Familysearch.org and Family Tree

My ward (congregation) has sure put me to work.  Since my assignment as family history consultant I have given a presentation about small and simple things you can do in family history for a women's class, started teaching a seven lesson class once a week, given a brief presentation to about 100 people about familysearch, and I am now preparing to teach two more classes to youth groups in the next couple weeks.  Oh and I'm working in our local family history center a few hours this week.

I'm feeling BUSY!

It's a good busy and it is exciting to be a part of it all!

Amid all these assignments I have had to quickly become very familiar with Familysearch.org.  And lucky me it had recently gone through a complete overhaul shortly before I was called.  I have worked with new.familysearch.org and I have searched records on labs.familysearch.org but both of those are old hat to this new system. 

There are so many wonderful features on familysearch.org now.  Be sure to check them out!

Family Tree:
This is where you can keep track of your pedigree.  It is similar to new.familysearch.org but so much smoother and user friendly.  The ability to add sources is greatly improved over the new system.  Especially with sources that are coming directly off of familysearch.org.  I've been spending a lot of time just adding sources to the information that is already on my tree.  It makes me feel so much better when information can be supported and verified by sources!

Photos and Stories:
This new feature is AWESOME!  You can find and/or share heritage photos on the website and link them to your family lines.  This is a great way to preserve and share important photos that you have inherited. I have been slowly working on adding the photos I digitized at my grandma's a few years ago.  My husband has benefited from other family members uploading photos and stories onto his family line.  He has a second cousin that is transcribing a personal history and we have been able to read the stories and share them with our children.  It is amazing to read about Josh's pioneer heritage and the sacrifices they made for their families and the gospel.

Search:
This is where you can gain access to all the millions of records being indexed by thousands of volunteers worldwide.  It is an amazing collection that is FREE and growing daily.

Familysearch.org has also made it really easy to find, prepare, request and manage the temple work for our ancestors.  So much better that when I started doing family history and you had to go to a FHC and work on a dos program. :P

Another thing I am really impressed with is familysearch's helpcenter.  They have dozens of videos to help you with familysearch, teach you how to do family history research, online research help, etc...
This has been particularly helpful as I have been learning about familysearch.

The ease and accessibility of this website and many more popping up all over the internet is a testimony to me of the importance of family work.  It is a blessing to be a part of this work that is accelerating a such an exciting speed.