—Jad Mills, Ridgeview 1st Ward
Family History Is Linking God’s Family Together One Person At A Time. My mother taught me that . Her life’s mission was to unite her family in Eternity. From the time she joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as a young mother, she began to search out her ancestors and to share their stories with her children. She gathered the ancestors’ stories and passed them down. She wanted her children to know from whom they came, what their ancestors were like, and what they did. And she wanted to perform ordinances for her ancestors in the Temple.
My mother didn’t much like to travel, but she made exceptions for family history trips. Mostly these were road trips from Oregon to Salt Lake City to visit the Church genealogy archives. But she drove as far as New Mexico to her grandfather’s birthplace to search the cemeteries until she could find any sign of his parents. She even traveled as far as Indiana to meet some distant cousins and learn the family stories they kept. These trips represented a significant investment of time and money from a woman who raised six children with meager financial resources and very little time to herself.
All the time, she was puzzling out the missing information and looking for each missing link in the family tree. She wasn’t satisfied just to find her direct line ancestors. She wanted to find each child. That is how she found Aunt Rita.
No one knew about Rita. For more than six decades, Aunt Rita had been to her biological family nothing more than a longer than usual gap in births for her grandmother, who had a particularly prodigious number of children. This gap didn’t set right with my mother. No one had ever known her grandmother to have lost any children. But there was this gap in the family group sheet where my mother was certain someone should be. The gap was long enough that my mother was convinced that grandmother must have lost an infant rather than a pregnancy. My mother searched for years without finding anything. And then one day, after years of searching, she found what she was looking for. Finally, a birth record for grandmother’s missing daughter Rita.
But the mystery was not over. There was no death certificate. For an infant’s early death when grandmother had not moved, one would expect to find the death certificate in the same or similar place as the birth certificate. But there was none. We knew now where baby Rita was born. But where did she die?
After much searching, somehow, my mother discovered what happened to Rita. Though not one of her many brothers or sisters knew she existed, Rita was born healthy decades ago. But Rita was not the child who died. Rita was the child who lived. Because of her circumstances, and those of her family, she was raised in institutions rather than with her family. For decades, Rita had lived completely separated from her family. She did not know any of them, and none of her siblings even knew she existed. After grandmother had passed away, decades before, Rita’s very existence had been lost to the knowledge of any of her family. Until my mother found her decades later
Before Christmas that year, my mother made another family history journey. This time, she traveled to meet Aunt Rita and to introduce Aunt Rita to her own siblings for the very first time. Imagine living six, seven, or even eight decades before discovering you have a sister you never knew. Imagine living those many decades before discovering you have a family. Tears were shed. Stories were shared. Pictures were taken. Decades of separation and loss began to heal.
When I think about this story, I think about how much Heavenly Father cares for each one of His children. Every last one. Not a single one is lost to Him. He knows where they are. He knows who they are, even when they don’t know. Even when their family doesn’t know. This past summer, shortly after the anniversary of my own mother’s passing, I was in the Sealing Room in the Temple. I was there to help someone else with uniting their ancestors in Eternity. When one particular family with whom I have no formal relationship was sealed together, I was overcome with an incredibly powerful feeling. God was uniting this family. God was uniting His family. And none of the children are lost to Him. He does not give up. And neither can we.