New Direction

We have a new director at our FHC! The change-over has gone smoothly. Our new director told us that she has been asked by the stake presidency to try to bring more young people into the FHC. Our previous director has helped our YSA ward to become involved in Indexing, and we will continue to make this a priority. But we need to do much more to get the youth and young adults involved.

I would like to plan classes that appeal to this group. I have been thinking of using the 5-Minute Genealogy videos to introduce each class. They are short, well-done, demonstrate an easily learned skill, and leave a challenge that we can follow-up in the class.

Elder Bednar's talk and the other resources at https://www.lds.org/youth/family-history may also be a help.

I think that to gain their attention and hold it until they feel the spirit of Elijah, we will need to base our activities on practice rather than theory. And we will need to make it personal rather than impersonal. If we can help them find their own ancestors it will be more meaningful than finding someone else's ancestors. The fan chart from http://treeseek.com/ has been very effective in capturing the interest of "non-genealogists". Our goal is not for all members of the Church to become professional genealogists, but for all to strengthen their family ties across the generations, and to unite the family for eternity.

Perhaps we need to recognize that family history goes far beyond pedigree charts and FORs, although they are part of it. Indexing, journals, scrapbooks, photo albums, Facebook pages, and showing young children where they are in the family's story book or Book of Remembrance are part of family history too. Repeating the old family stories is another way of building bonds between the generations. At present these are mostly activities of the middle years and the senior years.

Does anyone have other suggestions to involve youth and young adults?