FamilySearch International is celebrating its 130th anniversary this month, growing from its start in 1894 as the Genealogical Society of Utah to what now has become the world’s largest genealogical organization.
While helping people worldwide interested in family history, FamilySearch has created a collaborative online family tree with more than 1.5 billion people in its branches, currently with 18 billion searchable historical records and images.
On this episode of the Church News podcast, reporter Trent Toone interviews Elder Kevin S. Hamilton, a General Authority Seventy and executive director of the Family History Department for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch. They discuss this historic milestone and how technological advances, inspiring experiences and growing interest in genealogy truly help nourish temple work.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: All of this — everything we do, everything that we’re about, every possible activity of FamilySearch — is driven by one thing, and that’s to “nourish temples with names.” That’s President Nelson’s quote. Families come together, they identify their ancestors, they submit those names to the temple. There is no purpose to genealogy without temple ordinances. There is nothing we do that doesn’t somehow relate back to the temple. And so President Nelson’s vision of bringing the temples closer and closer and closer to the people has really driven the work of the Family History Department. We’re not in this for the family history; we’re in this for the temples. We’re in this because this is how we gather Israel on both sides of the veil.
1:03
Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
1:19
Trent Toone: I’m Trent Toone, a Church News reporter guest hosting this episode. On Nov. 13, 1894, the Genealogical Society of Utah was created under the direction of Wilford Woodruff, the fourth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Today, it is known as FamilySearch International, one of the world’s largest genealogical organizations. FamilySearch recently celebrated its 130th anniversary.
This episode of the Church News podcast features Elder Kevin S. Hamilton, a General Authority Seventy and executive director of the Church’s Family History Department. Elder Hamilton is joined by Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch International, to talk about the milestone, FamilySearch’s growth, technological advances, inspiring experiences and how family history work helps nourish temple work. This interview took place before the anniversary, at the Church Office Building.
Well, officially, thank you for taking time to meet with me and discuss the 130th anniversary of FamilySearch, which started out as the Genealogical Society of Utah. So, No. 1, what are your thoughts on the significance of reaching this 130-year milestone for FamilySearch?
2:43
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: I think of Wilfred Woodruff when he founded the Genealogical Society of Utah, which now is known as FamilySearch International. I think he would be stunned. I just think he would be absolutely stunned to see the reach and the breadth and the work that’s been done in the 130 years. It’s such an exciting thing to watch, and it came from such humble beginnings, just a few books in a room with a handful of volunteers.
3:15
Steve Rockwood: And I think when we look back, we’re stunned and amazed at how prophetic he was in creating this. He literally created the Genealogical Society of Utah to simply help members discover their ancestors so they can perform ordinances. And at that time, the temple’s just right here, and the Salt Lake Temple had just been dedicated the year before. And the wisdom and the way that he structured everything, and we’re still the beneficiaries of that 130 years later, and we’re doing the exact same thing, still enabling the children of the covenant to discover their ancestors and perform temple ordinances.
And in his dedicatory prayer of the Salt Lake Temple, he also asked Heavenly Father to bless those not of the covenant that they would have success in the same. And we have the wonderful blessing to serve many people who are not members of the Church. And so it’s just the prophetic nature of it is stunning.
4:15
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: I think also the insight that he had to set it up as a separate entity. It could have been done as the Church, but we interact with so many different kinds of organizations and for profit and nonprofit and academic and societies and governments around the world. Although we have prophetic direction and we’re 100% owned by the Church, we are slightly apart, and it gives us a little bit more opportunity, I think, as we work with some of these organizations.
4:46
Trent Toone: Oh yeah, and speaking of Wilford Woodruff, going back to the late 1800s, the Genealogical Society of Utah was established in 1894 with Elder Franklin D. Richards as the first president. The goals they set included: establish and maintain a genealogical library, disseminate genealogical information, acquire records of the dead to perform ordinances in the temple. How have these goals evolved over time?
5:14
Steve Rockwood: Well, the beauty of it is that they haven’t. We are true to our charter.
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Yeah, still doing the same thing.
Steve Rockwood: We have the single-largest genealogical library in the world in the FamilySearch Library here in Salt Lake. It now has over 6,000 branches around the world. So I think we’ve stayed true to that in the many evolutions that have occurred in the last 130 years.
We do disseminate genealogical information, but we do even more. We like to facilitate. The information needed for individuals to discover their ancestors, both in and out of the Church, are out there in the field. This is not a headquarter thing here. So we just love being the facilitator. You come and ask information about your family, we can now go out through the whole world network and find that, whether they’re in our collection and, most often, not in our collection, but we can still facilitate bringing that to you, no matter where you are, and doing all of that with keeping the core objective in mind, and that is so that we can perform temple ordinances for the ancestors of children of the covenant.
6:21
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Yeah, I think the evolution, if there is one, is that it’s just gotten bigger and more global. I mean, we were kind of Western-civilization oriented in the early days; Europe, Scandinavia, North America. But now, if you look at Africa and Latin America, look at the things we’re doing in Asia and the Pacific, it’s just similar objectives, similar purposes, similar strategy, just much larger and, of course, completely global now.
Steve Rockwood: And enabled in ways that were never thought of 130 years.
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Yeah, with the technology.
6:53
Trent Toone: That’s a lot to process. Well, from those humble beginnings, FamilySearch, as you said, has grown into one of the largest genealogical family history organizations in the world. What role has technology played in that transformation?
7:09
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Well, there’s a great quote from President Boyd K. Packer. It’s back in the 1970s. It says, and I’ll paraphrase, he says, “When the servants of the Lord go forward in faith, the Lord meets them at the crossroads” — that was the quote — “at the crossroads with the resources and technology they need to accomplish the thing needed.” And so we have seen that as the work has expanded and gotten bigger and bigger, if you think about some of the advances that have been brought to bear, even in the last 10 years, really remarkable. We’re doing things today that we couldn’t have done in a previous generation.
7:49
Steve Rockwood: And those crossroads are so inspiring. So, everything from travel, because we used to travel in certain ways to these homelands and bring the information back; to in the early 1930s when microfilm was being used primarily in the finance industry, we then applied it to this, and that ended up putting this on a whole new trajectory with our microfilm technology and that. And then the computer power, especially large computer systems, the Church was adopting a mainframe computer technology, then server computer technology, then PC, all of that took the access to this work to a whole new level. And I just love to see those stairsteps throughout our history. And it went from PC to the internet, which was a huge spike, and then from there to a mobile, which was a huge spike. And now the latest spike is generative AI.
8:47
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: I think some of the things that the world sort of takes for granted now, like the internet; prior to the internet, users couldn’t see what other users were doing. Everybody was working in good faith on their family tree, their records, but they couldn’t see what was being developed, what was being submitted, because we all worked on a desktop system — Personal Ancestral File was the system we used for years — and it resulted in duplication of temple ordinances and resulted in errors in the database. But now, with more of a public approach, a wiki approach, we can see everybody at the same time everywhere in the world, what’s happening. That’s given us a huge reach, as we say, from Seattle to Singapore, everybody can work on the same family tree. Internet facilitated all of that.
9:37
Steve Rockwood: I would also say that this technology not only facilitates more people to participate, not just the enthusiasts that are willing to go through the heavy lifting of, quote, “doing genealogy,” but it’s actually a means for people to feel the spirit of Elijah. There are more people now that can feel the Holy Ghost bearing witness of the divine nature of their family, whether they have any genealogical intention or aspiration at all. Technology has now been a wonderful means for that restoration of the spirit of Elijah to actually be enjoyed by many, many more people.
10:14
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: You mentioned artificial intelligence, and it was interesting; it was only two years ago that a company from Silicon Valley called OpenAI introduced a new product called ChatGPT, but that generative AI, generative artificial intelligence, has changed everything about how we approach big data.
For example, we used to use this army of volunteers to do what we called indexing, where they would look at a record, they would then type in or key in the key fields in that record, and so that the record could become searchable and fully digital. We’ve learned with generative AI, we can feed those records in almost any language into a large language model. The generative AI can not only recognize the handwritten records, it can actually index the records and even go so far as to recognize relationships and begin to build a family tree, all using AI.
And we’re still in the early days where everybody’s trying to figure this out, but the future is so bright. We now use our army of volunteers to help kind of curate the records and maybe get the last couple of 3 percentage points of accuracy that we need on that indexing effort.
11:33
Steve Rockwood: As you know, volunteers has been a key engine throughout those 130 years, and it will continue to be so, but the nice thing is we’ve enriched the experience of the volunteer. They used to have to do that front-end work. Now they’re curating what the technology is able to do and actually relying more on their inspiration and their cognitive reasons.
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Yeah, I always like to say the computers now are doing the heavy lifting; volunteers are kind of just fixing it up and getting it the last little bit.
12:01
Trent Toone: If we could dwell on technology just a second longer: Just in the last five years, we had the worldwide pandemic, which launched RootsTech to millions of people participating worldwide. In 2021, FamilySearch finished digitizing and publishing all its records online, and it’s now available in more than 40 languages. You mentioned AI and the role that it’s playing.
Just thinking about the last five years, how has technology changed family history work in that time?
12:37
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Well, RootsTech’s a good one. Prior to the pandemic, RootsTech was a local conference held here in Salt Lake City with 20,000 or 25,000 attendees. It was a great conference, but it was very much kind of a localized affair. With RootsTech, we said, “We can’t meet in person. Let’s take it online.” And we’ve kind of learned year over year. And last year, we had almost 5 million attendees at RootsTech from some 240-some countries. It truly has become a global event, and we are now looking at, “Well, how do we reach even more? How do we make this even bigger and more far-reaching?” And all of that is because of the pandemic.
So it’s funny; something that was so devastating actually had these silver linings where we were forced to think about it differently and forced to look for new solutions, which has been a blessing.
13:32
Steve Rockwood: While it was devastating, one of those other silver linings is it brought individuals who had not engaged online and that were not connecting via the internet. Unfortunately, it forced them to do so, but as a result, now we have full families, multigenerational families, that are participating, whereas before the pandemic, you ask any of our industry friends, you still had just those digital people that were using it, no matter what their age or demographic. Now, everyone became more astute and comfortable, and we’ve seen, once again, a huge stairstep of participation all over the world.
14:13
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Another example of technology — I love this story — we started in the ‘30s, 1930s, gathering microfilm, and when we stopped using microfilm and began to go straight to digital imaging, we had acquired a huge collection of microfilm, something like 2 ½ million rolls of microfilm, and a roll of microfilm is 100 feet long and about 3 ½ inches wide and contains thousands and tens of thousands of images. So we had all that microfilm stored, and then before our time, somebody said, “Well, we should digitize all that so it could be searchable on the internet.” And our faithful engineers and computer scientists came up with an approach using new technology and using very early-days machine learning and artificial intelligence. They finished the entire project in 7 ½ years. We now today can access all of our microfilm collection online through FamilySearch.org using any smart device, a smartphone, a tablet, a desktop computer, a laptop. It’s really, truly amazing, all that information now at the touch of a finger.
15:28
Trent Toone: Absolutely remarkable. Well, reflecting on the 130-year history, what are some of the most exciting discoveries or other notable highlights made possible through FamilySearch records and resources?
15:42
Steve Rockwood: Well, because of the incredible pioneering work that those early participants in the Genealogical Society of Utah did for the first 50 years and even 100 years, FamilySearch — and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — is known for best in class in having record preservation, offering record access, and providing world-class help and support for those people that have the information here. So it’s that foundation, it’s those shoulders on which we stand, and it’s had these different breakthroughs, from the microfilm we talked about to the mainframe technology, all the way now to the generative AI that we see. But it’s all about helping more and more people in more parts of the world simply do what we were designed to do, and that’s discover their ancestors.
16:38
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: You know, we’ve had some interesting breakthroughs kind of by necessity; I guess that’s the mother of invention. The First Presidency came to us a few years ago and said, “We are concerned about” what they call “records at risk.” So these were records that were either at risk of being destroyed, or one use case that we came up with was people that have indigenous tribes where they’re oral genealogies or oral records. So there are no written records. But every village has kind of a village rememberer, an elder that is tasked to learn and memorize the genealogies of the village, and some of them could remember 20 and 25 generations of genealogy.
So we set out to figure a way to find a way that we could capture those records out of the minds of these village elders. And we came up with an approach in Africa which has become a very successful effort. We send contractors out into the villages, native speakers, with some technology to capture the oral history, and then they process that and create the records and the trees that document these people. Today, we have some 4,500 contractors scattered throughout 21 countries in Africa. We have just finished our 2 millionth interview, like last month, and by the end of this year, we will have published something like 500 million records. Remarkable, and this is the first time anybody has ever done anything like this on such a scale.
And so using that now, using that technology, we now have turned our attention to other indigenous peoples around the world. We have a project going in the Philippines. We’re about to start a project in Papua, New Guinea. Anywhere where we have people that have oral records, we’re trying to capture those, that information, those records, get that published and accessible so that people can build their family trees.
Trent Toone: Very exciting.
18:41
Steve Rockwood: And it’s been a race against time. We just got word, literally this week, in one of these new areas that we’re going, one of the key remembers, 107 years old, and unfortunately he died last week before we could get there. But that’s happening, because when those rememberers pass away, that people, they just lost a library. So just as we’re trying to save those records that are deteriorating in bad environmental situations around the world, we’re also trying to grab those oral histories.
19:13
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: I’ve always been grateful for the kind of prophetic insight of the First Presidency that saw that need and gave us the resources and authorized us to go and work on that.
19:25
Steve Rockwood: We’ve found that those crossroads come when there’s opportunities to take a look at, but also sometimes when there’s negative things, like the pandemic, nudges that you have. We’ve been known for our records, and so we always make our records available to people for free. We used to make those available even without having an account with us. Yet some people started to abuse that privilege, so we thought, “Well, darn it. We’re going to have to require that you have a username and password.” So that was kind of a negative thing for us, but actually what that did is it introduced the people that have been using our records for years, it introduced them to the FamilySearch Family Tree for the first time, and that’s been a huge benefit now, because now they’re being exposed to even more resources that they didn’t even know they had.
So I’m always fascinated by the positive carrots and the negative sticks. Either way, it advances the work, because these crossroads come, as President Packer talked about.
20:22
Trent Toone: I like those stories. What are some other stories or experiences that have personally touched or inspired you in your work with FamilySearch over the years?
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Well, we have these big initiatives and worldwide global things we do, but sometimes it’s as simple as an individual. I saw a story just last week. It was a man in Taiwan. He was the head of one of the large genealogical societies in Taiwan that keep the clan genealogies. Our team in Taiwan invited him to come. They would help him build his family tree on FamilySearch. And he came to our FamilySearch Library in Taipei, and he began to build his family tree only to find that one of his daughters, from whom he had been estranged for years, had already built the family tree on FamilySearch.
And even more compelling as he began to search the tree that she had built, and she’s now deceased, she had left an audio recording of her experiences with ancestors and finding records. And this was a deeply emotional connection as he reconnected across the veil with a daughter that had been difficult in this life and now had passed on. So, I mean, there’s hundreds of thousands of those stories where people have these deeply personal, deeply emotional experiences.
The spirit of Elijah, or the Holy Ghost, is very powerful, and it touches people in a way that is heart turning and heart softening. We see it happen every day, over and over.
21:57
Steve Rockwood: And that’s what keeps motivating us. We have these big, huge projects we do that require a lot of business acumen, a lot of technology in that, but it always comes down to those intimate one-on-one experiences. I just had one this past weekend that reminded me why I have pinched myself that I get to be a part of this. And this was a brand new member of the Church, he had just been baptized the week before, and I happened to be in his home, and we read together Lehi’s dream, where he had taken of the fruit, and right after he had taken of the fruit that was white and bright and brought him joy, he inherently looked for his family members to share with that fruit.
And so there I was, and we read it together. I said, “You’ve just partaken of the fruit. Who do you want to share this with now?” His wife was alongside. She hasn’t accepted the gospel yet. His children are out watching. They haven’t accepted it. And then I said, “And who of your past family members would you like to share this fruit?” He immediately said his grandma and grandpa. And so we were able to show him how, within just a few days, he can take the names of his grandparents to the temple and he can actually go and be baptized again but on their behalf. And as Elder Hamilton said, this happens over and over again, every single day, and that’s the great motivation.
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: It is. It’s a remarkable experience.
23:25
Trent Toone: Well, thank you. How has the vision of President Russell M. Nelson and other senior Church leaders influenced the direction of FamilySearch’s work and mission?
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: All of this — everything we do, everything that we’re about, every possible activity of FamilySearch — is driven by one thing, and that’s to “nourish temples with names.” That’s President Nelson’s quote. Families come together, they identify their ancestors, they submit those names to the temple, where they can then perform temple ordinances. Steve and I have both been in meetings with President Nelson and his counselors where, quite emphatically, they have reminded us there is no purpose to genealogy without temple ordinances. There is nothing we do that doesn’t somehow relate back to the temple.
And so 367 temples currently announced or under construction or in operation, all of those temples need content, need data, in order to do the proxy ordinances that we do in temples. And so President Nelson’s vision of bringing the temples closer and closer and closer to the people has really driven the work of the Family History Department so that we can help nourish the temples with names. That is our ultimate end objective, full stop. That’s what we do.
24:49
Steve Rockwood: And we love to go to our industry friends, and we love to share with them, “If you want to see our business plan, just take a look at the latest temple announcements, and you know exactly where we’re going and exactly what our task is. And we’d love to have you help us, and we’d love to help you with your objectives.” And that’s how we’re able to be this facilitator for the industry and the facilitator of members of the Church discovering their ancestors.
25:14
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: And President Nelson’s vision really drives us to the far corners of the earth. I mean, 17 temples in Asia, 13 temples in the Philippines, 27 temples in Mexico and 25 temples, I think, in Brazil. It just pushes us into these places where we have temples and people that need records to be able to identify their ancestors, build their family trees, submit names to the temple for ordinances.
So, after every general conference, we have this fun exercise. We don’t know until the President announces the temples, but on Sunday night, we’re busy looking at all the new temples that have been announced. “Where do we have coverage? Where do we need more coverage? Where do we need to find more records? What archives do we need to engage with? How do we support these new temples that have just been announced?” Sometimes it’s a happy experience, like, “We have tons of records. We’re great,” like most of the North American ones, we’re always happy.
26:12
Steve Rockwood: Yeah, he says Saratoga Springs, we say, “We’re good to go.” He says Bengaluru, India, “We have a lot of work to do.”
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: And it’s been fun. And so we adjust, and we scramble and kind of tweak our business plan going forward so that we can address the needs of these newly announced temples.
26:32
Trent Toone: Well, on that note, I want to insert a question. Last year at RootsTech, they talked about the new initiative to help converts find a name, like leaders. How is that working?
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Wonderfully well. We call it Family Name Assist.
Trent Toone: Yes, thank you.
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: And this is where a bishop or an elders quorum president or a Relief Society president can sit with a new member and ask just one simple question: “Who would you like to be baptized for when you go to the temple next?” And without having a FamilySearch account or without even knowing your family tree or any of that, if they can just give us the name of a deceased ancestor, we can build the tree, we can set up an account, we can help them with everything they need to be able to print a temple name card and then take that card to the temple. It works wonderfully well.
Like most new initiatives in the Church, we’re still kind of getting the word out and helping with awareness. Maybe there’s some listening to this podcast today that might be blessed. But bishops, elders quorum presidents, Relief Society presidents are beginning, increasingly beginning, to use that feature.
27:42
Steve Rockwood: It’ll take a while because we know there’s generations of tradition, which is, with a new convert or any member of the Church, it’s, “You want to participate in uniting your family for eternity? Well, let’s start with genealogy. Let’s start with names, dates, places in the last 25 years. Let’s make sure you have a username and password.” The beautiful thing about Family Name Assist — and quite honestly, the beautiful thing about Ordinances Ready — it actually brings a much better sequence, a better tradition, than what we’ve done in the past. This doesn’t negate the wonderful traditions we’ve had, but it actually has taken us to a higher, holier way, because we start with the Savior.
So, back to this gentleman I met with just this past weekend, my question was not, “Do you want to build your tree? Let’s build your first four generations of the tree.” My question was exactly what Elder Hamilton said: “For whom would you like to be baptized?” No research necessary. No names, dates. He just said, “Grandma and Grandpa.” That actually lets the Holy Ghost — and by the way, we weren’t building this tree; we were gathering Grandma and Grandpa to Christ.
So we want to start with Christ. “Who do you want to gather to Christ?” And then we’ll build the tree so that we can perform the ordinances in an appropriate order and sequence. But “Who do you want to bring to Christ?” It always starts with Christ. Is there genealogy involved? You bet there is. But genealogy is its appropriate sequence and place. We’re not starting with genealogy. We start with Christ.
29:14
Trent Toone: Thank you. Well, what are some of the most significant challenges that FamilySearch is facing as it looks at its anniversary of 130 years?
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: I’d say our challenges are — I mean, these are happy problems, but — keeping up with the growth is certainly a high, high priority for us. Adopting and understanding the technology that’s being provided is always a challenge. Keeping our eye on the objective, which is sealing families, uniting families together for eternity. We’re not a genealogy company. We’re nonprofit. We’re not in this for the family history; we’re in this for the temples. We’re in this because this is how we gather Israel on both sides of the veil.
And so all of that, we have to constantly remind ourselves and our teams and everybody that we’re working with: We’re here to nourish the temples, because this is how Heavenly Father gathers His children home. Those are fun problems, but we talk about them a lot.
We have a lot of senior missionaries that work with FamilySearch — senior and junior missionaries, both — and some 6,000 or 7,000 missionaries working on FamilySearch projects right now. And on the surface of it, you would say that’s kind of clerical work. They’re cleaning up data, they’re working with datasets and working with name registries and civil registries and things. But when you talk to them, they love it. They are absolutely enthralled. And they sign up again and again. They repeat again and again their opportunity to serve.
And when you ask them why, it’s because they feel the presence of people on the other side of the veil. These are real people. They’re not just names on a piece of paper or on a computer screen. They exist. They’re active and engaged on the other side of the veil, and that veil gets pretty thin sometimes. People feel these promptings and inspirations that come back and forth. President Nelson, beautifully said, gathering “on both sides of the veil.” We’re gathering on this side, they’re gathering on that side. It’s all this incredible work, and there’s a spirit to it.
31:32
Steve Rockwood: And we’ve been taught that the temple, the house of the Lord, is where heaven and earth join together. Well, in preparing for that, that heaven and earth also comes together when people actually engage in this. And that’s when you’ve heard it from President Nelson most recently, from Elder Rasband in general conference. There are more than us than there are with them. And in these, the last days, we are truly working together on both sides of the veil, and the people that engage in that have those incredibly sacred spiritual experiences, and we want everyone to be able to enjoy that.
32:06
Trent Toone: How is FamilySearch doing in its efforts to engage younger generations and help them appreciate the value of family history work?
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: The youth of the world are really one of our fastest-growing demographics. Elder Bednar gave a talk in 2011 in general conference called “The Hearts of the Children Shall Turn.” And in it, he famously said that your thumbs were not made to tweet and text, but to do the work of salvation and exaltation. And he invited the youth of the Church to come and get engaged in family history work, which was kind of unheard of. I mean, nobody had ever even thought of that, to be honest. We didn’t really have any tools or apps. We had a website, but it was very early days. And I went back and looked, and that year, 2011, we had about 1,900 youth or so that submitted a name to the temple for a temple ordinance worldwide.
This year, 2024, we’ll be up over 200,000, I’m sure. Youth that came and participated in FamilySearch, found a name and then, in many cases, went and performed the temple ordinances. And that hockey stick growth will continue, I’m sure, into the future. We see the youth, they’re digital natives, they get the technology. There’s a problem-solving aspect to FamilySearch; you’ve got to kind of figure things out. That’s attractive to our rising generation. They enjoy that. They find it kind of fun and interesting.
So, it’s not for everyone, but a lot of our kids, they like it, they enjoy it, and they come back again and again. We track the retention, and we track the returns. They come back. They enjoy it.
33:44
Steve Rockwood: And we’re amazed of the fact that most everyone ages into interest in family history, in and out of the Church, and that’s usually 50s and 60s. But we’ve been designing more and more for the younger generation. Not try to convince them, but they actually are inherently interested. And now if you look at the adversary’s role in this, the adversary’s attack now on the on the family is so sophisticated; there’s no doubt why now the manifestation of Holy Ghost bearing witness of the divine nature of family is becoming more and more familiar and more and more important for people at a much younger age.
Then a take on top of that, the whole crisis of identity and young people understanding who they are, where they come from and from whom do they come. Whose are they we have? President Nelson has taught them they are children of God, they are children of the covenant, they are disciples of Jesus Christ. As you engage in this at a much, much earlier age, it’s like the Lord telling Moses that he was His son, and “I have a work” for him to do, before the adversary tried to come and tell him, “No, you’re a son of man.” That’s our job, is to make sure we can give everyone that Moses experience and inoculate them before the world tries to convince them of a different false identity.
35:08
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: You know, it’s interesting; there’s a fair amount of data — not our data, but just out of the academic community — that says that when children and youth understand their family narrative, they tend to be much more resilient to life’s ups and downs. “My grandparents struggled through the Great Depression. I guess I can struggle through the Great Recession.” There’s just something about knowing your family’s story. Some of this information was published recently in the New York Times. But I’ve found that even with my own children and grandchildren: As we share their family stories, share our family narrative, it helps them be more resilient, strong, have greater faith. And so I think whether you’re a member of the Church or not, helping the rising generation learn about their family stories has a great positive effect. It blesses families and blesses society.
36:03
Steve Rockwood: And it brings a great urgency to the work. So we feel the urgency of preserving that record at risk. We feel the urgency of nourishing the temple with family-related names that these temples grow. But we also feel the urgency of helping people learn their family narrative when they’re young.
36:19
Trent Toone: Well, as you mentioned earlier, there are countless people who volunteer and help who’ve helped over the 130-year period of FamilySearch. If you could share a message with them for their important role in the success and expansion of FamilySearch, what would it be?
36:38
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Well, I would start by just expressing our complete gratitude for the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people that come and help and build the family tree of humanity. It is remarkable to me that they come and they do it, and we’re deeply grateful, so appreciative of their efforts. I would also just express the reason why they do it is because they feel something. I mean, this is a deeply satisfying, very spiritual work. The Holy Ghost bears testimony over and over and over as you participate in this, and people feel that, and that’s why they come back, and that’s why they do it. And we’re so grateful for that.
37:23
Steve Rockwood: And we want to thank them for their flexibility. They were asked to do many different things 20 years ago versus 10 years ago. They’ll be asked to do things today that are different from 10 years from now, and it’s just wonderful. So you used to index records, now curate what the technology does. And you didn’t used to build trees, but now come and help us curate what the trees that we’re grateful to build. It’s that resiliency and that flexibility of these wonderful volunteers that I know will continue to bless them and bless the work.
37:56
Trent Toone: Well, I wanted to give you the final word. What do you know now? So, as you ponder the 130th anniversary and the future of FamilySearch, what do you know now? And maybe we’ll go with Steve and then Elder Hamilton.
38:13
Steve Rockwood: Well, I know something that Elder Hamilton has taught us by leading this work for the last several years, and that is: All that we’ve talked about is the manifestations of God’s love. And as we can share this with others, it’s a manifestation of the hope that’s out there. In this ever-complicated world, it is so exciting to see that there truly is opposition in all things. And when we see the Lord providing the temples and, more importantly, the covenants and ordinances of those temples to more of His children through the revelation given to prophets and apostles. And then we are doing what we’re supposed to be doing the last 130 years: just enable people to act in that doctrine, both those in the Church and outside of the Church. We just stand all amazed.
39:04
Elder Kevin S. Hamilton: Yeah, I look back at 130 years, and I even look back 10 years, and things are moving so quickly, and I have a very hard time trying to look ahead. I am not one of the prophets, but I try to envision, “Where will we be 10 years from now, or 20 years from now?” And it’s so exciting. It’s one of the most exhilarating things I have ever done in my life, to be involved in this work. I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for President Nelson and his vision, his prophetic vision of what it means to gather all of God’s children.
Our estimates — and these are rough estimates — but most people think there’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 to 100 billion people that have lived on the earth or been born since Adam and Eve. And people say, “Well, what’s the goal?” And I just reply, “We’re going to build the family tree of humanity, all of God’s children accurately placed into a tree, with relationships carefully defined, so that we can go and seal those families together in temples.”
That’s the goal, and that’s what we’re attempting to do. And I know it sounds a little audacious, but you know what? The Lord’s in charge. He can do anything He wants. We’re just going to move forward in faith. That’s my testimony, that we’ll get there.
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Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
