My mother-in-law (who was supposed to leave on a mission to the U.K. in June) and I had a “family history tour” girls trip planned for late March.  We have been wanting to go meet some cousins that we were able to contact through ancestry DNA and see if they could help us put together some missing pieces of her family history.

We had the whole trip planned, we would fly into Northern California and make our way down to Southern California all-the-while finding grave sites and descendants. It was going to be great! The kind of a good time that my husband likes to poke fun at, but that truly fills my cup.  We ended up having to cancel our trip, because of COVID, and we were super bummed about it.

Skip to a couple of weeks ago. I logged onto family search to find a message from Brenda, a potential  cousin I had written to months ago. She wrote me letting me know that yes she was the granddaughter of Aunt Ruth. She let me know that she had recently lost her 14 year old son, and that through that experience she has found her way to searching out her family history, but not quite sure how to go about it.

Through our correspondence back and forth I learned that she grew up in a community with a large number of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She was always aware of the church, but never interested in joining. After the loss of her son, she opened her heart to the missionaries, and weeks later was baptized. She has since been fairly active, and was even able to go to the temple once, about a year ago to do Baptisms for her now deceased son.  

There are angels on both sides of the veil working to accomplish this work.  I feel so honored to play a little role in this experience.  I know that we are supposed to meet with Brenda when we finally make it to our California Family History tour. I hope to be able to help Brenda remotely with discovering her family line. I know that God’s timing is not mine, and that we all have miracles happening around us all the time. I hope to be able to see the miracles around me.  This work is unreal! I love Family History. I love my ancestors, and I love my Heavenly Father! 

–Allison Davis, Temple and Family History Consultant