3 Easy Ways to Make Family History Something You Don’t Keep Avoiding
Family history! We all know its importance, we all know we need to do it, and we all wish we did, in fact, do it – but very few of us actually get up the courage to be regularly involved, and I’m convinced even fewer of us truly enjoy most of the time we do spend doing it. Why considering that we know the work’s importance and the blessings the Lord promises when we become regularly engaged in it?
I’m sure that you, like me, could make a list right now of the roadblocks that have specifically come in your way to becoming actively, regularly involved in the work of salvation because there are a lot of reasons – some more reasonable, others not at all. But this post isn’t about obstacles – it’s about overcoming them, and overcoming them in a specific way.
Our prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, has a clue:
“As you pursue family history work, you are going to find yourself running into roadblocks, and you are going to say to yourself, ‘There is nothing else I can do.’ When you come to that point, get down on your knees and ask the Lord to open the way, and he will open the way for you. I testify that this is true…Heavenly Father loves his children in the spirit world just as much as he loves you and me.”
Thomas S. Monson
I’m convinced that one of the reasons the Lord has commanded us through prophets to have a weekly family home evening is so that our kids will see that we are capable of having a fun, carefree, enjoyable time together specifically so that they’ll bear with us a little more when it comes time to do things they may not consider quite as fun, like praying and studying the scriptures as a family each day.
Children don’t stick with anything they don’t like for long, but even if they’re bored during daily scripture study, knowing that not everything we insist they do is boring helps them to stick it out a bit more – there’s hope that something else more fun is around the corner, and that while the current activity may not be what they consider ‘fun’, it’s important to you and over before too long. Rounding out the variety of family and gospel activities can make it a lot easier to actually do them, and make the doing much more enjoyable.
Likewise, if you (like me) find yourself week after week setting aside, (or “planning” to set aside) an hour on Sunday to finally get into family history work, only to brush it off every time, maybe rounding it out and using some of these suggestions will make it something you look forward to a bit more – and maybe even actually do – because you will already have had a positive experience with it.
With that, for your consideration are four ways that you can ‘round out’ the variety of ways you engage in family history work – so that you (and I) might actually do them and bless not only yourselves but the important people we love both here and on the other side as well.
1. Record your own personal history
I know what you’re thinking, hear me out!
Reading the line above undoubtedly brings to mind long, solemn gospel lectures about the importance of record keeping and writing regularly in a personal journal or even a (gasp) family journal. As great as those things are, they’re not what I’m referring to today, we’re thinking simpler. Besides, everybody knows you don’t have time for that level of involvement, you’re too busy doing very important things right now on your mobile devices, or trying to get your kids off of theirs. Think of a much lighter, more fun version of record keeping – your kids are already great at this.
They record and share all kinds of things they do, capturing a wide variety of daily moments from their lives, sometimes significant and sometimes not, using apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and more. I’m not suggesting that you join these platforms and become as involved as they are, rather that you adopt the same level of enthusiasm that they have for sharing things you consider to be important – here’s an example.
Instead of or in combination with a nightly journal entry, use the phone that’s already in your hand distracting you to make record a quick 30 second -2 minute video mentioning a couple of things that went good or bad that day, if anything funny or interesting happened, or just something that happens to be on your mind.
Most importantly, even if you don’t do mention the other things suggested, share briefly about 1-2 things that happened or are on your mind that day that you’d like your children/spouse/relatives or close friends to know about, perhaps something that would be interesting or of help to them. You can even encourage your kids to do this as well – it’s incredibly similar to what they already do on their social media platforms, just a bit more purpose driven.
This is a mini video diary, and it’s not hard to do at all. In doing so, you are actively creating a family history that can later be shared with those in your life now and other generations, or even to be reviewed later by yourself.
Family history isn’t just about names, birthdates and death dates – it’s about the rich, entertaining and inspiring stories and experiences that fill the gap between those dates and give a real impression of the person whose name you know. Making connections with those you currently interact with will make it easier when it comes time to seek out information of those ancestors you don’t currently know about because you’ll have already seen the value felt the benefit of leaving something behind for others.
2. Make it a family affair, without making it boring (here’s how)
Many of us have gotten at least as far as learning how to index genealogical records provided by the church online (in my case the very easiest, clear to read records). Even if you haven’t, it’s very easy to begin and you can learn – see the family history specialist or assistant listed in your ward directory online at lds.org/directory.
Chances are your kids know how to index as well, but it isn’t an activity they always love to do. Learn how if you haven’t already, and begin to do it every so often as a family, perhaps on a Sunday. So that there’s something as a background and to talk about, consider playing some music you all enjoy or putting on a movie/show that’s familiar while you do. Family history can be hard, but even more so when you’re the only one who seems to want to do it, so make it easier for them by being brave and leading the way.
If children find you on a Sunday watching a movie in the living room and indexing on the laptop or tablet, there’s a better chance your invitation for them to join you (or see if they can actually beat their technologically challenged parents at indexing) will be more readily accepted.
The point is to have fun, engaging experiences completing activities you find easier to do so that you’ll have greater motivation, confidence, and enthusiasm going into things that are a bit harder, such as searching for and identifying accurate new names and genealogical information.
3. Engage with those you care about in an original way
One thing many families enjoy doing is visiting their relatives when they have the time to do so, especially parents and grandparents as they age. You have a good time, food/treats are often shared, and very often the same anecdotes can be repeated several times over. How many times have you heard your Grandma talk about that awkward remark that a grandchild made out of nowhere? While you love your family and this is a lot of fun, I think one reason conversations with relatives fail to reach any further than surface level stories and experience is simply a lack of preparation – you go to Grandma’s house to relax and distract the kids, not necessarily to conduct a formal interview.
Still, coming prepared to delve deeper into the life experiences and lessons of your relatives can be incredibly rewarding – and easy to do. I remember one Father’s Day my sisters and I Googled around for a set of good questions to ask your father that time of year. Even though it felt a bit cliché to do so at first, asking our dad interesting, well thought out questions resulted in him sharing things that we had never heard him talk about, many of which were incredibly interesting and even more of which were very funny. Had we simply planned to wish him a happy Father’s Day and sat around chatting for a while we probably would have gotten distracted by whatever else happened next, but being prepared for a good conversation allowed him to impart all kinds of humor, wisdom, and experience that we had never heard before, which made it for me at least the most memorable Father’s Day I can remember yet.
Doing this doesn’t have to be stressful or difficult – there is a multitude of such lists available online (here’s an example: ) — but it can make for a very entertaining and even inspiring time as a family. Don’t feel like you have to wait for any holiday or special occasion in order to have that experience either. If you find a list of 50 or so questions like we did, for example, ask 5 or 10 of them per visit if you visit fairly regularly. Letting family members that it can be fun, silly and informal as well as occasionally more serious will help to ease any worry or uncertainty about opening themselves up a bit – this experience is just for you and for them because you love them and want to know them on a deeper level.
In order to remember and preserve these experiences and conversations, you can record audio or video in the moment or write/record the things you learned and remember shortly after on your own (perhaps in your own mini video diary!).
Again, this is family history, and a good part of what God, as communicated through church leaders, wants us to do in the area of family history work – to seek out experiences and inspiration as much as we do names, dates, and information.
The purpose of these suggestions is to help us feel deeper levels of connection with those we love – feelings that will lead you to seek that same kind of connection with those who have already passed on.
When you have experiences with someone, you can come to love them. When you love someone, you’ll do anything for them – even if helping them find freedom and happiness entail doing work that can sometimes be difficult or confusing.
Perfect love casteth out all fear – fear that for many of us is precisely what keeps us from experiencing the rich blessings which come as a result of active and regular engagement in the work of salvation. Hopefully rounding out the experiences we have in this important area will help us to have the enthusiasm, determination, and desire to learn and help others we will need in order to bring salvation to the captive and unite our families eternally.
Lifey is a free video life history service that helps individuals share, record and edit meaningful life experiences in a browsable format so that friends and loved ones can easily view them. If you are interested in learning more about Lifey, visit for more information and contact Alex Balinski at to set up your own free Lifey.
*Guest article was written by Christian Bell.