Quick, Informative Guide Helps Church Members Find Family Names for the Temple

(Image from Barnes & Noble)

If there's one thing members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are known for (besides not drinking coffee), it's their love of genealogy/family history.  The Church has long encouraged and supported its people in exploring their roots, seeking out their dead, and performing eternal ordinances by proxy for their deceased family members in its temples.  To help in this effort, the Church created FamilySearch.org, a family tree-building website that houses a massive database of records and other information to help people create complete and accurate trees.  The site is collaborative, user friendly, and totally free for all users (although only Church members can access the site's temple features).  If you are interested in family history, it's a website you simply must check out.  You will likely be stunned by the amount of information about your ancestors already in the database.  FamilySearch really is incredible.

Because of the Church's long emphasis on the importance of doing family history, one of members' biggest frustrations is not being able to find ancestors whose temple work has not already been done.  It can be difficult to comb through all the different branches and generations of one's family, which is why apps like Take a Name (or FamilySearch's Ordinance Ready feature, which can be found under the "Temple" tab) have been created.  These are useful shortcuts, but it's also important to learn how to build and search your family tree properly and thoroughly.  

To help people do just that, Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder—the genealogists behind Family Locket—wrote Find Names for the Temple: A Step-by-Step Method for Success.  I'm not going to lie, their approach is methodical, even tedious.  However, it is very thorough.  By following their instructions, you can ensure the information you put into your tree as well as the information you get out of it (including finding names for the temple) is both complete and accurate.  Although the effort might seem exhaustive at the outset, you will be saving yourself time and frustration in the long-run.  Find Names for the Temple is aimed at beginners, but it does assume a bit of familiarity with FamilySearch.  It also focuses mostly on finding names, so it's not a comprehensive guide on how to use the website (never fear, though—FamilySearch offers excellent tutorials as well as 24/7 customer support).  Dyer and Elder are experienced, passionate genealogists and that enthusiasm shows in this quick, easy-to-read guide.  If you're having trouble finding names for the temple, whether you're a beginner or a seasoned researcher, definitely check out this book (as well as the Family Locket website).  I've been working on my family history for years and I still learned a lot from this very helpful volume.

(Readalikes:  I've never really read a family history guide before, so I'm not sure what to compare this one to.  You?)

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To the FTC, with love:  I received a finished copy of Find Names for the Temple from its very generous authors in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you!