Family History Is Any Activity That Connects Families Past, Present, or Future

Connecting your family to their ancestors is much more than just adding names and relationships into a family tree. Perhaps the most fun part of family history is knowing your ancestors, who they were, what they did, their struggles, their accomplishments, their traditions and their heritage.

The new FamilySearch.org/Africa website provides a feature for recording your memories, those of your family, or any memories that can be remembered for your ancestors. You can use the FamilySearch Africa app with the microphone on your smartphone to record the stories, or you can use your phone or computer to write them. This allows memories to be shared with any of your living family and relatives. Those stories are preserved for your children and grandchildren to experience and learn from.

How to access the Record Your Story feature

Click on “Record Your Story” before you log in or click on the three horizontal bars in the top corner of the app or website. That menu has a “Record Your Story” link.
“Record Your Story” provides many categories of topics to select ideas for sharing stories. Opening one of the categories provides a list of suggested questions you can select to record your memories. If you don’t see a question you like, you can create your own by adding a title and starting to write or record your story. Up to five minutes can be recorded.

Let’s look at just a few categories:

In the “Heart and Soul” category, one of the questions is “What is something really hard you’ve gone through?” Imagine how powerful sharing your story about a challenge you have gone through and overcome could be to your children or future posterity. They can learn from your experiences things that can help them overcome their own trials. You can share things like what caused the trial to occur, a choice that might have done differently, or something that was out of your control, like the death of a parent. You could share how you felt, whether you had to face it alone or if a family member or close friend supported you and how. What changes did you have to make in the process of overcoming your challenge? You could share how you relied on God and how you felt that He supported you or answered your prayers. Perhaps a priesthood blessing provided added support and strength to overcoming the hardship. Can you imagine how what you share could strengthen and support others by just knowing what someone else has overcome? They might think, “So can I, especially with God’s help.”

“Record with Friends” is a fun category that you can do with a friend or group of friends. This can add a lot of interest to a story because it can provide not just your opinions but those of your friends. Their unique differences in perspective on a shared experience can add a lot of insights that you may have missed or didn’t experience personally.

Consider the “Spiritual” category. This not only lets you record and preserve special spiritual experiences, but the questions can lead to reflection and pondering of your personal spirituality. For example, “When did you realize that you had a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ? How did you know?” Having a testimony may be something you know intuitively but had never focused on how or when it occurred. You might not have thought about what led you to a testimony of the Savior’s gospel.

Sometimes just pondering and recording an answer to such a question can bring new insights and reinforce a truth more deeply within your heart. It can also help strengthen your ability to share your testimony with others. These recordings of your spiritual experiences can become a strong influence for your posterity if they are shared.

Finally, you can use the app to record memories of one of your grandparents or other relatives if you have an opportunity for a visit. This is especially important if you don’t know if you’ll have another chance to visit in the future. Capture their memories of their ancestors whom you never knew or met. What relationships and special things do they remember about them so that you can know and understand their lives better? When and where did they live? What are their birth and death dates? Think how precious it is to have memories of a loved one in their own voice that you can listen to after they have passed on.

These memories can often lead to opportunities to add these relatives into your family tree and do temple ordinances for them, thus providing blessings to your ancestors waiting on the other side of the veil for these sacred experiences that they never had an opportunity to receive while they lived on the earth.

Follow the counsel from one of our Apostles: “Let the adventure of family history be intentional and spontaneous. Call your grandmother. Look deeply into the eyes of that new baby. Make time—discover eternity—at each stage of your journey. Learn and acknowledge with gratitude and honesty your family heritage. Celebrate and become the positive and, where needed, humbly do everything possible not to pass on the negative. Let good things begin with you.”

Remember, anytime you want, you can read or listen to the stories you have saved in FamilySearch. This tool is truly a blessing to help establish better family connections and help your family and posterity remember their heritage. There are so many possibilities and opportunities to share important memories, principles, life lessons, and the courage, strength, and challenges they faced, in order to find hope and resilience to help sustain your current family and future posterity.