This afternoon we attended a Stake Conference in The Dalles Stake. During the 4:00 Priesthood Leadership Meeting, I sat in the foyer, preparing my talk for the evening session. I couldn’t help but notice a grandma near me writing in what looked like a journal.
The talk I was preparing was on Family history and preserving our family stories, so I watched this lovely lady intently as she wrote, and smiled and wrote more. I loved what I was seeing. After the meeting ended, I introduced myself and made a new friend–Harriett Madden, grandma to a lucky 23-year-old granddaughter who will receive this book–this perfect gift–for her birthday in a few months.
We had a delightful visit about what she was writing and sharing–her stories. What I watched reminded me of 3 scriptures I’ve been thinking about:
D&C 127:9 talks about records and how things like histories, stories and testimonies should be “held in remembrance from generation to generation.” What does it mean to be held in remembrance? If it’s not recorded, it won’t be remembered.
2 Nephi 25:22 also talks about records and says “these things shall go from generation to generation, as Nephi describes what and why we should write. In verse 26 he says that we write “that our children may know.” How will they know if we don’t record our experiences?
In Jacob 4:1-3, Jacob writes (about 500 BC):
1. Now behold, it came to pass that I, Jacob, having ministered much unto my people in word, (and I cannot write but a little of my words, because of the difficulty of engraving our words upon plates) and we know that the things which we write upon plates must remain;
2. But whatsoever things we write upon anything save it be upon plates must perish and vanish away; but we can write a few words upon plates, which will give our children, and also our beloved brethren, a small degree of knowledge concerning us, or concerning their fathers—
3. Now in this thing we do rejoice; and we labor diligently to engraven these words upon plates, hoping that our beloved brethren and our children will receive them with thankful hearts, and look upon them that they may learn with joy and not with sorrow, neither with contempt, concerning their first parents.
4. For, for this intent have we written these things, that they may know that we knew of Christ, and we had a hope of his glory many hundred years before his coming; and not only we ourselves had a hope of his glory, but also all the holy prophets which were before us.
I loved watching Sister Madden as I thought about the reasons we write and record.
These things remind me of my 20 November 2013 post:
https://annlaemmlenlewis.com/2013/11/20/your-name-will-be-obliterated/
