As we were preparing to leave, my aunt received a call from a long lost niece of my stepfather. She said she wanted to bring a box of papers and other items. We waited for her arrival, visited with her, then went on our way to the graveyard.

That evening, my husband asked if he could look in the box. There he found obituaries, old funeral programs and letters. As Aunt Lois told about members of my stepfather's family, my husband would pick up papers giving their birth and death dates.

My husband and I looked at each other with tears in our eyes and realized that the prayer we had offered at Adam-ondi-Ahman was answered. We received the names and dates we needed to complete the family group sheets, and a year later, stood proxy for some of the names we submitted for temple work.

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