Family History

Today I had a chance to revisit my family tree.  Since my family is from the Philippines, I don't have records of my family tree past my grandparents.  I spoke to my dad today and he confirmed that he didn't have a chance to ask his parents (both deceased) about his grand-parents.  And there are no records of them in the Philippines, or if they are, someone local would need to find them.  I do have some distant cousins that I hope could help with this endeavor.

Being a Mormon, we have a Spiritual emphasis to do Genealogy work.  With a help of a friend tonight, he showed me another website that I could use to research my family tree (ancestry.com).  I created my family tree, adding my parents and grand-parents.  As the names are added, the site then reaches out to archived data (census records, immigration files, ect) and tags possible references to the name.

I found the following, some not so significant, but others were "pretty neat":

• I found my old address at Gainesville, FL when I was attending the University of Florida.  It even had my phone number listed (before cell phones).
• I found a record of my mom "living" in San Francisco in 1970.  When I asked her about it, she told me that that was the port of entry to the United States when she entered the country for the first time.  She didn't live there though.  She lived in San Diego for a few months, but it was neat that her entry to the US was documented.
• The military scanned pictures of an 1984 ship yearbook and I found a scanned picture of my dad when he was on board the USS Yosimite in Mayport, FL.  He was DKCS and the picture depicted the personnel on the ship holding up wads of cash.  

But the last thing I found was of some significance.  I found my late uncle's listing on a Social Security Death Index.  His name is Marciano Paje.  I remembered that he had passed away in 2005 of colon cancer in San Diego.  I had a chance to visit him in 2000 when I was in San Diego for a Telemetering Conference as a BYU graduate student.

I haven't thought to enter his records into the temple so that I can do the ordinances for him.  (Click here if you want to learn more about this topic.) I put his information into my family tree in FamilySearch.org, and with permission from my father, I will be performing, or participating in, the ordinances for him at the temple.

This little exercise brought me closer to my parents, talking to them about their lives and about their immediate family.  My parents gave me permission to do the temple work for my grandparents in 2002, so I knew that my Dad would be OK for me to do the same for Uncle Marino, but when I asked my Dad for permission, and he said yes, I still couldn't help but well up in tears.

I'm thankful that tonight, I was able to "turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers" (Malichi 4:6).