family history and temples

Back in January (or February?) I discovered on a Sunday night that I had ancestors buried in Payson!  My own great-grandparents who I had never met, my grandma Hansen's parents!  5 miles away in Payson, and I have lived so close for 9 years!  Also one set of 2nd-great grandparents and 2 sets of 3rd great grandparents are buried there, pioneers!  SO exciting.  So the next morning, even though it had snowed in the night, I packed up owen and Maris to go to the cemetery after we dropped the girls off at school.  Turns out it's a little hard to find graves when you have to brush/scrape snow off every grave, at a cemetery you have never been to before!  But I felt such an urgency to find them, I couldn't wait for better weather.

Eventually we found them all!

The Hinzes.

The kids thought it was a great adventure and loved leaving the silk flowers we brought.

The Brimhalls

and other brimhall relatives, and the unmarked graves of my 3rd great Brimhall grandparents.

And the Courts.

Also in March we got to go to the Provo City Center Temple Open House.

It was wonderful and beautiful.  Haha Eric. he LOVES taking selfies don't you think??

Family History has become REALLY important to me the last few months.  Like I finally GET it, why it's so important and what an impact it can have on me and my family.  I've learned how to do the research and prepare names for the temple.  And I've taken my own names to the temple for the first time, like MY names; people I searched out and read their names on the census and put them into family tree and searched for duplicates and found their birth records, marriage records, death records.  And it is AMAZING!  First of all I love history, so it's fascinating in that way.  But also I feel like when I'm doing family history I have this little army of spirits of the people I'm helping, and they are gathering around me watching over me and protecting me from the devil and his temptations.  I know that sounds weird, but.... I've heard church leaders say that if the youth of the church will get involved in family history, they will be protected from the powers of Satan, or more able to resist temptation, of something like that!  So maybe that's partly why, and it's true for adults too, not just the youth!  Anyway I've felt this huge pull towards family history these last few months and it has been exciting and inspiring.