Personal Identifiers

I am one of several in my ward who is taking a six-week “Basic Genealogy” class during the Sunday School hour.

I am so new at this.

Today in our class we learned about how to get started with the new Church Software, FamilySearch.

We learned about gathering information about our ancestors.

The more information one can collect and record is very important when it comes to submitting those names to perform temple ordinances.

The information that is needed:

• The given name or surname of ancestor (include maiden name if female)

• The person’s gender

• Enough information to uniquely identify the person such as:

• Important date

• Places

• Names and relationships of other family members

I decided to call that type of information: Personal Identifiers.

So the example discussed in class was to take a name like: John Smith.

Plugging in that name into FamilySearch may bring up thousands and thousands of men with that same name.

But then, when you input John Smith’s name with his death date in 1825, the number of men who fit that name with that date now reduces to the hundreds.

Next, to that information, you add a place. Let’s take Minnesota for example. Now the number of men fitting those unique, Personal Identifiers, and simplifies the pool even more.

The, by adding a spouse’s name, Anna Marie Jackson, you are most likely to get THE person in your family.

Unique, Personal Identifiers.

We all have them.

Our ancestors have them.

Our posterity will have them.

Personal Identifiers are part of who we are, who we were, and who we can become.

And as I contemplated this whole process of finding our ancestors by way of collecting their unique, Personal Identifiers, I realized why the Lord says, “Remember, the worth of a soul is great in the sight of God.”

It’s because He knows us.

He knows us by our own unique, Divine Personal Identifiers.

Which sometimes cannot be seen by others, let alone by us.

But those Divine Personal Identifiers are there.

Present.

Ready to be discovered.

Ready to be put into action.

And FamilySearch is one way we can find those Personal Identifiers for our ancestors and perhaps even for ourselves!