Salvation Prevention

Trip to Arlington

    Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I had a great celebration for the third year in a row. This was my first non-Chinese celebration! In the morning we had a traditional Turkey Bowl with the ward members. There were so many people that showed up! They brought their boys just like my Dad used to bring my brothers and I out. Across the park in another field there was a bunch of strictly men playing an intense game. It impresses me how thoroughly our church believes in the importance of the family. We also don't just talk about it! We don't leave our children behind while we go have a good time. We include them in our activities and in our service to teach them and help them have a good life with us. My team also won the game! For some reason they had me playing on the line the entire time, and I'm like the smallest adult out there! We had an amazing meals with a really wonderful family the Verkerkes. We went over early to help them prepare the food and play some card games. I felt the spirit of love, gratitude, and family as we celebrated Thanksgiving together, I'll always cherish those memories.
     In the past year our mission has made an unusual push to try to utilize family history as a missionary tool. Just like the general body of the church is struggling to convert to family history, so are the missionaries. But I've been making special efforts to both learn how to use it effectively and discover how to help others to get into it. It is as important of a work as any that we could spend our spare time on. I've had the opportunity to help a nonmember and recent convert to the church start their family history in family search. Both attempts to link to their ancestors were unsuccessful and we weren't able to find any in the time of our visits. This past week we sent around a sign up sheet for anyone interested in some help with family history. One of the brothers in the Elders Quorum signed up for some assistance and we were excited! We went over and started from the beginning. I'm starting to get down the routine for starting an account and beginning searches. We put his father into the system, then his grandfather. We did an automatic search for records for his grandfather and it pulled up his family in the 1940 census. We attached the record to his grandfather, and then were pleased to find that the person who is his grandmother was already in the system and linked to the census! Once we attached her into the family tree we opened up at least 3 generations going back in his genealogy. We also discovered that there are 5th generation ancestors that have had temple work done. Meaning that this convert brother, who has no relatives that are members of the church, indeed has some distant relatives that are members! What an amazing discovery! My heart was filled as I saw all the names of the people ready to have their name taken to the temple to perform saving ordinances. Think of the implications of our discovery.
     Sometimes I feel like the adversary is working on me harder than ever. Even after times of great spiritual strength and faithfulness, he bombards me with negative and tempting thoughts. I wonder to myself why does it get so hard, especially when I'm doing all I can to do what is right. An answer came to my mind this week after our family history discovery. Perhaps Satan knows me and what God has called me to do better than I supposed. Maybe he knows the kind of impact my faithfulness can have on these generations of the human family, and he wants to prevent or delay that work. I cannot let his lies and deception throw me off or get me down! I feel stronger now that I recognize what he is doing, and why I need to resist it. I want to see the purposes of the Lord fulfilled in me and in the lives of everyone around me. One of the great gifts we could give to Christ this year is to find a family name to take to the temple.

Thanksgiving at the Verkerke's