Family History Moment: A Welding Link

Contributed By Linda Jordan, Church News contributor

  • 27 April 2017

Our family history class went to the Jordan River Utah Temple several years ago for a sealing session. I had my Ninemire family ready to be sealed together, and as I sat there I could feel the stirrings in my stomach—butterflies, heart beating fast as the other brothers’ and sisters’ names were being done.

I had prayed before I left that they would accept this and they would feel joy. It was a very tender and touching experience for me as I knelt at the altar to be a wife sealed to her husband and a daughter sealed to her parents. It was so emotional my eyes were swimming and the tears fell freely. I felt the Spirit so strongly, and I knew this family was pleased and had felt that joy that I had prayed for.

The sealer stopped and asked if I would like a tissue. He said, “These are very tender moments.” He then asked me to take the cards down to the office to be recorded. As the computer screen flashed “recorded” and a sister stamped the date on each card, I again felt the tears coming and the same feeling washed over me. I had given them a gift that only I could give as a member of this Church and I felt joy.

As we came out of the temple, a feeling of profound joy overwhelmed me and I thought of the scripture in D&C 128:18 which says that there has to be “a welding link of some kind or other between the fathers and the children. ... For we without them cannot be made perfect; neither can they without us be made perfect.”

We are truly their saviors on Mount Zion. You will feel no greater joy than when you do this sacred work for your families that have passed on to the other side.

In the April 2017 general conference, President Henry B. Eyring, First Counselor in the First Presidency, said that interest in family history is growing at an unprecedented rate. “Why is all of this happening? For lack of a better term, we call it the 'spirit of Elijah.' We could also equally call it 'fulfillment of prophecy,'” he said. “I bear testimony that Elijah did come. The hearts of the children—of you and me—have turned to our fathers, our ancestors. The affection you feel for your ancestors is part of the fulfillment of that prophecy. It is deeply seated in your sense of who you are” (“Gathering the Family of God”).

—Sister Jordan is from the Sandy 1st Ward, Sandy Utah West Stake.

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