Having recently become active in the Church again, my earnest desire was to search my family history. I remembered my mother and grandmother spending many hours on their family tree. Thus it seemed only right to approach my mother for help.
She was less than responsive. I left with only a few names and not her history, as I had hoped. It was not a good start.My next step was to talk to the people at the Family History Library. That should have been my first step. From the Ancestral File I obtained hundreds of pages of information. I went straight to my mother's house to show her my new-found treasures. She became so excited she pulled out her box of family history. Then she began to reminisce. I left with much information.
Mother also gave me a clue as to where I might find my grandmother's records. I eventually found them safe in the hands of my cousin's daughter, Amy. Those records took my family back to the 1400s.
Amy told me that more than two years previous she had had an overwhelming feeling to hasten to put grandmother's records on a computer diskette. Being a faithful Latter-day Saint, she never questioned why, but performed the task before her.
Then, my telephone call came six months later. Amy sent the diskette to me, and I entered the information in my Personal Ancestral File database. Then I cleared the names for temple work through TempleReady. My wife, mother-in-law, ward members, friends and I completed the temple work for approximately 720 deceased relatives.
I tried to call Amy to tell her the good news, but she had moved, and I had no way to get in touch with her. It left me with a feeling of incompleteness. But a few months later, my wife, Pat, and I had occasion to be in Salt Lake City and see the Church movie, "Legacy." While there, we, by chance, met Amy and her husband and sat right beside them in the theater.
How great the works of the Lord! The promise of Elijah is at hand. I feel the call yet today of my progenitors as if to say: "Gene, we are waiting."
