GETTING READY FOR 2025 - WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?
No doubt 2025 is going to be upon us very quickly. It seems that the days in a year get shorter and shorter doesn't it? Wasn't just Christmas yesterday? What happened to our grandchildren? They are graduating from High School soon. Wasn't I just rocking that one to sleep? What have we taught our families about their ancestors? Now that's an important question. It won't be long, before WE are the ancestors so get crackin'!
The more we help others, the more exciting the work becomes. Yes, we still help our ward and we are also Stake Consultants. Of course, we miss the Area calling. We have met so many wonderful people all over the world and you are all dear to our hearts. We are excited to tell you that we have perfected the WARD ANNUAL FAMILY HISTORY PLANNER FOR 2025.
ANY AUX - 2024 HELPING OTHERS PREPARE TO GO TO THE TEMPLE.xlsx
2025 ANY AUX HELPING OTHERS GO TO THE TEMPLE 9-2-24 KM.xlsm
2025 Ward Annual Family History Report -
2025 ANNUAL FAMILY HISTORY PLANNER932024KM.xlsx
Here are some of the Exciting changes:
On the TEMPLATE tab - you can Change the Ward Name, the Temple and Family HIstory Leader Name, end of Quarter Dates, all the 5th Sundays, etc You only have to put them in ONCE!
The rest of the workbook will autopopulate those dates for you.
MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES - For each Family History Event that the Relief Society, Elders Quorum, Young Womens, Young Men's or Primary planned, it will ask if the community has been invited. At the end of the year it will total all auxilliary events which lent a hand towards missionary work. How exciting would it be to tell the Stake President that your ward had 11 Missionary Events last year?
TEMPLE AND FAMILY HISTORY LEADER AND WARD MISSION LEADER
In the 2025 version, several emails have been sent to us from various places in the USA as well as Australia, New Zealand and Canada about this topic being added to the sheet. We know you have heard the Prophet say these words:
VIDEO HERE
ARTICLE HERE:
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When we were first Area Advisers in 2016 our leaders at Family Search would give us messages from the First Presidency to give to our Stake Presidents who would take the messages to their Counselor over Family History and the Stake High Councilor who would instruct the Wards. At every meeting they would stress to us, "The Presidency wants all converts to go to the Temple within 60 days with their own names from the day they are baptized."
It wasn't in writing, just a message we were supposed to tell them. We got a lot of pushback saying, "Show it to me in writing." Well, if you were at the Leadership Meeting in 2020 at Rootstech, you could have seen us almost jump out of our chairs with delight when Elder Bednar said, "All converts should go to the Temple within 60 days from the day they are baptiszd with their own names"
Immediately upon return, we started going through the handbook and could see the correlation between these things:
Instruct ward temple and family history consultants. Coordinate their efforts to help members find names of ancestors and perform temple ordinances on their behalf.
Work with the ward mission leader and the missionaries to help those learning the gospel, new members, and returning members engage in temple and family history work (see 23.2 and 23.3).
Where applicable, assign ward temple and family history consultants to serve in the FamilySearch center (see 25.3.6).
The Ward Mission Leader works with the Mission President and Full Time missionaries. He knows who is being taught, he knows when they are going to be baptized.
The Ward Mission Leader and the Temple and Family History Leader are supposed to be invited to the Ward Coordination meetings. Imagine what they might have to say?
The Temple and Family History Leader assigns a Consultant to do the following:
1. Work with the person being taught to create their own family tree. They can do this in their own Ancestry (partner access) account and export it later when they help a new member open his Family Search Tree and import the data.
2. They can link their findings to Family Search so, when the New Member starts to enter, they will start populating the tree right away.
3. They can print down the pedigree and interesting stories to give to him or her at her baptism
4. The Consultant can help get the appointment arranged with the Bishop for a Single Use Recommend each month.
5. The Consultant can, once the person becomes a member, give them the gift of Partner Access, (Ancestry, Find My Past, My Heritage, Geneanet, Filea, and American Ancestor)
6. The Consultant can teach them how to reserve and print down names.
7. The Consultant and Ministering Brother and Sister continue to friendship and introduce the member to other Ward Activities.
Your Ward Missionaries and Full Time Missionaries will love you....
This is the biggest gift you can give to your missionaries. All they want to do is baptize them and make sure that they are handled tenderly and lovingly. If these things do not occur, imagine how they feel when they find out the person went inactive.
You can make a difference! We had two situations this month where we found out that a brother got baptized AFTER it occurred. We would have loved to go to his Baptism and give him his names. I got in touch with him, we worked together and within 2 days we had over 300 names. He reported back on the 4th day that he had made it to Charlemagne! We are going to go to the Temple with him with 60 days with his own family names.
During Sacrament a recent Sunday I found out that there was a baptism coming up. No one knew the exact name or date but I kept asking until I had what we needed. It was an unusual situation. He was adopted and only knew his birth mother's name. He had information on the wonderful people who raised him, but Ted and I dove right in and worked on the impossible. Not only did Heavenly Father and this young man's Angels help us, but we have 200 records to hand to him along with a picture of his Grandfather and many other amazing stories about his Ancestors who were Knights or US Senators all the way back to 1565. He was blown away. He is so excited to get baptized and is ready to go to the Temple within 60 days with his own names.
YOUR CONSULTANTS ...
ARE THE KEY TO LONGEVITY IN THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST..
4. The Society President's Counselor can assign a Ministering Sister to the convert to help in the tree. The consultant can teach them both about family history.
5. The Elder's Quorum President's Counselor can do the same for a brother.
They can keep themselves worthy to go to the Temple with the new person EVERY MONTH FOR ONE YEAR.
6. They can be their first friend in the Ward (President Gordon B. Hinckley) and ensure life long membership, keeping them busy enough to stay active all year.
We will be releasing the 2025 ANNUAL FAMILY HISTORY PLANNER next Month, but we want you to finish up the year with an amended 2024 ANNUAL FAMILY HISTORY PLANNER
We also encourage the Temple and Family History Leaders to help keep everyone on the same page by using THE ANY AUX - HELPING PEOPLE TO GO TO THE TEMPLE
What about those Primary Kids entering YW/YM in January of the year they turn 12....who helps them?
It used to be that the Primary Counselor would help the kids learn about Family HIstory, how to research, how to document, how to reserve and print, but now the Handbook states that it is the Parent's Responsibility to make sure they are prepared. The Primary could certainly have a kick off event for them and their parents and give them some tools for success. If you would like to do this, we have tools to help them. Email us and we will send you some tools: naswfamilyhistory@gmail.com or meyerandmeyerconsulting@gmail.com
