This evening I was invited to speak to women in a neighboring Stake about the importance of writing and recording our lives. I had a lovely time visiting with them.
Here are the notes I spoke from:
Journal Presentation, Jan Kocherhans’s 10th Ward, Orem
14 April 2026
I’m here today to talk to you about Journal Writing!
Get to know them a bit, ask about their journals.
Who’s behind? Who’s caught up, etc.
I’ve thought a lot about the prophet Malachi, the last prophet in the OT, who’s prophecies show up in every single one of our standard works in Epic Moments:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest the whole earth be smitten with a curse (Malachi 4:5-6) (or utterly wasted at his coming D&C 138:48).
These words have been repeated in every dispensation of time, to every people. They were some of Moroni’s first words to Joseph Smith.
I used to think being Utterly Wasted meant that at the end of the world, we’d see nuclear fallout with peoples eyes falling out of their sockets and flesh falling from their bones. Now I think it means something very different.
A wonderful storyteller name Donald Davis said,
“We are what we remember.
If we don’t remember something, it’s as if it never happened.”
When we write in our journals or record our stories, we are literally Saving Lives–the lives of those who live in those stories.
When the memory is gone, it’s as if those events never happened, or those people never lived.
It’s like our lives or theirs are utterly wasted.
If I try hard my whole life and I learn things, and make mistakes and repent and try again and learn more things, and then I die, leaving no record, my life is of no worth to those who come after I die, because they will not know me or know what I learned. My life will be wasted to those who come after me.
We must save our lives, and the lives of those who have gone before us.
Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale:
“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
That MAGIC is what we are here to talk about this evening.
Who can tell me one thing you know about one of your ancestors?
How or where did you learn these things about them?
How do their words connect you?
Ancestors who left journals or photos or stories are the easiest to get to know. Journals help us know what they did and why.
They help us understand the challenges they dealt with.
People who left journals speak to us even after they are gone.
We are able to connect with them when we know something about them.
We can relate our lives to theirs.
We can see how choices they made played out in their lives.
(At the time great-grandma wrote about meeting great-grandpa, she didn’t know she’d end up marrying him!)
We can see from our perspective what they couldn’t see from theirs.
They wrote day by day or year by year, not knowing what their future would bring. But WE can look back and see their whole lives and how things played out. We can see how keeping the commandments blessed lives and how wrong choices caused trouble and sadness. We can learn from their choices.
I think that’s one of the most important reasons why HF wants us to Write!
Journals and histories help us learn from experiences over time. We learn by looking back to see where choices lead–ours or those of our ancestors.
There is another very important reason why it’s important to leave your words behind.
We often talk about the Spirit of Elijah in relation to Family History work. When I do FH work, I feel my heart turning to my fathers and ancestors and I feel that they are aware of me when I notice them.
If I don’t pay attention them, they don’t pay attention to me.
I often sense the presence or influence of those loved ones who have gone before. In most cases, I never knew them here, but have learned to love them since. I feel especially close to those I have learned about, and I feel them particularly near.
One day it occurred to me that it’s when I’m paying attention to them that I feel them paying attention to me. It’s like they’re given permission to be near me. Perhaps because I love and care for them, they get to return love and care for me in a way I can feel it. I feel them watching out for me and protecting me and my family.
That never happens with the ancestors I don’t know.
So how do we learn to know our ancestors??
Remember, one day YOU will be an ancestor to those who follow.
MAYBE if we write in our journals today, our future descendants will get to know us and love US and maybe long after we are gone, they will get to feel Us near them!
That’s one of my biggest motivations for writing in my journal.
I want my children who will never know me on earth to know me and to know why I lived the way I lived.
I want them to know
how what I believe affects my daily living
how I try to follow Jesus
why I read my scriptures
why I try to be good
why I went on missions
I want them to know how much I love my Savior Jesus Christ.
I want them to know ME.
And if they know ME, maybe I will get to hover near THEM!
In that day, maybe they will feel ME because they have my words and they know me! In that day, I hope I can watch over and protect THEM!
We live in a wonderful day where it’s easy to capture and record memories.
How many of you have written in a journal this week?
How many of you have taken a picture this week?
How many of you use facebook or instagram to post things about your life?
How many of you send a Christmas card with a family update?
When you write and record things about your life, you are preserving your life, so it won’t be Utterly Wasted. You are helping fulfill Malachi’s prophecy in a way that turns the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers/mothers.
This is why Journals are so Very Important. They are part of God’s Plan.
We should write about the things we do and the things we believe and how we live.
In Alma 36, we read moving letters from a father to his sons. His words are personal and intimate. These words have been carefully preserved (thanks to Mormon), not just for Alma’s sons, but also for us.
Alma teaches us 6 things we should include in our writing:
What I have tasted (been through)
What I have seen
What I do know
How I have been supported
How I trust God
How He has and how He will deliver me
Alma 37:8 Alma’s 3 reasons for writing and preserving our records
Enlarge the memory of this people
Convince many of the error of their ways
Bring others to the knowledge of their God
Nothing strengthens my testimony of Journaling more than when I discover and read words like Alma’s to his sons, or the journals or personal histories of family members who are gone, or of others who described their experiences. Some were kind enough to mention my family members in their journals.
I’ve spent a good deal of time in libraries and archives reading journals and histories of people who lived near where my ancestors lived. My 3rd great grandpa and his family lived in Nauvoo. They were the Prophet Joseph Smith’s neighbors.
Sometimes I read things in the journals of others that change me and how much I love my ancestors. A man named Joseph Lee Robinson lived close to Joseph Smith and my 3rd Grandparents. They lived close to the river. One day he made a journal entry describing the living conditions in Nauvoo at that time.
I have never forgotten his words.
My great-great grandmother, Charlotte was his neighbor. She was a little girl in Nauvoo at the time he wrote this journal entry. I often think of her curled up in her bed at night and wonder.
Here’s what Joseph Lee Robinson wrote in August 1841:
“When we arrived in the city of Nauvoo, I soon found my brother Ebenezer. He had a house for us to go to. It was a big log house near his printing office. Ebenezer was the printer for the church. (He was writing the Church Organ,) so had built a large two-story house. The top floor was used for his home and the bottom for the printing press. It was near the river, not far from the Prophet Joseph’s home. The worst enemy we found here was the long-tailed rat, that would bite the lips and nose[s] of our little children while they slept.” (Page 6)
That one sentence someone else wrote in their journal helps me love my ancestors more. They did hard things. I love them because I know what they did. And because I know them, I feel them close to me now.
What are your family’s most treasured possessions?
Show Elsa’s 1912 journal crossing the ocean from Germany.
How many of you have access to the journals of your parents, grandparents, or
ancestors? If not, what would you give to know more about the details of their lives? What do you wish you knew about them?
How many of you are writing now things your posterity will treasure?
If we had time, I’d share some accounts written by my ancestors and have you listen for:
1. What you find interesting and why
2. What things are different from what you experience in today’s world?
3. Context–what was going on in their world at that time?
4. Details–not generalizations, but little things you can visualize
(like the long-tailed rats)
5. How does what you hear affect you?
6. What similar experiences have you had in your own life?
Nothing has improved my journaling skills more than some ideas I want to teach you today from Arthur Henry King.
Handout–read together
How does what he suggest differ from how most people write?
More honest
Not “feelings”
(Not “I felt the Spirit” but what caused you to feel the Spirit–the how and why. Not just your testimony, but WHY you have a testimony.)
What were the things he said would be most interesting to generations to come?
Daily routines, things that change, technology.
The things that interest you will interest your children some day:
–It interests my kids, that personal computers did not exist when I graduated from HS and when I was in high school, I had seen fewer than 10 theater movies in my entire LIFE. VHS tapes were invented when I was on my mission.
–It interests my daughter that blow dryers, curling irons, and flat irons did not exist when I was in high school. She finds it strange that I sewed most of my clothes and rode a school bus to school.
–My son, Aaron, who loves everything gadety, finds it interesting that nothing in Best Buy today existed when I was his age. Not one thing. We played music on records, then 8-track tapes, then tape recorders and cassettes. Videos and CDs, cell phones and ipods, streaming music and movies, were all a thing of the future.
One of the things I’ve learned that is important in journal writing is to mention lots of people–all those who surround you. If you want family members to take an interest in what you have to say, make it interesting to them too–have something to say about their lives.
My mom kept a journal and wrote quite a bit. She handed me a copy of a 30-40 page personal history before she died a few years ago. She wanted me to read it. I was given one mention: that I was born. My motivation to read about her life would increase drastically if I were mentioned in it.
While my kids were still living at home, I made it a practice to mention in my daily entries what they were doing or saying at the moment I wrote. (Examples: Adam at BB practice, Claire in the kitchen with friends making crepes, Aaron on the sofa watching sports center.)
Sometimes I imagine them (after I am dead) doing a word search for their names in my journal and finding little gems about their lives they’d forgotten.
Now I often copy notes from texts or messages family members send, including actual dialogue:
My husband and I are preparing to move from our family home of 32 years. It’s the only home our kids remember. They are not happy we are moving out so our oldest son can move in.
This week I wrote:
I finished packing up everything in Claire’s room except for the drawers by her sink. She called today. I showed her the progress I’ve made emptying her room. She later texted me: “Thanks for spending all the time boxing that stuff up. It’s kind of hard to watch it happen.”
I responded with: “Packing up your things has reminded me of what a full life you’ve had and how much I love being your mom.”
It’s also fun to include descriptions of what our grandkids are doing. Learning to ride a scooter bike, losing a first tooth, what crazy outfits they are wearing, who’s traveling where, etc.
It’s also fun to mention what’s going on in the neighborhood or on the news.
Note signs of the times. (Victor Ludlow Isaiah class 40 years ago.)
Wars, rumors of wars, natural disasters, inflation, sickness and disease
Handout: List of things I like to do in my journals/why use a computer
Handout: Things I will really wish I’d recorded when I’m older
Record “A Day in the Life of”
A total description of yourself every 5 years
Create a Chronology
Write a Yearly summary every year before the year ends –Wilford Woodruff
Start a Writing Group with friends
Meet together in person or online, share something you’ve written
Ease in with LISTS
Lists–52 Lists of Happiness, List books, find lists online
Use Writing Prompts –To our Children’s Children, Old Friend From Far Away
The Book of Alchemy 100 Day Project
Show examples of helpful books: Encyclopedia of an Everyday Life, List books, writing prompt books, ideas for kids, etc.
It’s my testimony that Heavenly Father values the written word and he wants us to record what is happening in our lives. You can start with today and go forward. Don’t feel you have to start at a beginning and catch up before you write about today. Just Start Now. Start with today.
Commit to writing for 8 minutes a day.
Frederick G. Williams IV:
From those who wrote in shrouded days of yore
Some books remain, through which the silent pen
Affords to creatures now and evermore
A glimpse into the hearts of men.
Yet countless thoughts and deeds by men conceived
That once were known, are now forgot’ and passed.
This lesson we should learn that thoughts received,
Except some way preserved, will never last.
For hist’ry isn’t made or lived, but kept.
And till the deeds to paper are transferred
That man may yet survive when he hath slept,
On earth, at least, ‘tis though they ne’er occurred.
To live and not have written, save one’s name,
Or never to have lived, is much the same.
Ronald O. Barney, of the Church History Department:
If you do not write your story, your name will be obliterated from the human record and you will not speak from the grave. You will not have any influence on those who come after you. Those who write about the things they have done and learned in life have a huge impact on posterity. Write your story. You have overcome things your children need to know about.”
