Family Preserves

Earlier this week I had an Activity Day activity at my house.

The activity I had planned was about Genealogy, Family History, Journal writing etc.

We did our best to put together a pedigree chart, decorated little journals and also put together these little jars.

The paper says...

Family Preserves

Preserve your memories,

Seal them up well.

What you forget

You can never retell.

But a journal that's kept fresh on the shelf

Will help someone in the future-

Maybe even yourself.

Inside the jar are little slips of paper with questions to

help give you inspiration on your journal writing.

Now I can't take credit for this idea.

I don't remember who came up with it but I've used

it before when I was Home, Family and Personal Enrichment Leader.

It is such a cute idea however, I've had my jar for YEARS and have never put it to use.

Anyways, while putting together this activity,

I felt inspired to incorporate these questions and journal writing into this here blog.

After all, this is the closest thing I have to a journal.

Hopefully I will be able to add a post once a week where I answer a question.

It should be fun.

Instead of answering a question today I have decided to share a couple of experiences I have had that have shown me the importance of Journals.

First of all, most of you know my father past away when I was 7.

Well a couple of years ago my Sister Jill came across his journal that he kept while serving a 2 year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Indonesia. She has been typing up his journal in hopes to eventually give all 5 of us a copy. It's taken longer than she expected because half way thru the journal he starts writing in a different language. So she has had to use different language translators via Internet to interpret what he has written. I'm pretty sure she's close to being done. Anyways, Jill has shared with me that thru the process of typing out his journal she has really gotten to know him. She has enjoyed his humor, seen his personality, enjoyed his testimony and learned some fun stories from his journey as a missionary etc. I look forward to reading his journal and getting to know him as well.

Secondly, my Dad's (Paul) Sister, Aunt Linda, wrote a story about what she had learned about her ancestors journey from Denmark to Salt Lake City. She was very generous to share this story with our entire family and I really enjoyed learning about them and their testimony, trials, struggles, heartache and eventually joy of their conversion to the LDS church and journey as Pioneers. Their experiences have strengthened my testimony and I am extremely grateful for Aunt Linda's hard work, research, and inspiration to share what she learned with me.

These are just a few experiences that have influenced me to write more about who I am, what I believe, and what I would want my future family to know about me. I believe that you can learn so much from what your family has had to overcome or experienced in the past.

There is a line from one of the kids favorite movies (Night at the Museum) where Teddy Roosevelt says, "The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future". I'm not sure if he was quoting someone else or if he said it but every time I here that line it strikes a cord with me. Maybe it's because I enjoy History but I just think it's so true!

So CHEERS to Journals!