Sunset Heights Multi-stake FamilySearch Center
Staff Meeting
November 14, 2023
Welcome: Brent Gardner
Opening Prayer: Nora Lloyd
Spiritual Thought: Joy Stubbs
It is my testimony that miracles have not ceased, and one of the greatest miracles I have experienced is the way the Lord takes me from where I am to where I need to be.
In August of 2022, our family spent several days together in the temples here in Utah for part of our family reunion, doing ordinance work for our ancestral cousins. It was such a sweet experience that we decided to continue the tradition in 2023. I have two brothers and seven sisters. We created a family group on Family Search and continued the work of entering names there and performing temple work for them.
In January this year we thought it would be fun to celebrate each year of our lives and our spouses’ lives with an ordinance for each year. But we got finished sooner than we thought. By March we had completed 1,404, our goal, so we decided to celebrate the years of our children’s lives, again, an ordinance for each year. We reported to each other on our family chat. It was like looking into the temple mirrors, forward to each of our children and backward to our ancestral lines.
By October, we had completed well over 6,000 ordinances, and expected to reach our goal by the end of the month. My brother from Henderson, Nevada planned for a family reunion in the Las Vegas Temple. We decided to spend all day on October 27th in the temple together. “It will be fun,” my sister said, “just put a few snacks in your locker, and we can do several sessions of each type of ordinance work.”
That’s what we did. Three of our siblings couldn’t be with us so they spent time in their respective temples in St. Paul, Minnesota, Jordan River, Utah and Madrid, Spain. That day we completed 330 ordinances together. It was good to be together in such a sacred place, and our hearts were definitely turned to our fathers.
In fact, as we sat together in a sealing room in the Las Vegas Temple, the sealer, who had been randomly assigned, commented about my brother’s name, “Whitney, I had a bishop that I loved named Whitney. I named my first son Whitney after him.” Our ears perked up, since that was our family name.
“What was his first name?” someone asked. The sealer kept working and finally admitted, “I can’t remember. Brother Whitney?” We continued the sacred work.
Then another sibling thought to ask, “Well, where did you live?”
He smiled, “Boulder City, Nevada.” Tears filled our eyes. Our dad had served as a bishop there. The timing was right. The Spirit was strong inside our little sealing room.
Seven of us asked together, “Was it Bert Whitney?”
Now the sealer was visibly moved. “Yes,” he replied. He proceeded to tell us about how our father had impacted his life. After his shift with us ended, he popped back inside the room. “I forgot to tell you,” he added. “Your father and mother were the temple escorts for my wife and I when we were sealed together in the St. George Temple.”
We felt the power of the Holy Spirit sealing our Swedish ancestral cousins, some of them in whole families, and we also felt the penetrating knowledge that our parents were also able to be with us at our temple reunion. I thought of President Nelson’s admonition to attend the temple more often. I hadn’t imagined the rewards that would come to me as I spent the whole day with my siblings in the Las Vegas Temple. I didn’t even need the snacks in my locker.
Calendar:
Wednesday, November 22, closed after 1:00 pm
Thursday, November 23-Friday, November 24, Thanksgiving CENTER CLOSED
December: No Patron Classes or Staff Meeting
Monday, December 18 through Monday January 1, Christmas break
Tuesday, January 9, 7 pm, Staff Meeting
Monday, January 15, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, CENTER CLOSED
Tuesday, January 16, 11 am & 7 pm, Patron Class, Suzanne Adams, “How Can I Help? Temple and Family History Consultant Training”
Tuesday, January 30, 11 am & 7 pm, Patron Class, Alice Childs, “Finding Time in This Season: Accessing the Promised Blessings of Family History Today”
New Paper Cutter
Handout of Center Hours & Contact Information
Needs for Substitutes
Stump the Staff: Brent Gardner “Home Page and Search Menu”
There is a new opening page on FamilySearch that appears before you sign in. It has lots of information for those who are new to FamilySearch.
We discussed some of the features of the Search Menu on FamilySearch:
1. “Records” includes only those records which have been indexed and represents only about a third of the records in FamilySearch. “Images” includes all the records which have not been indexed.
2. “Family Tree” takes you directly into searching a name on the Tree.
3. “Genealogies” contains a wide variety of records, some of which are more reliable than others.
4. “Catalog” is just the catalog for the FamilySearch.com site. It has not been updated since 2022. A more complete catalog is found on the website for the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake. It is found at familysearch.org/en/library. Click on the “Collections” dropdown and then “Our Catalogs.” The two catalogs will be merged at some future date.
Training: Aaron Thacker “Family Groups & Sharing Temple Names”
Family Groups
-Why Family Groups? Collaboration in research and temple work.
Higher priority in Ordinances Ready.
-Creating a Family Group
Navigate to groups page and click Create Group. Fill out description and any rules.
-Inviting others to join
Invite through email or text. Get contact info from FamilySearch or elsewhere and send invitation. Admin must approve after invite accepted.
-Admin access
Add multiple Admins to group if you want help running group.
Sharing Temple Names
-Sharing with the temple
On My Reservations page, select names you want to share and click Share and then Share with Temple. Good for freezing expiration dates.
-Sharing with family groups
Same process as above but click Share with Group and then click the name of the group you want to share it with. You have to be a member of the group.
-Sharing with others
You can share directly with any FamilySearch contributor with just their email address. Similar process to above.
-Other options for sharing names with others: printing or sharing QR codes/numbers or physical cards.
-Unsharing
After sharing a name with the temple or a family group, you can get it back to your reservations by selecting it and clicking Unshare.
Closing Prayer: Paul Morrey
NEXT STAFF MEETING January 9, 2024, 7 pm
Orem Sunset Heights FamilySearch Center 