Good Morning Brothers and Sisters,
My name is Cindy Smith and I am a member of the San Sevaine Ward. I am here this morning, on assignment by the Stake Presidency, to introduce a new Stake Initiative called “Take 20”. I would like to start by sharing a true story.
In the early 1600’s, a family named Plessmann settled in a small northern village in Germany named Vernawaldshausen. They, along with numerous other families in this village, were members of the Christian Reformed Church. How did this church differ from the Catholic and Lutheran churches of that time? These people believed in baptism by immersion, and this church would later be known as the Baptist church. The Plessmann family were much the same as you and I today, striving to raise their family in righteousness, seeking for the most accurate way to be followers of Jesus Christ.
Shortly after World War 1, a young descendant of the Plessmann family, named William Pentzeck, left his family in Vernawaldshausen and emigrated to the United States, to Milwaukee, WI. There was a strong German population in Milwaukee, and he found his wife Selma, amongst the German Baptist community there. My mother was born to William and Selma Pentzeck in 1942. My mom recalls that her family’s life revolved around the German Baptist community. In 1969, she found herself as a young wife and mother with three children, when the missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints came knocking at her door. They had knocked on her door before, and she knew who they were. She was not searching for anything more than she had in her life at that time, but for some reason that day, she let the missionaries in. For many months, the missionaries continued to invite her to learn about the Gospel, though she rejected their teachings and made it clear she had no interest. My mother said it was a humble sweet testimony from one of the missionaries that allowed the spirit to touch her heart, and she read the Book of Mormon and received an undeniable testimony of its truthfulness. After almost a year from the time the missionaries first knocked on her door, and amidst opposition from both her family and my father’s family, she was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was no small thing for my mother to leave four hundred years of her German Baptist heritage behind, but she did, and she faithfully raised my brother and sister and I in the gospel, praying and hoping my dad’s heart would soften, which it did, 18 years later, and our family was sealed in the Chicago Temple when I was 22.
After her conversion to the church, my mother became active in Genealogy and searching out her family members. She had little contact with her extended family in Germany. Of particular frustration to her was the fact that she had no information on the Plessmann family line, her father’s family from Vernawaldshausen. Many records were lost and burned during WW11 and for 37 years she had been able to find very little information. Fast forward to 2006, 13 years ago. I was sitting in my kitchen, mother with 5 young children, looking at my family wall. Now for myself, I had the wonderful experience of growing up in Milwaukee amongst extended family on both sides, so when I married Richard and realized that I was going to be raising my own children in California, far away from family, I had a desire for my children to know them, so I made a collage of family pictures on the wall of our home. On that day, I was looking at this wall, and my eye caught the picture of the village of Vernawaldshausen, where I knew my grandfather’s family was from. I was pondering on the fact that after so many years, we still had no information on our family from that village. All of a sudden, a clear thought came to my mind “ I wonder what would happen if I put the name Vernawaldhausen” in the search engine of the computer. Now for the younger people in the audience, in 2006, the idea of googling information was still relatively new. It was a world that was just opening up to us, and this thought excited me, that perhaps there might be some information on Vernawaldshausen on the World Wide Web. But as soon as that thought came to my mind, as often happens to young moms, I was distracted by some need or other of my children and I never acted upon that impression. At the end of that week, my mother called me and said “You’re not going to believe what happened to me this week. I was cleaning the house, and all of a sudden the thought came to my mind, “I wonder what would happen if I put the name Vernawaldshausen into the search engine of the computer”. I went to the computer and typed it in, and I found a Plessmann furniture store. I emailed the owner of the store, explained who I was, and that I was searching for information on the Plessmann family and he referred me to a distant cousin in Canada, who had been working for years, collecting information on the Plessmann family line, and was about to publish a book. I contacted this cousin through email and I’m waiting to hear from him.” I was astounded! I shared with my mom that I had that same exact thought during the week. She responded “Someone wants their temple work done. They are waiting and they are ready.”
Within 3 months, my mom had purchased this book from her cousin and started to transcribe names into Family Search. Over the past 13 years, we have had the opportunity and privilege of performing temple work for almost 1,000 people from the Plessmann family line. This experience bears powerful witness to me that the desire to progress in the Gospel is as real on the other side of the veil as it is to us here.
Some of Our family members who have passed on are active in learning the Gospel, and we need to do our part and be active in finding their names and helping them with their work on this side of the veil. We can become part of the fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi when he speaks of the return of Elijah “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” How can we help in fulfilling this prophecy? How do we do this?
This is where our new Stake Initiative comes in! It’s called Take 20. I’m here to motivate you to be part of this new initiative….to become more involved with Family History work. Family History work is so much more than researching names. Of course that is important, but if we are not quite there yet, we can start by doing whatever we can, to become more involved. For some of us, it will mean taking 20 names to the temple this year, but for others it might mean taking 20 minutes every Sunday to record family stories, your own stories from your life. For some it might mean indexing names for 20 minutes a day,… and for others it might mean taking 20 minutes to find out what indexing is! We might Log on to Family Search and look around for 20 minutes today, or we could sit down with our family this afternoon and write 20 ways to be involved Family History Work. The sky is the limit and this is where you can truly make the program your own. There are no guidelines, no restrictions, no requirements, just figure out what Take 20 is going to mean to YOU this year. Our Stake Presidency is asking us to do ANYTHING we can to be more involved with Family History than we have been in the past.
I took the time this week to research ways in which to become involved with Family History Work. If you have paper, or want to jot some notes down in your phone, now is the time to get ready. Now I’ve had to text family and friends for ideas because I personally needed help and advice on Family History Work.
One of the first things we can do is to reach out to the Family History consultants in our wards. You might take 20 minutes today or this week to find out who they are. That can be part of your Take 20, this week.
Here are some other ways that you can “Take 20” this year:
Take 20 minutes today to set goals for yourself or your family for this new initiative. What is Take 20 going to mean to you, or your family this year? What is your program going to look like?
After you figure that out, get some sticky notes or notecards, write TAKE 20 on them, and put them around your house, in your purse, in your car, write yourself reminders on your phone, to Take 20. Life is going to distract us, and these little reminders will help keep us on track with our goals.
Take 20 minutes a day or week to index names.
Upload 20 pictures to the memories tab on family search
Speaking of familysearch.org, get on and look around.
This is a very good resource…..I got this information from Katy Gibbons in the San Sevaine Ward. She’s a wealth of information on Family History. It’s called The Family History Guide….thefhguide.com. I loved this website because it led me through different steps for navigating around Family Search. If you are like me and you need things broken down step by step, get on thefhguide.com. Extremely helpful for someone that isn’t confident navigating Family Search. It even has a kid’s corner with activities for children.
If you have family pictures, make enlargements, frame them, and put them up in your home so your children will start asking questions and they may spark wonderful conversations.
Start recording memories. I found a great way to do this. It’s a program called #52 stories….google that. #52stories. This is a collection of 52 questions,….if you work on one question per week, you can have your personal history written in One year. I have started this and am about ½ way through. It has been wonderful way to record family stories that may never have been recorded or saved if it hadn’t been for the prompts of these questions.. #52 stories….it’s worth looking into for 20 minutes today. These are all wonderful ways to become more involved with Family History… and hopefully as we get out feet wet and become more comfortable with and excited about this work, we will be inspired to put time into understanding how to research names. And to find our family’s names to be able to take to the temple. In Moses 1:39 we find out what Heavenly Father’s main focus is, the reason we are here on this wonderful Earth he has created for us…Moses 1:39 reads, “ For behold, this is my work and my glory- to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” Family history work is such an important part of this plan, Brothers and Sisters. Let’s all make it a goal to Take 20, in any way that we can this year, to help our Father in Heaven with His work and plan.
In the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer,
Amen
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