Family History

This semester I've been called as a Family History Consultant in my ward. This is definitely something I've never done before. While I'm extremely grateful it's not Home Evening (three years in the same calling is a bit long), it is a bit overwhelming. Family History is one of those things I know I should be doing, but really had no idea where to start. My lesson a week and a half ago went well (the manual is really straight forward), minus the fact that the projector cut off the top third of the video so all the people were headless, hahahaha. While the lesson went well, I still didn't know exactly what to do for the 20 minutes of class where we have time to actually work on our own Family History. For my Mom's side and my Dad's mom's side it seems like all the work has been done. For my Dad's Dad's side we don't have any records past my Great-great grandparents. My great-grandparents came over from Croatia and the church where their family records are was destroyed. We also have the problem of not speaking Croatian. I really felt like there wasn't anything for me to do. If I don't know how to do my own Family History, how in the world am I supposed to teach others what to do?

This past Saturday I was invited to a Family History Conference over at the BATC. While a conference from 9-5 didn't sound like the funnest way to spend my Saturday, I knew it was something I needed to do. I asked my mom to come with me so I didn't have to go by myself and be surrounded by a bunch of Senior Citizens :) Overall the Conference was really helpful, though I still don't know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. I did learn some things that I can start doing on my own line. One of the best tips I got was to not look at your direct line. You go to your great-grandparents or even great-great grandparents and start looking at their siblings or other children and make sure their work has all been done. You basically go up your family tree, and then start working out and back down. Right now I'm researching my great grandparents siblings. My great-grandfather has five siblings that have all been sealed to their parents, but we don't have any information on their own spouses and children. It's been really confusing with all the name changes and everything that could have happened to the records, but hopefully something good will come out of it. A friend of mine told me on Sunday (something along the lines of this): That which you persist in doing you become proficient at. I'm just going to keep moving forward and hopefully I'll figure it all out along the way.