My genealogy is already done

I hear the phrase, "My genealogy is done" at least once a week. If you spent every waking moment for the rest of your life you still would not have completed your family history. I find new people and errors in my family history on a regular basis. By the way, my family history was done when I received copies twenty years ago. All of my ancestors were Mormon pioneers and they had all dutifully done their four generations.

I don't really care if you do your genealogy. I just know the great benefits and rewards. It is kind of like finding out about a great new restaurant and urging all your friends to try it out. For some reason genealogy is a big ogre looming over the lives of the young; at least my friends. When you research "dead" people every day it forces you to face your own mortality. Genealogy is hard work, but it is that kind of satisfying sense of accomplishment. There comes a point where you cross a hurdle and it becomes a joyous experience. There is a learning curve to genealogy, but it is not as big as you might think.

Eternity is organized into families. We are responsible for taking care of our living and our dead relations. They without us cannot be made whole. So I can hear some of you saying, "The temple work is done, so I am off the hook." Wrong! Each of us has an obligation to get to know our ancestors and to instill the love that we have developed for our ancestors into our children. By spending time getting to know ancestral stories we get to know them. I think it is so great to be able to put your kids to bed with real bedtime stories, like harrowing tales of immigration.

Joseph Smith said, "Our dead should be as dear to us as our living relatives." The way that we get to know our living relations is by spending time with them. We sit around the dinner table and tell stories. We take little moments to just be together. We sit in church and reverently pray together. In similar ways we can get to know our ancestors. When you spend hours hunched over a microfilm reader and finally find the person you have been seeking, they are right there in the room with you in spirit. They cast a warm glow of love upon you that cannot be described. When you visit the cemetery and touch the weathered headstone you get a sense of the love felt for this person, which warms your heart. What is even more unfathomable is that when you exert great energy and effort on behalf of your ancestors they start to fall in love with you.

When you meet them in the Spirit World you will know them and they will know you. Once you are in the Spirit World I wonder if it will be too little too late? I wonder if they will ask, "Why did you not do more for me?" or "Why didn't you get to know me when you had such good access to the records?" Heavenly Father has more than opened the way. You can do genealogy at home in your pajamas after the kids are in bed. I started researching when all research had to be done on site. There was nothing you could do at home except organize what you had collected. Sometimes it meant saving up for a trip here or there, but I cannot tell you the benefits I have gained from family history. I am NEVER bored.