Family History Unites Geneations

I had a speaking assignment in another ward yesterday...this is what I ended up sharing.  MANY thanks to my mom who rushed me her family history notes so I could share from our own ancestral stories. Thought you'd like to see.

In the dining room of my parent’s home there is a wooden chest.  It is made of heavy, dark, aged wood.  It sits on short legs and is lined with a distinctly patterned fabric.  As a kid I thought it smelled funny. 

I remember hearing my mom tell me about this strange piece of furniture.  She shared that it had been her Grandma Blanche’s cedar chest and had a place in her grandparent’s home when she was girl.  But the connection it had to my mom was more than that.  She told me that when she was about 6 months old, she was left in the care of her grandparents for a few hours while her parents went out together.  Her grandmother placed her in that chest, on a couple of pillows, to sleep that evening—a makeshift crib at her grandparent’s home.  Some time that night, Grandma Blanche died suddenly.   To my mom that old cedar chest was a tangible tie to her grandmother.  It is a treasure to her and a keepsake in our family.

Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander, of the Quorum of the Seventy, spoke about Bridges and Eternal Keepsakes in his General Conference talk in April of 1999. He said “Every family has keepsakes.  Families collect furniture, books, porcelain, and other valuable things, then, pass them on to their posterity.  Such beautiful keepsakes remind us of loved ones now gone and turn our minds to loved ones unborn.  They form a bridge between family past and family future. 

“Every family has other, more valuable keepsakes. These include genealogies, family stories, historical accounts, and traditions.  These eternal keepsakes also form a bridge between past and future and bind generations together in ways no other keepsake can.”

Elder Neuenschwander noted that “Bridges between generations are not built by accident. Each member of this church has the personal responsibility to be an eternal architect of this bridge for his or her own family.”

We are taught in the Member’s Guide to Temple and Family History Work: “As you participate in temple and family history work, you will be blessed with a stronger testimony of its importance, a greater appreciation of the Lord’s love for His children, and a motivating desire to do temple work for your ancestors.  You will have a better understanding of your family origins and an increased love for your ancestors.”

“Family history and temple work have a great power,” Elder Neuenschwander taught, “Which lies in their scriptural and divine promise that the hearts of the fathers will turn to the children and these children will turn to their fathers.”

President Eyring has said “If you learn stories about their lives, write them down and keep them.  You are not just gathering names.  Those you never met in life will become friends you love.  Your heart will be bound to theirs forever.”

I have been delighted to learn more of the lives of my ancestors from both sides of my family.  They may have lived in very different times than I do, but I feel a connection to them as I learn of their characteristics and choices.

Mary was waiting tables in Finland in July 1914 when, as she recalled, an “old man from America came in”.  John Jarvi was looking for a wife for his 30 year old son Alexander.  Mary longed for the adventure and the promised success to be found in America and convinced him to take her as the bride-to-be.  She had to work for one year to pay the family back for the cost of her passage across the ocean.  She was supposed to marry Alexander, but while she worked that year she got to know Alex’s youngest brother, Jacob.  She preferred him much more and once her passage was paid off, she and Jacob married.  They had 6 children together and raised cows, chickens, pigs, horses, wheat and corn along with a large garden in the little town of Frederick, South Dakota.  She was a member of local Savo-Lutheran church which was the center of their social and religious activities.

Okke and Elizabeth Boomgaarden were passengers on a two-masted sailing vessel, one of the few ships to carry emigrants from the North Sea harbor of Emden, in northern Germany.  The voyage to New York would take 13 weeks.  Young Jacob was less than three years old at the time.  The little family had left a village called Campen.  On board was another young family called the Freerks.  They were leaving their village of Rysum—only a few miles from Campen, but the families hadn’t ever met before traveling the Atlantic on the same ship with a similar dream of success and prosperity in America.

During the passage, a heavy sea washed little Jacob along the deck and would have swept him overboard had not Evertje  Freerks flung her body at him and seized him by the leg.  In heartfelt gratitude, the Boomgaardens voiced the hope that in time their little boy might marry a future Freerks daughter.  The two families went their separate ways upon arriving in Illinois but some years later the Freerks family, including their daughter Harmanna, moved to Grundy County where they discovered their shipboard friends had also moved.  The thankful vow made on the stormy deck of the ship was fulfilled twenty years later when Jacob married young Harmanna Freerks.

Elder Neuenschwander continued “Family history and temple work are one work….  Family history research provides the emotional bridge between the generations.  Temple ordinances provide the priesthood bridge.  Temple ordinances are the priesthood ratification of the connection that we have already established in our hearts.”

My ancestors were not the Mormon pioneers that we honor each July 24^th.  But my ancestors brought our family to America years before my parents would eventually find the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And, subsequently, it blesses us to do the temple work for these long ago generations of my family.

President Erying once said “It is not surprising that Wilford Woodruff said, while he lived, that he believed few, if any of the ancestors of the Latter Day Saints in the spirit world would choose to reject the message of salvation when they heard it.” 

Because of the eternal nature of the family, and the glorious restoration of the Gospel in its fullness, I believe the words in D&C 110 “that in us and our seed all generations after us should be blessed….Behold the time has fully come, which was spoken of by the mouth of Malachi—testifying that he [Elijah] should be sent…to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. Lest the whole earth be smitten with a curse….”

May I share once more from my family history?  I recorded this in my journal, and then shared it in answer to one of my cousins after a question about my Great Grandmother Mary—the mail order bride from Finland—came up. 

As a child of about 8 I remember driving nearly across the country to meet my great grandparents.  My mom and her sister, my own sister, then about 5, and our two cousins–T, about 6, and M, about 3, all rode from California to South Dakota to see them.

Grandma and Grandpa Jarvi were Finnish and so was their whole side of town.  To my 8 year old girl self, Grandma seemed a bit cold to me and a bit severe too.  My thought then was that she just had 4 little kids invade her space.  She didn’t speak to us much, as I recall, but with a grown up perspective now I think she just probably felt uneasy speaking in English.  Her community was Finnish and they spoke in their native tongue daily.

One night, however, as mom was getting my sister and me into bed, we heard Grandma’s one phone of the house ring.   It was in the hallway, just outside our bedroom door.  After a slightly reserved “Hello”, Grandma’s voice burst into energy and excitement.  But it was not in English.  One of her Finnish friends had called and this little grandma that I had thought so severe and cold was gurgle-ling on and on with her friend in a sing-songy language that I couldn’t even recognize.  As I laid on the bed listening, I realized that this lady was friendly and apparently funny too.  After hearing the difference the shared language made, I felt different about her somehow.  She was kind and sweet and a little funny.

But perhaps the most vivid memory of that trip and the stay with Grandma Jarvi in particular was also fairly traumatic.  The four of us kids were trotted out back with Grandma and Grandpa.  We were headed to a shed-like building sitting toward the back part of their back garden.  I remember thinking to myself, “Why are we going to mow the lawn?  It is getting late.”  I assumed the shed looking building was a storage building for gardening equipment.  

Grandpa opened the outside door and herded us in to a small entryway–somewhat like an indoor porch.  There was a seat on one side and a huge dipper hanging on the wall.  Grandma followed us in, bringing with her a big bucket of water.  “This is weird,” I thought to myself.”  Just then in her broken English, Grandma told us to take off our clothes.  In her other arm she carried a pile of our pajamas.  “This is only getting weirder,” I thought again.  

Instead of getting our PJs on, she shepherded us into the adjoining room through an interior door.  This room was rectangular shaped and in one corner was a pile of rocks sitting on what looked to be a tiny fireplace with a subtle glow of heat.  She indicated for us to sit on the bench that lined the whole room.  The room felt like it was made of very smooth wood paneling.  The four of us sat on the bench looking at each other and wondering just what was going on and beginning to feel very warm.  All of a sudden the door opened again and in walks Grandma Jarvi with her bucket of water–buck naked!  This WAS weird.  And more bizarre yet, Grandpa Jarvi followed her in and took a seat near my cousin T–again NAKED!  

This was not normal! 

Grandma dipped the huge ladle into the water bucket and slowly and careful poured the water, over and over again, covering these strange rocks in the pile.  The steam erupted into the air and filled the room.  Soon it was so dense that we couldn’t see our naked, wrinkly grandparents at all.  The heat permeated our bodies and soon we felt like we’d just been thrown into a hot tub, but without ever feeling the water.

Of course, this was a Finnish Sauna and was a regular part of their culture and heritage.  They bathed this way.  For a nearly 8 year old girl this was not a memory that could fade easily.  You just can’t see Great Grandparents NAKED and ever forget it.  However, as the years have gone by I look back on that experience and am grateful for it.  I saw–more than I wanted to then–a glimpse into their home country, their private, yet daily, life together.  They invited us–their great grandchildren–into a regular part of their day.  Now I feel blessed to have known them so personally.

Many years later, my sister and I visited the Pioneer Village in SLC with our own kids and stopped to look at a Swedish home that had been reproduced to represent what the Scandinavian saints had built when they joined the other members of the church in Utah.  A distinct Scandinavian design I saw in the front of the home reminded me of these sweet great-grandparents, now long ago passed away.  I asked to my sister, “Remember when we visited Grandma and Grandpa Jarvi in South Dakota and they took us out to the sauna with them?”  She didn’t remember the experience.  Perhaps she had “blocked it out”–seeing naked, old people as a child might do that.  Or perhaps, more certainly, she was too young to hold on to that memory.  I retold her of the experience we had with our great-grandparents as little girls.

The volunteer ladies “hosting” at this pioneer home had been sitting on the porch doing some quilting when we went along inside.  As we got back to the doorway, one sister asked about the story I was relating–“not meaning to eavesdrop,” she said, “but that memory sounds very distinct and quite interesting.”  I explained it to her and both these volunteer sisters remarked that the memory, though funny now, is certainly an important part of how my own feelings of our heritage have been shaped.

Knowing some of the people personally who have the names on my family group sheet makes all of the genealogy work we do real.  They belong to me, as I belong to them.  We are family.  And time and place and differences won’t ever change that.  The gospel and the revealed truth it provides about temple work and the importance of families makes it possible to link generations as far as we can find them.  These real people will be there in heaven to greet us–just as they met four little grandchildren in South Dakota years and years ago.  Just next time, I hope without any sign of a sauna nearby!