Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage your host and MC, Jason Hewlett. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Well, hello, everybody. Are you ready for a great day?

Family Discovery Day. Thank you all so much for being here. We're honored and pleased to have some incredible things happening this entire day and especially right now on this stage. We will have so much fun today with this. I get to now introduce to the stage one of my dearest friends, somebody I look up to so much. And when they told us, "We want to have somebody that would be fun with you on stage," and so forth, I thought nobody better than a BYU professor, no one better than a best-selling author who has CDs and DVDs that probably every young person here listens to over and over. Please welcome to the stage Brother Hank Smith.

Hey, all right. Thank you, Jason. Hello, RootsTech. Who's ready to have some family history fun? Family history fun. This is exciting. Oh, this is fantastic. My family and I, we are so excited to be back. We were here last year, and I rarely get second dates. So this is exciting. I'm excited to be here. Well, what are we doing today? The folks at FamilySearch have done some incredible things to help make family history fun for our kids. You and I both have a lot of little kids, and sometimes we say "family history" and they think "going to visit cemeteries and staring at records." But that's not all that it's about. FamilySearch has done some fun things that we're going to go through the app today and show you how you and your kids can have fun together. We are going to go through the app, and we're going to also try something on the internet. And so we have so many people in this room that, everyone doing it at once, we don't want to overload the system and crash everything. Because that would not look good on our demo. So as tempting as it might be, try not to do everything right now that we're going to do with you, trying not to do it all. Not only the people in this room, but also there are some people at home. There's people watching. And so we welcome everybody from wherever you are in the world. We're grateful that you would join us today. So Hank, I want you to start. We're kind of making this our center area because this is all about electronics today. Yes, I have my phone with me. If you have your phones available, this is where we're going to be doing some very cool things today, is finding out how we can use these as a tool for family history. So first, I'd like-- I've got to tell this story. I've got to tell this story. To introduce this first part of the app, let me tell you a story. So way back in the 1900s--who remembers living in the 1900s? Anybody remember the 1900s? Lots of you. Lots of you. Jason and I were born in the 1900s. So it was the late 1990s. I was in college. I was in an institute class. Who went to institute? Let me see who went to institute. Institute's a wonderful thing. So I was in institute, and I think it was a Book of Mormon class with Brother Negley down in St. George. And he had us sign up on a calendar, two to a day. Before class started, before he started his lesson, he would have one or two of us come up, and we would share a story about our family history. So we were to choose an ancestor who we looked up to. So I got the calendar. It was being passed around, and there was an open day there. And I signed up on the open day. And another girl had signed up on that day. There was two, another student. Her name was Andrea. And I knew her maybe from school or elementary school or whatever. But I knew a couple of people in the class. So the day comes that I am supposed to present, and I was ready. I had my report on one of my ancestors. His name was Bendt Rasmussen. I was excited to give this report. So as I was sitting there, he said, "We're going to have Andrea and Hank give their reports on their family history today." So Andrea got up and she said--I'm not joking. You're not going to believe this. But randomly we signed up on the same day, and she said, "I'm going to give my report on Bendt Rasmussen." And she started to talk about this ancestor. And at first, it threw me. I said, "That girl stole my report." Like, it honestly crossed my mind that she hadn't done the work, and then slipped over to my desk and grabbed my ancestor and pretended. But she was actually giving a report on her ancestor. And when I stood up, Brother Negley just wouldn't believe it. I stood up and I said, "I honestly have the report on Bendt Rassmussen, the exact same person that she just gave a report on." He said, "Come on. That's not true." I said, "I promise. Look, I have the whole report here." Andrea and I found out that we were cousins. And for the rest of the semester, we called each other "hey, cuz," "hey, cuz." It tied us together in that way. Isn't that crazy? On the exact same day, we signed up. Now the folks at FamilySearch.org have made it so you don't have to have occurrences like that. You can go straight to the app. Now, Jason and I are supposed to be hooked up to Apple TV. Are we on, Jason? Let me see here. I'm going to bring me up. I believe mine is connected. You are connected. I think I'm connected, too. This is all technology here, folks. So everybody make sure to open up-- Oh, I'm seeing something up there. Oh, this looks like me. There it is. There it is. We have our--we have our technicians on hand to help us out, because you and I-- --just said we can't let the phones go to sleep. Then it knocks us off. Don't let the phone go to sleep. Got it. Do not sleep. Don't do this. Don't do this. So now you guys can see my screen up on the screen right now. So there's my pedigree. Can you see that? So when I go over to this little bottom right-hand side More, I can hit that. Now, I have an iPhone. On Android, this will look a little bit different. But you'll be able to figure it out, you Android users. It's very user-friendly. You come over here, and you can see that the third option down is Relatives at RootsTech. Now, usually that will say "Relatives around Me." But since we're at RootsTech, I can hit that button, and it's going to bring up everybody who's here. I have Madelynn Smith. She's a very close relative. In fact, she's my daughter. We also have Gayle Peterson Steele, and I can see her. I can click on Gayle. Take a look, and I can see that Gayle and I are related. Our grandmothers were sisters, grandmothers were sisters. In fact, I can now message Gayle. I've never met her. Hi, cuz.

Sure miss you, Gayle. And I can send that message to Gayle. Look at that. Now Gayle and I are connected. I'm going to have to find her. Gayle, you'll have to write back to me if you're in the room. So you can do "Relatives around Me." Yeah, we have it here, but also around me. So those watching online, what do they do? Yes, you can do this. This is a perfect ward activity. Let's say you get the ward together. Everybody goes to the app, turns it on, does "Relatives around Me," and you can find out everyone in your ward that you're related to. We've heard stories that wards will do this, and this will be the only activity they do, because then they go--everyone's traveling from person to person, making those connections. So if we have Relief Society presidencies in the room or bishopric members in the room, branch presidency members listening, this might be a great activity for you. Well, I think it would be fun. And it would be funny, actually, to call your home teaching family and be like, "I'm standing out front wondering--are we connected somehow?" Or maybe we're related. Maybe I should have done better on my home teaching. Now that I know we're related, I will come over more and eat your food. All right, so here's what we're going to do next. I get to tell you a little bit about what happened last year when I came to RootsTech. And I have personally not--I am very guilty of not doing much family history for myself. And I stand in front of you as somebody who's committing to be better. And that's what today is about, is learning and feeling that connection, wanting to do it. I was told by the genealogy specialists that helped me to learn more about the line through my mother's family, which is the Redford Vanderpol line. And it went right through in Holland and into the Netherlands. And the person's name was Jan Linnaeus. And apparently, he was a ship captain. And he kept safe this strait in a place called Texel, if I recall, right here. Yeah, it was near Texel. And this is fun to find these stories out. They showed me some ships and some paintings and so forth. And what's neat about that--I don't know what he looked like. I don't know what these people were like at all. But what's neat is to think that we're related. And a lot of people wonder, where do I get my good looks? I think that often about myself. I look at that and think, "How did this happen? How did I win the lottery?" You did. Here's what I want you to do, folks. If you'll make sure to go with me--we're going to go out of the app for just a moment. And I want to show you something that is brand-new, never been seen, and finally put together by our team. Earlier in the week they were talking: "Wouldn't it be neat if you could compare your face to your ancestors? Wouldn't that be neat if you could see how much you look like them?" So I'd like you to go to a browser. Open up your internet browser and go to the Safari or to Chrome or-- If you're over 30, you might have to turn to someone younger than you and say, "What's an internet browser?" and see if they can, see if they can help you find that. Right, so we're going to a new browser window. And you need to type in FamilySearch.org.

Now, when you click on this, it takes us to their FamilySearch website, which is awesome. And then once this loads and we get in there--so Hank, do you think you can do this? FamilySearch.org, and then it was slash discovery. Forward slash discovery. That's right. FamilySearch.org, and then you're going to slash discovery.

We are just driving the tech people crazy-- Yeah, they're going, "Oh, my gosh." All right, I can see mine. I've got mine going right now. Can you guys see that on my screen? Look at this. This is brand-new, ladies and gentlemen. This is fantastic. It's a little part of the website called Compare-a-Face. And here's the thing. We want everyone, we want everyone to try this with us--not right now at this point. We want you-- Everyone might be doing it right now. Don't click into this yet. I want you to just watch us do it. So I am clicking into Compare-a-Face so you guys can maybe, if we can pull it up on the screen--here I am. I'm on the screen now. As you can see, it says, "Ever wonder where you got your good looks?" That's funny. And then I have put a photo in here. Now, you can actually take a photo today if you wanted to, right in here. And so I'm going to take a photo right now. Yeah, we're going to have a break after our session. This would be the perfect time to try this. Handsome, buddy, hey.

Oh, yeah. This is perfect. And it looks like we're going to use that photo. Now they're going to analyze the image, and what's going to happen--don't do this yet with me. Just watch for a minute. I have to accept the terms, and we never read those. So just go ahead-- Yeah, just accept. "Will you give us your children?" "Accept. Accept. Yes, I want to see who I look like." "Oh, my Social Security number." Which one is you? Well, I'm the bearded one. Start my comparison. Let's see what happens with this picture from the stage. I am so excited to see who you look like in your ancestry. Would any ancestor want to look like that? I don't know. We'll see what happens. Here it comes. Now it shows us-- Hey, look at that. I see it. I look like John Brooks Wasden. Never met, but if you click on him, what's neat is that it will now take me into-- It shows you how you're related. Oh, look. See, he's like my great-great-grandpa, it looks like, second great. Very cool. Now with this, I can go across the top menu bar here. It's got all these cool photos that somebody generously-- Somebody has done all the work for you. Already did the work. You could go into stories, documents. This is so cool. And we would ask that you guys not all do it right now at once, but you can do it throughout the day. But how fun is that, to compare a face and find out who you look like. I think I look like my actual--here's my grandpa, my Grandpa Redford. And that's a 37 percent. I guess--oh, no. It's going a little slow on you. We might have a lot of people online. Some people are not being obedient in this room. They don't care. They're like, "Well, everyone else won't, so I'll just quickly take a look. I'm so excited."

So there's all kinds of options here. I think we had some screenshots from doing this yesterday. Do they have-- How about this one? I guess I look like-- I can see it. I actually can see it. If you look close enough, you can see that you and Harriet have a lot in common. Look at that nose. I can see it. That's funny. So I guess we have the same nose. Yes, you do. And it's a good-looking nose. It's not a problem. I like Harriet. Love your nose. No problem with Harriet's nose there. I don't see a beard on her. But I see-- Oh, there's the beard. There's the beard, George-- Did you get to see that? So we hope that you'll--when we're done with this session, we hope that you'll go home and enjoy doing the Compare-a-Face when we're not all doing it at once. Hey, look, they've got Mary Ann. Oh, Mary Ann. Oh, my. Who can see it? Who can see it? Can you see it there? I can see the--Jason's wife is in the audience. She's going, "I hope I don't see it." She's like, "Is that how it's going to end? That's how he'll turn out." Oh, I bet Mary Ann is in the spirit world going, "I can't believe they're showing that picture of Jason." You're so funny. Well, why don't we go back to the app. Yeah, let's go back to the app. And Hank, do you want to lead us? Yes, I'm going to lead us in this next one. So let's see if I can get my phone back up here. So if you come back to the FamilySearch app, let's show you what the Family Tree app looks like. So I have it under my menu file. You can see it, Church, right in the middle. So if you want to go find this in the App Store, if it's not on your phone, feel guilty, and then go get it onto your phone. And you'll open it up, and it'll show your pedigree there. And you can come over to More. And I like this fourth option down. Does everybody see the fourth option down? It's called "Map My Ancestors." And what will happen now is, it'll show me anywhere in the world an ancestor had an event take place--a birth, a death, a wedding, a residence. If I back out, here's Utah. Of course I have a lot of happenings in Utah. That's where my family's from. But if we go back, you can start to see, on the East Coast, I had a lot happen there. And then I crossed the pond. Can you see me cross the pond here? And you'll see that I had all sorts of ancestors in Ireland and England. You can see everything that's there. So I have places to stay. When I go over, I'm going to go show up at some of these residences and show them the app and say, "Listen, my Grandma Agnes was born here, and I belong." And maybe I'll even speak to them in their native tongue. Yeah, like "Good day, mate." Yeah, no. That's Australian; that's not exactly what they're-- "Another shrimp on the barbie." No, no, that's also not-- Oh, that's Scotland. I think Irish would be like, "Top of the morning to ya. How are you doing here? All right, we're going to come here to Ireland. Can we fight for our land?

My grandfather, he fought for his land and his Lucky Charms." Lucky Charms. I sound like I fit right in, don't I? Oh, Lucky Charms. Remind me to never go on vacation with you. OK, this is just absolutely wonderful. Now do you see that for me now, this comes alive? Family history comes alive. My kids can come and say, "Oh, wow, Dad, look. We have ancestors all over England." So, long before we take a trip to England, which we hope to one day, we're going to go through all these and talk about some of these stories, friends and family members that we've had living in these places. What a connection we'll make to those lands. And you can back it up and go all across the world. You can see here, Denmark. There's Bendt Rasmussen I told you about earlier. I'd know his picture anywhere. There's Bendt right there. So this is something I want you to do at the break. I want you to get your Family Tree app and do a little "Map My Ancestors." Don't do it right now because I'm doing it, and it's important that we all watch me. But after this, you can go and see all the connections. Maybe you're going to make--I bet someone's going to make vacation plans here today at RootsTech based on "Map My Ancestors." That's very cool. We've just gone through the "discover" section of the technology that's available to us. And what's so exciting is that it doesn't just end there. "Discover" is something where we can discover more about our roots, about those around us--so cool. Now we're going to go in to gather, the gathering. And we want to start with our families that we have created. The tree begins with us, kind of a place. And people are surprised to hear that we were able to win a woman from-- Right, my wife's legally blind without her contacts. So that was helpful. Now a lot of us think family history has to do with great-great-grandparents, but family history can be what we do on Sunday just in our family. That is our family history. We're making history as a family. It doesn't have to be 100 years ago or even 50 years ago. It can be right now. And so would you like to see what our families look like right now? Have you guys--some of you--four people want to see it. OK, four of them. The rest of them are like, "Get on with the show, boys. Come on." Everyone's like, "I'm comparing my face to Agnes. I look like Mary Ann." Here's my little family. Oh, now that is a beautiful crew. We have a fun group here. Ella is our oldest, and the boys are Redford, Romney, and Royal--strong family. How in the world did you marry a girl that beautiful? I am shocked. My beautiful wife, Tami, and they're actually out here today on the front row. So there they are. Hi, you guys. Good to see you. And Hank? Yes, I have a family as well. Here they are. Here is the whole crew. I have my gorgeous wife, Sara, who is absolutely wonderful; our oldest, Madelynn, who I'm hoping you'll meet later; and then we have four boys, four boys. Any kids in here have all-boys or all-girls siblings? Any have them all-boys or all-girls siblings? That's Madelynn. She is our only girl. Look at her. And then she has four little brothers. That's Mason, with a twin on his shoulders. Elijah there in the middle, our little redhead. And then our twin boys, Rockwell and Steel. We actually have twin boys named Rock and Steel. What's interesting is--I've got to tell you this, Jason. My wife's maiden name is Savage, Sara Savage. Now, those of you who are older, you don't know that savage is now a new term for cool. When a kid sees something, they say, "Oh, that's savage." Well, all of my boys have the middle name of Savage. So they think they're the greatest thing ever. We have Mason Savage Smith, Elijah Savage Smith, Rockwell Sa--Rock Savage Smith, Steel Savage Smith. He sounds like a professional wrestler. I hope he doesn't have a lisp: "I'm Thteel Thavage Thmith." That one's going to be hard for him. But they are pretty excited about their middle name now. And there's some family history there that they're going to look into one day. That's very cool. And you saw that the boys are out here, but the girls are somewhere else. Yes, the boys are all out here with us. But where are the girls? Well, I think we need to bring them to the stage to help us. Are we OK with that? Yes, who would like to meet our eldest daughters? Please welcome Madelynn Smith and Ella Hewlett. Here they are. Come on, girls. Take a seat. Come, girls, come. You know when I look at these two, Jason, you know what I think? You must have good-looking parents, because look how gorgeous you are. They are. They're darling young ladies. And what's important about family history and genealogy is to not only understand these apps, but to make sure that people this age and even younger get into the idea of using this from a very early age. This is absolutely something your 8-, 9-, 10-year-old can do. They don't have to have you sitting there the whole time, watching over. Now, both of these girls are a little older. Maddie's 14, Ella is-- Just turned 12. Just turned 12. But even my 11-year-old son, my 8-year-old son, they could do this as well. I just didn't dare bring them up here on stage. It's a little unpredictable. So what are you going to show us here? Maddie and I are going to show you how to add a story. So is my phone up on screen? Let's make sure that Apple TV is on. We're going to mirror it here. So what Maddie and I are going to do is show you that we wanted to add a story to have forever on our records here. So Maddie, how do we do it? OK, so you first go on to your family tree. And right now, I'm going to do my dad. There's me, Henry Ryan Smith. And so you click on Memories right here, and you click the little plus sign in the corner. And you click Write Story. OK, now stop right there. I'm going to actually tell a story for you to enter. Now, I'm a storyteller. Who here likes stories? Who here likes hearing stories? Wonderful. Stories are fantastic. They're memorable; they connect our kids to--they can connect our kids to their ancestors. If we tell them these stories--I remember my dad telling me all about our ancestors who came on a boat across the ocean and traveled by handcart and by wagon. I remember these stories. So I want to share one with Madelynn and a couple thousand of our closest friends. So when I was a kid, my parents used to love to take us to visit cemeteries on Memorial Day. Does anybody visit cemeteries on Memorial Day? Now, when I was a kid, I've got to tell you, this wasn't my favorite thing. When I was 8, 9, 10, 11 years old--and now I'm going to put you into the head of an 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-year-old--I just thought a cemetery was a really awful park. There was a little bit of grass, but nowhere to run. And my parents were always telling me, "Stop, don't talk, walk there, don't walk there, be respectful." And I said, "Why don't we just go to a real park?" So it was frequently that we would take these long drives up to Heber City, where there was a lot--we had a lot of relatives who were buried. And we would go buy the flowers, and we would go set them on the headstones. We would often pick up my grandmother along the way, my mom's mom. We would pick her up. Now, I love my grandmother. But in the head of a 10-year-old, there's just anywhere I'd rather be than sitting in the back seat next to my grandma for hours at a time. In my 10-year-old head, I thought, "She's old, and I don't want to be touching someone that old. What if old is contagious?" So me and my brother both would be hugging our doors as our grandma sat in the middle. And she's, "Hello, dears," and we're like, "Oh, Grandma." So we would get to the cemetery. And then they would go do their thing, and I would wander around wasting time. Well, at one point--I must have been 10 or 11 years old--I was walking around the cemetery, and I noticed my grandmother. I still have this memory vividly. I noticed my grandmother, and she's talking to the ground. She's looking at the ground. She's using her hands. She's talking to the ground. And I thought, in my 11-year-old brain, "Oh, no. Grandma's lost it, and Grandma has imaginary friends." So I walked slowly over to her, and I went up and kind of watched her. And she noticed me, and she said, "Hello, Hank." And I thought, "OK, maybe she's not crazy." And I said, "Grandma, who are you talking to?" And I remember this moment. Here I am, decades later, but I remember it. She said, "I'm talking to my family." And I was a little confused by that. I thought, "Family? That's the grass, Grandma." And she came over and she put her arm around me. And she said, "These are my parents," and she pointed at two headstones. And then she moved over here, and she said, "This is my oldest brother, and this is my oldest sister." And I remember looking at the ground and looking at my grandma. And I'll be honest, it had never occurred to me in my little 11-year-old head that my grandma was once young. She'd been old ever since I'd known her, and I just figured she'd always been that old. She was born that old. She'd always been that way. And all of a sudden it occurred to me, "Grandma, you were once little," and I said it out loud. I said, "Grandma," and I looked at my family who were out walking around. There were my parents and my brother and sister. And I said, "Grandma, these are the people you went on vacation with. These are the people you ate dinner with." And she said, "I know, dear, I know." And I said, "Grandma"--and I honestly said this--"that's so sad. They're here." And my grandma, I think, cracked the funniest joke, Jason. And she said, "It's OK, dear. I knew they were gone before we got here."

And all of a sudden, that changed my view, not only of my grandmother but on family history, on seeing headstones. These were real people that breathed and loved and lived. And we have a connection to them. It really changed the way I view my own family and how fleeting moments are and also how I viewed family history. And so that's a story I want to share. So Maddie, how would we share it? Well, before we go there, we need your password because your phone went to sleep-- Oh, of course. And it knocked us offline. My phone is always going to sleep. While he's getting this back working, what's neat about what Hank just shared is that this is a story that can live on forever. And obviously, Hank is the type of person that might record it someday on a CD or something that you could get anyway. Not everybody gets that chance. However, today Maddie is going to tell us how it all works. I'll hold it. You go right ahead. OK, so you can enter a title and your story. And so my dad wrote it last night. I typed it up. Don't tell them I did it last night, sweetie. I was very prepared. Let's keep that. He's a BYU professor; I didn't want to say.

OK, can you select the whole thing, Mads? Let's see if I can. There we go. Hit Select All. Then hit Copy. So this is something I typed up earlier. But you don't have to type it up anywhere else; you can type it up straight in the app. So let's paste it right there. So now I have the whole story. Wow. And then, Maddie, let's give the story a title. Let's call it "Hank and His Grandma." I like that title, "Hank and His Grandma." No, no, no, not "Hank Is a Grandma." "Hank and His Grandma." Thanks, sweetheart. I'm not a grandma. That's Jason. You saw Compare-a-Face. That's Jason. "Hank and His Grandmother." Right there. Now what do we do, Mads? Can we save it? Yes. I hit Save. And? It's right there. How long, Jason, is that going to be in there now? Forever. That is going to be there forever. Who wants to put a story in this place forever, in a memory forever? Tell me you're going to do this. Turn to the person next to you or your family and say, "We are doing this today. We are doing this. We are going to add a story forever onto the app." That's incredible. Think about how permanent and wonderful that is. That was awesome. Thank you, Maddie. You did so good showing us that. And now let's give her a round of applause. That was cool. So proud. She has incredible parents.

Now what are you and Ella going to do? Well, we wanted to do something that's a little different. See, you have a written story that I would obviously love to hear you telling as well. That could be a possibility with this app. And so I'm going to share a story. And then I'm going to do something that I think we ought to keep recorded. And so you can actually record these right into the app, which is so neat. So some of you may have heard this, but as a kid, I found out that I was a singer, that I could do music and voices and so forth. And there was a teacher named Mrs. Rosalind Hall who heard me singing. And she had this accent. She said, "Who's singing in the hall? Who's singing in the hall?" because I'm singing in the hall at school like a normal kid does. You know, like-- [SINGING "THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT"] Waiting for people behind me to like-- [SINGING]

Didn't happen, but I wanted it to. And then Mrs. Hall said, "Who's singing in the hall?" And I said, "It was me. I'm sorry. I'll stop." And she said, "Don't stop. You have a gift. Come into my classroom." And so I went to her classroom, and I was very weirded out because I didn't ever go in the choir room. And I said, "What are we doing?" She said, "This is your audition. Sing for me." And I said, "What I supposed to sing?" She said, "A song you know all the way through." And so before we do what I'm about to do, Ella, will you please show us what you would do to record what I'm about to do? Yes. Are we online? Do we have you up on Apple TV? Go right ahead. So you want to click the Family Tree app. And then it pops up your whole family tree. Oh, is Mary Ann there? No. But I'm going to click my dad's face. And then there are some options up here, and you're going to want to click Memories. And in the bottom right-hand corner, there's a plus sign, and there is a couple of options. And you're going to want to click Record Audio. And there are some topics you can choose from, or you can just begin recording your own. So we can start-- So I'm going to record what I did for Mrs. Hall's audition. Are you guys OK with that? This is going to be fun. Do you want to hold on to the phone? Do you want to have it close to you? What do you think? Yeah, I think, well, it might pick it up pretty good in this room. You ready, Ella? Press start. Go. (SINGING) Christmas, Christmas time is near. Time for joy and time for cheer. [LAUGH] OK. That was your audition? That was my audition. I sang the whole song. But for today, what are we going to do when we're done? You can either pause it, or you can just click Done! And then you can name it. "Crazy Dad" or "Chipmunks." "Crazy Dad." Saved forever. You can go back and listen to it whenever you want. I wonder if it will work. In fact, can we hear it? Let's see. Do you want to press play? (SINGING) Christmas, Christmas time is near. Time for joy ... Yeah, it worked. Oh, my gosh. Let's see. Who's going to record a story today? Who can commit to recording a story today on the app? Let me see. I want to see hands. Who can commit to recording a story today on the app? You need to do this. This is a big deal. How wonderful for your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren to be able to go to the app and to see this. Wouldn't that be fantastic? And really neat, as well, is that not just your own story, but how about Mom or Dad or Grandpa or Grandma and just putting the recording--or the app right near them. And just say, "Talk." Just say, "Talk." Ask them any of the questions that are in there. And wow, I guess we're connected here. People are messaging me. I like these people. And so that's fun. Your cousins. "Get off the stage! You're embarrassing the family."

I'm just grateful she claims me. But we hope that you've been enlightened by the opportunities available here with the gathering section, because we started with "discover." Now we've gathered some of what's available currently to us. And let's please give a special round of applause to our big-time amazingly beautiful helpers-- Wonderful assistants. Maddie Smith and Ella Hewlett. Thank you, guys. Give me a hug. Good job. See you. Good job. All right. Stay away from boys. Stay away from boys. Forever. All right, let's talk for a minute about the why. Now we've shown you what you can do. And I picture, on a Sunday afternoon, I don't know if anybody's kids get bored on Sunday afternoon. Do anybody have kids that say, "I'm bored, I hate Sunday, I can't do anything"? This might be a fun Sunday activity to sit down with your iPad or sit down with your phone and say, "Let's take some pictures and add them to the app. Let's go find some old pictures of Grandma and Grandpa and add them to the app." I can see that being a wonderful family activity on a Sunday or even a Monday night. That's a big deal. That's going to be--those little life-changing moments in the life of a teenager or a young person. And really, by getting used to doing this, that keeps our children and ourselves more protected, I think, as far as our spirituality and what we're doing online, which apps we're choosing first. Because if we wake up and we just go to the same app every day or the same place, how neat is it if we create those habits early in our lives to say, "This is what I want to be known for. This is what I want to do for my family." This is a great gift that can be left to everyone. Discover, connect, and then lastly, this will lead us right to the temple. This, hopefully, will get our children involved in a way that you can say, "Now we can not only learn about our ancestors and be connected to our ancestors, but we can now help them in a way that they cannot help themselves. Let's take these people, these names, and let's go to the temple." Well, and what's really interesting to me about this conference is that I've been walking around the halls for the last week or so and in the expo hall as well. And how neat to see people that are so passionate about this and know it so well. And it's intimidating for me because I haven't done it very much. I mean, I'm not very familiar with it. So if I click on a person's face, I might be concerned I'm going to touch something-- I'm going to mess it up. I'm going to mess it up. You can't really mess it up. What's neat is, we have one of the great technology teams in the whole world putting this app together. And in fact, they're here. Guys, would you just raise your hand? We just want to give you a round of applause. They put this all together right here in front of us. Unbelievable. The amount of work involved in what we just showed you is incredible. We can't let these tools that they've built go to waste. We need to use them and get our kids using them. Well, I had a friend of mine come to the RootsTech conference for the last week, and she's from Houston. And we know from the news, if we weren't there, we know that in Houston this last summer, they experienced a humongous tragedy with the hurricane that came through. Now, my friend is a big-time family history buff. She loves doing it. And her name is Suzanne. She is so darling, and she was telling me with tears in her eyes, not that she'd lost her home--which she did; she lost her home--she was crying because she'd lost her family history records, pictures, journals, stories. And so her new mission to herself is to share that with others and say, "Get it online, get it in the app, take the time to record it and to make sure to scan in your journal pages and those irreplaceable things that would happen in that type of a scenario." So we don't want to put fear in you about doing this. But we want you to understand-- Maybe just a little. A little. We want to understand the urgency of why it's important. Absolutely. And someone might be worried, "I don't want to put my journal online." Well, guess what? None of this is available outside until you have passed on. So if you're nervous about putting certain things online, none of it is available for someone to click on until you are long since gone. So that's a benefit. You're protected. Your privacy is protected on this app. That's something that they've thought through. Well, and I really like the idea that we can now create our family history moving from where we are this very day. It's not too late. You can start now and start capturing everything that you possibly can. As a family, we got to a place where I was on the road so much, speaking and performing around the country, that I thought, "Wouldn't it be neat if we could create our own new way of doing things?" And so our family made the investment and bought a motor home. And have you ever packed six people into a car and driven across the country? Yeah, some of us here have. But this time it was a motor home that was 40 feet long. Some of us have a fully developed brain, and we realize that we wouldn't do that. Well, we decided, "Let's try this out. See if we could do it." So we went up through the Northern states in the summer a couple of years ago, and we hit the Church history sites. And I'll tell you, there's nothing more cool than to sit there for a family time or family night and click through those photos and relive those memories. And if they're not here and saved in a safe place, then we need to make sure to get that going. We, in fact, this last summer did the Southern states. And I'll tell you, never do the Southern states in the summer. We learned that the hard way, but beautiful places. It was just a very challenging trip. And we laugh about it now because we went through so many things. And I can't wait, because now that I know how to do this, to tell this story and record it here, to write it down and put it in here. Yeah, see, those stories aren't 100 years old. They're not 150 years old. But they're still family history. Let's make sure we get them preserved in this wonderful tool that we've been given. I've heard it said once that if you want to know how it feels in the spirit world to see a new temple open, think of yourself in the TSA security line at the airport or in the grocery line at the grocery store, in the line for the cashier. And as you're sitting there in line just waiting, and this line is immensely long, imagine when another cashier opens, another place opens, and everybody floods over to that side. And the work is speeding up, right? And that's perhaps--I never thought of it that way--that when a new temple opens, there's another flux of people who are heading over in the spirit world over to that side because it's enabling the work to go faster. Well, I think in the same way, it can be that way when our children and our families get involved with family history. There's now more and more places for revelation to come to get those names to where they need to be and to get those ordinances done. I'll tell you, one time my wife got on fire with the spirit of Elijah--in fact, our third son is named Elijah because of this period of time she went through where she was just on fire with family history. And then the twins came, and pretty much our entire lives went away. But for a while, she was just into family history. And I saw the veil thin in our family and in our home. In fact, there was one night--and my wife's not--she doesn't often tell crazy stories where they're unbelievable. She's very down-to-earth, very wonderful, very perfect, very amazing, very--can I keep coming up with incredible adjectives for her? Because she's perfect. But one night, she woke up in the middle of the night. It was in the middle of all this work she was doing. She woke up in the middle of the night, and she went into the next room. And I saw the glow of the computer come on. And I thought, "Oh, what is she doing?" So I kind of walked over, stumbled over. I said, "What's going on?" And she said, "I just need to do something." And she was sitting at the computer, and she said, "Go to bed." And I was glad. I was, "OK." So I went back to bed. And the next morning, I woke up and I said, "What was that about?" And she said, "I had the most vivid dream. I was in Europe." She said, "Somehow I knew I was in Europe. I'd never been there before, but I knew I was there. And this family came over the hill to talk to me. And they were very kind, and they said, 'How are you?' And I said, 'Fine, how are you?'" And then she said, "What are you doing here?" And this family said to her, "We're waiting for you. We're waiting for you." And she said at that moment she woke up, and she went immediately to her family history, started looking through. And with tears in her eyes, she told me, "Hank, I found that family. I found that family. And we're going to go to the temple." I just think, is that not what we want for our youth--those connections to heaven, those connections to their ancestors, that strengthening spiritual influence? We want that for our teenagers. But we have to be deliberate about it. We have to take the time to show them how to use these things--they might even show us how to use the actual device--and then make a habit of it and make it a habit in our family, that this is something our family does. We do family history in this family. We take it seriously, and we love it--not just for our ancestors of decades gone by and centuries gone by, but our own family history, our family vacations. We make sure that they're preserved for history. Thank you for that story. That was beautiful. As we're wrapping up now, consider for yourself, what is the promise of family history? What is that promise? Why should I put in this time? This time, effort. Truly, to know where we've come from helps us understand where we need to go. It brings our family closer together. It helps us make greater promises instead of just a goal--like, "I'm going to set a goal to do something, and hopefully I'll get into the family history." Make a promise instead today. So I say, why set a goal when you can make a promise? Because we all are promise makers and, hopefully, promise keepers. But no one can say it better, I don't think, than who we're about to introduce. Absolutely. Should we turn it over? Yeah, well, I would just say that parents, as much as you want, you can't be everywhere your teenagers are. And as much as I'd love to lock them in the temple until they're 25, we can't. And we need our children to have an extra spiritual protection. So as you listen to these prophetic promises, pay attention and ask yourself, "Do I really want these for my children? If I do, what do I have to do today to get those promises fulfilled?"

[VIDEO PLAYBACK] [MUSIC PLAYING]

While temple and family history work has the power to bless those beyond the veil, it has an equal power to bless the living. It has a refining influence on those who are engaged in it. This is how you and I become saviors on Mount Zion. There is a joy and satisfaction that is only understood through spiritual feelings. We are linked to them forever. As an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, I leave my blessing upon you with a promise that if you look beyond the bonds of time and mortality and help those who cannot help themselves, you will be blessed with more closeness and joy in your family and with the divine protections afforded those who are faithful in His service. As you respond in faith to this invitation, your heart shall turn to the fathers. The promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be implanted in your hearts. Your patriarchal blessing, with its declaration of lineage, will link you to these fathers and be more meaningful to you. Your love and gratitude for your ancestors will increase. Your testimony of and conversion to the Savior will become deep and abiding. You'll find not only protection from the temptation and ills of this world, but you'll also find personal power--power to change, power to repent, power to learn, power to be sanctified, and power to turn the hearts of your family together and heal that which needs healing. Your own knowledge and faith in the Savior will increase, and you will receive a more certain witness that life continues beyond the veil. I know that life continues beyond the veil. I know it. I invoke a special blessing on you parents, you youth, and you children, that each of you will find joy and be blessed in every other aspect of your life as you fulfill the obligation that has been sent from heaven. And I promise you will be protected against the intensifying influence of the adversary. As you participate and love this holy work, you will be safeguarded in your youth and throughout your lives. I testify that God the Father wants His children home again in families and in glory, and I promise you the inspired help that you seek and need. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

[END PLAYBACK]

Brothers and sisters, is there any greater blessing than those promised for our children? Like the serpent on the staff that Moses is holding up, it is available to us and available to our children if we will only put in the effort and grab hold of these promises and do the work that will bring these promises into our lives. So you have a break. We want you to compare a face. We want you to map your ancestors. We want you to find other relatives at RootsTech. Then we want you recording stories and typing up stories and adding photos to the app and get engaged in this process. If you do so, those promises and blessings that are available will come to pass. I know that they will. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Amen. What do we have coming up? President Oaks will be here at 1:00. We excuse you to lunch. And I'd like to, please, make sure to give a great round of applause to the amazing Hank Smith. Thank you. Thank you for being here.