You are sons and daughters of God, children of the covenant,
and builders of the kingdom.
You need not wait until you reach an arbitrary age to
fulfill your responsibility to assist in the work of
salvation for the human family.
Your fingers have been trained to text and to tweet to
accelerate and advance the work of the Lord, not just to
communicate quickly with your friends.
Well, it started out about mid-September.
Bishop came to our house and wanted to see Cheyenne.
He asked that Cheyenne would accept a calling to work on
the Elijah Project.
The Elijah Project is about all the youth coming together
and finding their own ancestors and doing their
ordinances.
And it may seem hard at first, but it's a lot of fun.
When Cheyenne was called, my mother had passed away about
three days prior to that.
We had just barely had her funeral.
My parents, they were very strong, very into genealogy.
So no sooner did the bishop leave, Cheyenne went straight
to her grandfather that had just lost his wife.
And that kind of lifted his spirits.
That was something that he was very excited for.
Matter of fact, the first excursion to the temple, we
took all the youth.
And I remember when we pulled up that morning, and
immediately he came out and wanted to know how it went.
So we told him, "We did over 200 names,
Dad." He was just excited.
He knew everything and every name.
He was constantly on the computer.
He never took a break, even until he passed away.
He passed away eight weeks after my mom passed away.
He worked with Cheyenne for about six weeks before he just
couldn't do anymore.
It's almost like the passing of the guard.
After my grandparents passed away, I wanted to kind of
carry on their work.
As I go through family history, you can learn about
the time when they were born and where they lived, and you
can find stories on them and pictures.
And it's almost like you almost get to know them and
feel compassion for them.
And I was going through my grandpa's books,
and we found journals.
And one was about Susan Ellen Johnson.
It just talks about all of her times on the plains and how
she raised children that weren't hers and what kind of
faith she had and how she stuck to it.
And she was a good horsewoman, too.
So they also had lives.
We just found a lot of names and lines that just shoot out
from those names.
And there are a lot of names that haven't had their
ordinances done.
I've always just gone to the temple and done temple names,
but when I got my first card, it was exciting to know that
I'm doing it for my own ancestor
and from my own lines.
And it just feels almost like they're there.
This is true.
Our children are the ones that inspired us to attend the
temple a little more, and we changed our temple night from
once a month to once a week.
And many times when we leave the home, our kids want to
know which names we're taking, and they want a report.
To find a card and to just wait for the card to be done
and get all the sealings done is just a good feeling.
To know that I can give people the same saving ordinances
that I have, it makes me feel humble.
It was such a blessing to me in my life when that
came when it did.
And now we're always going to the temple with the names that
we have, and being able to do that with our whole family is
such an amazing thing.
It's something that has brought our family closer, and
we've been very blessed.