Why We Do Family History

Favorite Quotes from FDREL 261 September to December 2016

“Are all our sympathies and love for each other only temporary—to be lost in death? No! Can family life endure beyond this period of mortal probation? Yes! God has revealed the eternal nature of celestial marriage and the family as the source of our greatest joy… Elder Russell M. Nelson

“We worship the great God who created the universe. He is our Father in heaven. We came into being because of him; we are his spirit children. We dwelt with him in a premortal life in a family relationship. We knew him as intimately and as well as we know our mortal fathers in this sphere of existence” - Bruce R. McConkie

“We feel an urgency for this great work to be accomplished and wish to encourage the Saints to accept their responsibility of performing temple ordinances, writing their personal and family history, participating in the name extraction program when called to do so, completing their four-generation research, and then continuing their family research to ensure the redemption of their kindred dead” (“We Feel an Urgency,” Ensign, Aug. 1980, 2). President Spencer W. Kimball

‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: “‘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’ [Malachi 4:5–6].

We are Abraham’s seed, and they were Abraham’s seed— through Isaac, through Jacob, and through the house of Israel. It thus becomes our privilege, on the basis of salvation for the dead, to search out our

ancestors—to whom the same blessings have been promised as have come to us—and to make these blessings available to them through the vicarious ordinances of the house of the Lord” (A New Witness for the

Articles of Faith, 508–9). Bruce R. McConkie

“I tell you when the prophets and apostles go to preach to those who are shut up in prison, and who have not received the gospel, thousands of them will there embrace the gospel. . . . “There will be very few, if any, who will not accept the gospel. President Wilford Woodruff

‘All at once a vision opened to me, and I beheld a great congregation of people gathered in the east end of the font room. One by one, as each

name was baptized for, one of these people climbed a stairway over the font to the west end of the room. Not one soul was missing, but there was

a person for every one of the thousand names done that day.’Melvin J. Ballard

Thomas S. Monson“There are thousands of them,

hundreds of thousands and millions of them in the spirit world who long

to receive this gospel and have been waiting hundreds of years for their

deliverance. They are waiting on you. They are praying that the Lord will

awaken your hearts in their interest. They know where their records are,

and I testify to you that the spirit and influence of your dead will guide

those who are interested in finding those records. If there is anywhere on the earth anything concerning them, you will find it. That is my promise to

you.