Genealogy, I am Doing It

Something happened a couple of months ago that has really been on my mind.  It has to do with genealogy.  Someone made a comment to me about how the members of the church are commanded to do the work for their dead but nobody wants to do it....the genealogy part of it anyway.  People love going to the temple and having their spiritual experiences, etc., but where do they think the names come from that they do the work for while at the temple?  From people who do genealogy. 

Why don't members like to do genealogy?  What causes such negative feelings about doing genealogy?  I hear so many people say they don't have time to do it.  But, they have time to go to movies, watch tv or sports, go shopping, hang out with friends, and what not.  So, why not spend an hour or two a week working on finding your family so they can be with you for eternity as well?  I hear people say they don't do genealogy because they don't know how.  Well, it's not hard to learn.  Most wards have family history consultants who offer their knowledge and skills for free, of course.  They WANT to show you how to find your ancestors.  They WANT to share in your excitement when you find someone you've been looking for!  They want to fulfill their calling.

So, over the last 3 months or so, I've had this nagging feeling that I need to get back to working on our genealogy.  I've really enjoyed watching the tv show "Who Do You Think You Are?"  It's produced by the folks at Ancestry.com.  It's been really interesting seeing these celebrities learn more about their ancestors and the stories of their lives.  It's helped spark my interest again in genealogy. 

Last weekend there was free unlimited access to the Federal Census images on Ancestry.com.  I decided this was a good opportunity for me to try getting back into doing genealogy.  What a great decision!  I had such a great time looking at the censuses and finding people that I had in my family, well, really, Melon Man's!  The only problem was that all of my genealogy files are on a zip disk from back when Mr. Spock was around and the zip drive went with him.  I've been trying to find anybody in the ward or elsewhere that has a zip drive that could burn this disk to a CD or move the files to a flash drive, but to no avail.  I was so sad...here I am, trying to do what I'm supposed to do to redeem the dead and I can't even access my files!  For now, I just wrote everything down that I found and saved files to my computer for source documentation.

So, I searched and searched online for an inexpensive new zip drive.  Nope.  Searched Craigslist...everyone wanted too much and they were all so far away.  So...I turned to eBay.  Yep, found a couple!  Good prices.  Good shipping!  And...one auction was over in 18 hours!  So, I watched it and watched it and at just the right moment, I bid!  It took a few more quick bids, but I ended up winning!  So, for $41 (shipping included) it was all mine!  It will be here in a few days and I can't wait to load up my gedcom file with all my names and start getting to work again!