Save The Date - General Womens Meeting

We are looking forward to our next General Womens Meeting.  This is for all Relief Society sisters, young women and Primary girls ages 8+.  It is a wonderful opportunity to gather together to mingle over a light meal and then be taught and uplifted as we view the broadcast of the General Womens Meeting held in Salt Lake City.

Postcards should be available in your ward and branches.  Please consider sharing one with sisters you visit teach who are less active or maybe need an extra bit of encouragement.

The General Womens Meeting is available to watch on the BYU channel or through lds.org and if you are unable to join us at the Stake Center, we hope you will still join us in watching the meeting via these other options.

Last fall, when we met together for a meal before the broadcast, we had over 200 sisters, young women and girls join us.  It was a delight to see so many from around the stake coming together.  It is an opportunity to strengthen friendships and begin new ones.

Details
General Womens Meeting
Saturday - March 26, 2016
6:45pm Light Meal - 8pm Broadcast
Women ages 8+
Sunday Dress
Held at the Stake Center - 4100 Saint Johns Lane, Ellicott City

How Has Relief Society Blessed Your Life?

Susan Reinsch - Stake Relief Society President - Columbia 1 Ward

Relief Society has been an important part of my life.  Through it, I have had many opportunities to serve and learn from wonderful women who are striving in all aspects of their lives to follow the Savior.  It is interesting to look back and see how Relief Society has changed over the years.  My first calling in Relief Society was to teach the Cultural Refinement lessons.  I learned so much from studying the lives of sisters all over the world and sharing what I had learned in Relief Society each month. Today it is wonderful and fulfilling to be in Relief Society meetings where we study the teachings of our prophets.  I enjoy hearing the testimonies of my sisters and to know of their love for the gospel and the Savior.  I have made wonderful friends and learned many new skills to better my life and the lives of my family.  I have learned ways to improve my marriage and to have a better relationship with my husband and with our children.  I am so grateful that our Father in Heaven saw fit to organize the women in His church and that Joseph Smith felt that the Church was not fully organized until the women were also organized.  Thank you, Sisters, for your examples and love for each other and for all the children of our Father in Heaven that you influence each day.  Thank you for your testimonies of Jesus and Christ and for living it so valiantly.

Cheri Meiners - Stake Relief Society Counselor - Columbia 1 Ward

For me, one of the amazing things about Relief Society is meeting regularly with women who have similar ideals and goals--learning and serving together with them.  Through my Relief Society callings, including Visiting Teacher, I’ve been influenced by the goodness of many women; I've gained homemaking skills; have learned to reach out to people beyond my comfort zone; and I've grown spiritually as I come to understand my worth and role as a ‘daughter in God’s kingdom’.

Having lived in Maryland for many years, I've witnessed the strength of the sisters in this stake.  Though we are spread out geographically, I feel buoyed up just by associating together and witnessing the way you are living the gospel-- gaining knowledge, developing character, raising strong families, working to enrich our community, and serving others.  We are more than a social circle for one another.  I know that we are organized under the power of the priesthood to fulfill the important purposes of increasing our faith and personal righteousness, giving strength to our families, and reaching out to provide relief wherever it is needed.  It's a blessing to be part of this organization with you!

Marsha Searle - Stake Relief Society Counselor - Ellicott City Ward

Relief Society has blessed my life with inspiration and joy.  The strong spirit which I feel when I am there and the things which I have learned from my fellow sisters witness of the gospel has lifted, strengthened, and inspired me to grow, endure, and thrive.  I am so grateful for its influence in my life and the great power of its faithful sisters.

Did You Know? Family Search/FamilyTree and Ancestry Tools Together

Recently our ward Relief Society had a lesson focused on helping sisters understand how to use the amazing family history tools available to organize, research and prepare our ancestors names for temple work.  As I listened to the questions and comments, it was evident that there is a great deal of confusion about these tools - how to access them, what to use them for, what not to use them for, etc.

I'm certainly not an expert, but I do have a fair amount of experience in using both Family Tree (as found on familysearch.org) and Ancestry.com.  There are other tools available that the Church has partnered with, but for most people I think that covering the basics of FamilyTree/familysearch.org and Ancestry.com is a good place to start.  My hope is that this post will be enough to point sisters in the right direction and maybe answer a few questions in the process.

What is Family Tree?

Family Tree is an online program found on the Church's site familysearch.org.  It was created from the records submitted to the Church over many years from various sources.  As an example - when I was a teenager (1970's) every family in our Stake was asked to submit a 4-generation pedigree chart with family group records.  Those records were all sent to Salt Lake and became part of the Church family history archives.  When those archives were digitized, they eventually became part of Family Tree.  That's only one example of a source, but it gives you an idea - and hopefully suggests to you that just because a person/or family and their info is there in "your" Family Tree doesn't mean it's necessarily accurate.  I know my parents tried to submit accurate records back then, but there were bound to be errors made.  Their research was only as accurate as the records they were able to access and those were not nearly so numerous as today.

Family Tree was created as a collaborative tool.  It enables family members around the world to add to, correct, document and work together in research in order to create a more accurate family tree.  The purpose of doing that is two fold: first, fix the errors that exist within the Church records as shown in  Family Tree; and second, find the ancestors who need to have their temple ordinances completed.

The biggest error we can make is to forget that Family Tree is a collaborative tool.  It is not our personal online family tree.  It belongs to anyone that links to you through all those branches on your tree - 1st, 2nd, 3rd cousins, three times removed - they all can contribute and change the data there.  Hopefully, they and you will provide your sources when they or you make those changes and corrections.  By providing the sources, you allow others to understand your work and then build on it.

Family Tree is essential in temple work.  It is the tool whereby we identify ancestors and then prepare their information and print the cards that we take with us to the temple.

Family Tree is linked to familysearch.org and does provide quick research ability for those people in your tree.

If you are new to Family Tree the best place to start is by clicking "Get Help" in the upper right corner and then clicking "Quick Start to Family Tree" in the drop down menu.  There are other helps in that menu to get you going and answer questions.  Each ward/branch in our Stake should have Family History Consultants that can also help you get going.  And our Columbia Maryland Family History Center  and the Family History Center in Hampstead are great resources for help as well.

What is and Why use Ancestry.com?

Ancestry is a privately owned genealogy and family history company.  Among other things, they provide members the ability to create a family tree online and to use their amazing amount of online records.  About a year ago, the Church created a partnership with Ancestry that allows Church members to have a lifetime free membership to Ancestry.  What does that mean?  Well previously, I would pay around $300 per year to maintain my membership to Ancestry.  Now I have all of what I had before - only without the annual membership fee.  AND in that partnership they have embedded software into the family trees that allow members to connect their ancestry trees with their Family Tree on familysearch.org.  Which saves time!

The ability to create a family tree online - 

Since your tree on Family Tree/familysearch.org isn't yours exclusively (remember it's really everyone's tree) - you need a place to build your own family tree.  On Ancestry you can build that tree and choose whether to make it private or public and whether to invite other family members to be editors.  It is a place to have a working tree - one that you change and correct as you work through the questions in your family line.  Then when you are confident in the work identifying a person/family, you can easily connect that information to Family Tree/familysearch.org and, using that tool, move forward with temple ordinances.

Use their amazing amount of online records -

While the Church family history records are huge and their indexing efforts are providing more and more online resources every year - the records available through Ancestry are truly astounding and serve to complement what can be found on the Church's site.  Admittedly Ancestry is not the only good online record search engine worth using and many records may still need to be researched offline - however since the records at Ancestry are now available to Church members for free - in not using this resource you are really missing out on something that could simplify your family history research significantly.

I hope this helps a little at least.  I know I've only covered a bit of what could be asked & answered and I've only covered Ancestry.  But the Church has other partners in the family history efforts.  You can learn more about the others at https://familysearch.org/ask/#/partners/ - found under the "Get Help" tab on familysearch.org.  Also from our ward Relief Society discussion was the following handout -

D&C 110:14 & 15 reads:

Behold, the time has fully come, which was spoken of by the mouth of Malachi—testifying that he [Elijah] should be sent, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord come—

To turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers, lest the whole earth be smitten with a curse—

I have a great love for family history work and the temple ordinances that are associated with the seeking of my ancestors.  We have truly been blessed with the resources to hasten the work for our kindred dead.  I know they are waiting for us to turn our hearts and our time to them.

- Lorie Pierce

(with special thanks to Beverly Christensen)

A Legacy of Faith and Service - Post Six

Sister Deon Tait served as the Stake Relief Society President from Spring 2010 to Fall 2012.  She had recently served as the Relief Society President in Hampstead Ward and brought with her the understanding and experience gained in that calling.  She clearly knew the burdens the ward/branch leaders faced and she worked to be a support to them.  I was personally blessed by her willingness to share her time and perspective with me as I continued to serve as a ward president.

Deon had a great concern and interest in the young single adult sisters in our stake.  She spent time talking with ward/branch presidents and trying to assess how the needs of the YSA sisters could be better met.  The great concern was how many of these sisters were active during their time as young women, but fell away from activity after transitioning to Relief Society.  Her presidency, working with the Stake Young Women presidency, focused good efforts on helping ward/branch Relief Society and Young Women presidencies have a better approach to helping young women in their transition.  It was during her time as president that the Columbia YSA Branch was formed.  She encouraged all the young single adult sisters in our stake to participate there.  She felt it was going to provide them opportunities that would lead them to strengthen their commitment to the Gospel.

Deon was also concerned about Provident Living.  She wanted to help the sisters in the stake achieve a higher level of preparedness - of self-reliance in all aspects of their lives.  The Stake Relief Society activities planned by her presidency reflected those concerns and she used those opportunities to set an example of helping young women look toward Relief Society by including the Laurels throughout the stake in the invitation to attend.  They also continued the effort to involve sisters from all around the stake in the planning and carrying out of these activities.

During the Spring of 2011, their presidency encouraged the sisters in the stake to plant gardens and in the Fall of 2011 sisters from all around the stake shared their results.  Many sisters took the invitation to heart and found blessings to themselves and their families.

As a presidency they wanted to hear from the wards/branches what the needs were and tried to help meet any needs they could through the classes and activities offered on a stake level.  Deon, her presidency and secretary looked for ways to use the always improving technology as a tool and set a great example to ward/branch leaders of effective use of these tools.  It was a result of Deon's forsight that this Stake Relief Society blog and the Stake Relief Society Facebook group came to existence.  She could see the benefit of reaching out through social media to the sisters scattered across the stake.  It's not been too many years since her presidency was released and we are still seeing the blessings of their faith and service as we continue to use technology as a tool to help us reach out to one another in our sisterhood.  Deon has since moved away from Maryland, but thanks to that very technology she encouraged us to learn to use and use wisely, we are able to stay in touch.  She is still serving and blessing the lives of sisters in her sphere.

- Lorie Pierce