I went to the temple this morning and received an interesting surprise. Before i came down to college, I asked Grandpa Zirker if he had any family names that I could do, and he ended up giving me tons of names to do, mostly sealings, but a few endowments. I have been in the process of finishing the women's endowments.
As I sat in the temple waiting for the session to start, I began to gaze over the card from Grandpa I had chosen to do today. I looked at the name, Mary Barber, and said a prayer in my heart for her, hoping and praying she would accept this last piece of her temple work (she had already been sealed to her parents). Looking over the card, I was randomly drawn to the extractors name. To my surprise, this time it didn't day "Kenneth Eugene Zirker" as the hundreds of other cards I've done for Grandpa. This time it said: Leona Sagers Shields Zirker. Completely taken aback and confused, I looked at the dates on the card. This woman's ordinances had been started back in February of 1999. Grandma passed away a year later, and never had the chance to finish them. Mary had been waiting 9 years for someone to finish it. 9 years! Can you imagine that?! All i could think was, "All this time..."
I learned a good lesson from that. I had been so nonchalant in doing her work, and she'd been waiting nine years, knowing full well that her name was ALREADY IN THE SYSTEM! What a humbling experience it was for me to be reminded of my part in genealogy. I may not be as amazing as Grandpa on Family Search (come to think of it, I'm not even sure I know how to use it, sadly), but I can do my small part. I'm so excited to meet Mary Barber someday and ask her about her side of the experience. Waiting for NINE years -- what a lesson of patience! I wonder if she and Grandma are friends...
4 comments:
Manda....so I had this feeling I needed to look at your blog. As I started reading your new post tears just started coming to my eyes. I have no idea why other then this special spirit just touched me! I've started doing my genealogy and cannot wait to have these same experience's as you are having. I'm sure Mary Barber is so grateful for you and rejoicing with your Grandma today! What a special day!
First of all, I had no idea you had a blog. Thank you to google alerts for alerting me. Second, kudos to you for doing the temple work for our ancestors. It must be a frustrating thing sitting on the other side waiting helplessly for your work to get done. I think you and Mary Barber will be good friends some day. Let me know if you need help with the temple work.
Maybe time runs differently for peeps who are already in the Spirit World, so she didn't mind the 9 years quite as much. ;) And if you need help with FamilySearch, let me know. I used to be a pro (they changed it a bit, so I might have to brush up on my skills).
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