What if you could connect with each deceased grandma and grandpa up to 4 generations back? It wouldn’t take too much time and you would learn a lot about yourself and life. #SummerwithAncestors
We created this tree at the beginning of the summer and have been adding pictures to each name on the tree as we have explored their profile on Family Search.
This includes my family and my husband’s family. We click on the name, look at their memories which include pictures, stories, audio files, etc and then draw their likeness on the tree above their name.
Here are the kids “making their mark” on the blank part of the tree as I read the short bio about Great-Great Grandma Alsie on my husband‘s side. She died while giving birth to her son who was a stillborn. She was only 29 years old. Grandma Margaret (Alsie's daughter) was just 4 years old. Alsie was quite a remarkable woman. We got to connect with her today which was sweet. We also have noticed that a few more recently passed grandmas and grandpas don’t have any stories or audio memories so we added some as part of our #summerwithancestors.
I also have a few biographies or collections of poetry and other momentos from ancestors. Those are fun to look at while we are highlighting that particular ancestor.
As for living grandmas and grandpas, we are interviewing them about their life including questions like:
Can you tell us about a time you felt the Holy Ghost?
What did you do for fun when you were my age?
Can you share a memory of your mother and/or your father?
Can you tell me how you met your grandma/grandpa?
Can you share 3 things about my mommy/daddy that I might not know?
What is your favorite thing to do with me?
We are planning to upload those audio files as well. It’s been a project we can all join in on and it has been a special way for us to pierce the veil in a sense.
We are not quite done with this project but we will finish by middle of August.
While these individuals all already have their temple work finished (in fact, they were all married in the temple and stayed married 🙌🏼) we still feel that starting with our closest ancestors can help turn our hearts to our fathers and mothers and inspire us to find other ancestors to gather and bless by doing temple work.
Here is a little PS: We were inspired by this article "Roots" and the story of a family who really connected with one of their great-grandfathers as they learned more about his life mission and history. This is from the Millennial Instructor Volume 3: The True "Olive Tree".