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.