Passing of Memories

Take the opportunity now to get memories from your family.

I am the Family History Center Director for the Little Rock Arkansas Family History Center.  This position is a calling (basically a volunteer position that I was asked to do by my church leadership). In my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, all callings are volunteer unpaid positions. The church is a lay church, even our clergy have full-time jobs that they hold in addition to their service in the church.  We all get paid in blessings!  The church has handbooks and online training for individual callings.  In one of my online training courses, I was challenged as a center director to complete a My Family booklet which is basically a family history with photos and stories.
I already had completed a lot of my family history online in Family Search, but I decided to take the challenge and do this paper version.  It had a lot of emphasis on stories and I realized I needed to get a lot of mine straight.  I decided to start questioning my dad because he lived close to me. My dad is an excellent story teller and we spent hours going over stories and details.  Family Search had tools for me to record audio of him telling his stories.  Each audio story can be up to 15 minutes long.  So, I picked my dad's brain and got every question in the world I could think of answered.  I recorded him telling several fun stories and learned a lot more than I had known before.  I focused on him because he lived close and it seemed easy and my dad loves to talk.  I finished getting all the living knowledge I could about his side of the family.

Little did I know that my dad would be gone just a few short months later.  I honestly can't put in to words what it means to me to have those stories in his voice.  My dad was hilarious, had a great memory, and lived a very interesting life.  I am so grateful I took that challenge and didn't lose out on the joy of having these memories that I can replay at anytime.  I hope that you too will take the challenge.  If you are already involved in family history...great!  But don't get so caught up in the data that you miss out on the stories. None of us are getting any younger.

If you are interested in the My Family booklet, it is only 50 cents...though there is a shipping charge.   Order it here or use the free online version.  For the online version you will first have to create a free account on Family Search.  Once your account is created here is a link to the online version.  If you live in Little Rock you can come by the Little Rock Arkansas Family History Center for a booklet.