Brothers and
sisters, Wendy and I are delighted to
be with you today. We love families. We love temple and family
history work, and we love you. The family truly can be
a place for everything from safety and refuge
to fun and happiness. And that shouldn't
surprise us because of what we believe about
the sanctity of the family. As Church members, our interest
in family history work has been motivated by instruction from
the Lord that our ancestors cannot be made
perfect without us, and we cannot be made
perfect without them. That means we are to be linked
together by the sacred sealing ordinances of the temple. We are to be strong links in
the chain from our ancestors to our posterity. It's wonderful to
turn the hearts of the children to their fathers
by telling important family history stories in ways that
are accessible and memorable. However, if we leave
it at that level, we haven't really done enough. If we know who our ancestors
are and know marvelous things about them, but we leave them
stranded on the other side without their ordinances,
such diversion will not be of any help to our
ancestors who remain confined in their spirit prison. That means sacrificing
time we normally spend on other activities. We need to be spending
more time in the temple and in doing family
history research, which includes indexing. It is my testimony
that however fabulous your life is right
now, or however discouraging and
heartbreaking it may be, your involvement in
family history and temple work will make it better. It is my testimony
that when we show the Lord we are serious
about helping our ancestors, the heavens will open and we
will receive all that we need. I would like to extend a
challenge to each one of us. I invite you
prayerfully to consider what kind of sacrifice, and
preferably a sacrifice of time, you can make to do more
family history and temple work this year. Brothers and
sisters, together we are engaged in the
work of Almighty God. He lives. Jesus is the Christ. This is His Church. We are His covenant children. He can count on us.