People From the Past

For several years Jim and I have been involved in the church's FREP (now called Family Research Indexing) program. We view documents like census records on the Family Research website, then type a transcription of the record and send it back to the Family History department so that it can be made available for people researching their genealogy. We have found it to be interesting, enjoyable, and also another way of consecrating our time for the building of the kingdom. Some of the records have affected me profoundly, such as slave census records where the only name that appears is the name of the owner. The slaves would be listed as a black male, 24 years old, for example. It showed me how truly dehumanizing slavery is. Though I have always known that slavery was wrong, I still was thoughtful for a long while after I typed those. Death records often have a similar affect on me. Today we had the opportunity to go to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to teach the youth of our ward how to index as part of their youth conference. Most of them took it seriously and some even completed the record they downloaded before the time was up. Maybe it will spark an interest in one or two and they'll continue to participate in this important work. Anyone reading this post who desires to, can become involved by checking out the site www.familysearch.org . The pictures are of a few of the 44 youth participating today.