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Genealogy Corner… Family History Missions – Part 1

Part 1

FamilySearch is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For this, the Church calls and sets apart missionaries who work specifically with family history. With an increased emphasis on family history initiatives, the Family History Department is looking to add more missionaries either as couples or singles. There are three different types of family history missionary experiences to help accommodate a variety of life circumstances. Members can serve a family history mission away from home, close to home or directly from home.

Art Johnson is the Recruiting and Workforce Development Manager with FamilySearch. He said, “If a missionary wants to serve a full-time mission away from home for 18 to 24 months, we offer that experience. If they want to serve locally in their community, we have those service experiences available. If they want to serve from home, we offer that as well.”

I have been serving in the Worldwide Support Services for FamilySearch as a missionary for the last 53 months and I just agreed to renew until at least October 2016. Over the next few weeks, I will explain about these different service opportunities.

Away from home

One opportunity is found serving in Salt Lake City in the largest mission in the church, the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Missionaries there analyze genealogical records, assist patrons with their research, do photo duplication or work with FamilySearch products and services. Any needed training is provided. With so much work and with so many missionaries, there is plenty of room for creating relationships with those who serve nearby.

Other opportunities to serve away from home include the preservation of historical records in archives around the world by capturing digital images of historic records with digital camera equipment provided by FamilySearch. These digital images are then processed for indexing and made available to the public on FamilySearch.org. This is important because each year genealogical content is destroyed by floods, fires and other natural disasters and FamilySearch feels it is a race against time to get these records preserved. Full-time couples may also be assigned to serve in area offices helping promote family history efforts around the world.

Part 2 continues next week.

Interested members should visit the Family History Missionary website found at familysearch.org/mission. There, you can learn about the options that are available and, with that information, you can choose which of these options will be the best for you. You can also call toll-free 1-855-346-4774 or send an email to mission@familysearch.org.

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