Breakthrough

A couple of bugs are going around the household just now, but they're not enough to rain on our parade. Yesterday, Brianna got back from her month of yoga study in Boulder, and she says it exceeded her expectations by a million times. But she's still too modest to do some of her awesome poses for the blog. She and Dan both came down with a respiratory ailment today, and Shane's toughness gave way to a GI tract malady. It remains to be seen whether Colin and I can resist both wily attacks.

I'm about to float off to the temple. Given the amazing developments that are occuring, there's no place I'd rather spend the next few hours! What's occuring? Progress! After I came home from GA, I was overcome with a desire to pick up the search for some of my ancestors. Through the miracle of the internet, I've found a distant cousin who lives in GA and has genealogy as his hobby. He has sent us more information on theChason line than we knew was available, and we're ecstatic! I'm humbly expecting great things, and if they come to pass, you'll hear about it right here. After running into so many dead=ends, this feels marvelous!

Another fascinating detail was made known to us this week as well. Our dear friends,Rick and JoLyn Farrer, just discovered that their ancestors and Dan's second great grandfather, Abraham Washburn, were neighbors in Nauvoo, and worked on the temple together, before travelingout to settle in Utah. Can it be a coincidence that our relatives knew each other, were probably friends with one another, and that, generations later, we're friends too? I wonder just how much help in friendships and family matters we're receiving from beyond the veil.

"In all of us there is a hunger, bone-marrow deep, to know our heritage - to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness." Alex Haley, author of the book, Roots (Reader's Digest, May 1977, pp. 73–74)

Genealogical work has the power to do something for the dead. It has an equal power to do something to the living. Genealogical work ...has a refining, spiritualizing, tempering influence on those who are engaged in it. They understand that they are tying their family together, their living family here with those who have gone before... You cannot find names without knowing that they represent people.
--Boyd K. Packer