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Returning Home

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I looked out the window of our bedroom early one morning to see the full moon over Veitongo Beach . Mike and I spent the last ten days with my parents, my five siblings and their spouses in the land of my childhood, and I keep thinking about how much this place changed while somehow staying exactly the same. Most of my work as a family historian focuses on tracing names through records that go back generations. This trip flipped that. Instead of searching for the story, I walked back into where it began. Fifty-seven years ago this month, my parents, younger sister, and I left the United States for a small island in the South Pacific. My dad had just finished his bachelor’s degree in English, and his first job was teaching at a private school on the island of Tongatapu, Tonga. My parents packed up our belongings, gathered my younger sister and me, and flew away from family and everything familiar, stopping in Hawaii and Fiji along the way. This is the place where I first learned about G...
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One Question, Three Continents, One Family

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Opera House and Harbour Bridge at sunset Mike and I spent the last few days in Sydney, and I keep thinking about how we got here. As a genealogist and family historian, my goal is never just names and dates. It is discovering the stories that connect families across generations and build relationships. Two years ago, I reached out to a DNA match while trying to solve a mystery: Why did my great-aunt die in a country I could not connect her to? Ancestry confirmed that Mandy and I shared my paternal grandmother’s line. Mandy turned out to be the granddaughter of my great-aunt, and she filled in the missing pieces. Two sisters left England and built lives on opposite sides of the world.  Lisle Sisters (left to right): Jean, Pippen, Mary, Olga, and Betty Mary immigrated to North America and Olga immigrated to Australia My grandmother immigrated to Canada in 1949 and later to the United States. Her sister sailed for Australia in 1961 as one of the Ten Pound Poms, British immigrants who ...
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Carpe Diem!

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I used to introduce my seminary students to the Old Testament with a scene from the film  Dead Poets Society . Perhaps you remember it. Robin Williams as John Keating leads his students out of the classroom and into the hallway lined with trophy cases and photographs of alumni long gone. He has a student read a few lines of poetry and then invites the class to lean in close to those faded faces staring out from decades past. "Now I would like you to step forward over here and peruse some of the faces from the past. You’ve walked past them many times. I don’t think you’ve really looked at them. "They're not that different from you, are they?" Keating observes. "Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you. Their eyes are full of hope, just like you." Then comes the hard question: "Did they wait until it was too late t...
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My Utah Pioneers

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Many states in the United States have established their own state holidays. These holidays usually commemorate an important event or person that is significant to the state. Examples of such holidays are Mardi Gras in Louisiana, Cesar Chavez Day in California, Kamehameha Day in Hawaii, and Alaska Day in Alaska.  Utah’s state holiday, Pioneer Day, is celebrated every year on 24 July. It commemorates the arrival of the first group of Latter-day Saint settlers to the Salt Lake Valley on 24 July 1847. It is a time to celebrate all people who contributed to building the state, regardless of religion or background.  Oxford English Dictionary defines a pioneer as “one who goes before to prepare or open up the way for others to follow.” 1   For me, Pioneer Day is a time to remember the courage, sacrifice, devotion, and perseverance of those in my family who entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 and beyond. On this Pioneer Day, I honor my own Utah pioneers - the firsts in each line...
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Unity revisited

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  photo by Olisaknit, Etsy  (https://www.etsy.com : accessed 24 January 2022) I awoke with a heavy heart following events of the past couple of days, and this blog post I wrote last year came back to mind. Here we are nearly a year later, and it often feels like the divisiveness has only continued to escalate. So many I care about are feeling hurt and pain. Pondering on this, the words of a song came to mind this morning. It’s like a symphony Just keep listening And pretty soon you’ll start To figure out your part Everyone plays a piece And there are melodies In each one of us Oh, it’s glorious 1   Music speaks to my soul, and I love the symphony analogy used in this chorus. The word symphony derives from the Greek word symphonia, which means agreement or harmonious sound. 2 The whole point of a symphony is bringing various musicians and instruments together to create something beautiful. There are times when small solos enhance the piece, but generally, the best symph...
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"Light cleaveth unto light"

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Artwork by Katie Lee I heard the panic as soon as I answered the phone. I jumped in my car and reached them a few minutes later. Still visibly shaking, they recounted their experience. Three mornings a week, these sisters met with a lady I will call Sally. Sally had heard the missionary lessons from at least eight sets of missionaries over the years, and these sisters were the most recent to teach her. They began by teaching her the lessons, but she asked if they could read the Book of Mormon together instead. She eventually asked if they could move their meetings from the church building to her home, so their meeting location changed without anyone else knowing. Unbeknownst to these sisters, all kinds of questionable activity riddled Sally’s neighborhood. Following their meeting with Sally that morning, the police stopped these cute sisters, invited them to get out of their car, and asked to search their vehicle. In their innocence, they did not realize what was going on and asked the...
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What We Are Becoming

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  Years ago, I belonged to a very diverse book group. We all came from different walks of life. Some were young, and others were well beyond retirement, with a few sprinkled in between. We all belonged to different churches. Our eclectic group had just two things in common: we were all active in our chosen religion, and we loved to read. Our book chats often bled into religious discussions, and I learned so much about my own beliefs because they were willing to share theirs. I always walked away from our time together with my perspective expanded and with something to ponder. I was part of this group the first two years I taught seminary, and they often asked about my class when I saw them. The New Testament was the course of study in my first year. Our book group met the week I taught 1 Corinthians 15, so I asked what verses 40-41 meant to them at one point during our discussion. 40 There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and ...
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