Good, Better, Best

In the 2007 October General Conference, Elder Dallin H. Oaks spoke on "Good, Better, Best." He said," We have to forego some good things in order to choose others that are better or best because they develop faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and strengthen our families. Most of us have more things expected of us than we can possibly do. As breadwinners, as parents, as Church workers and members, we face many choices on what we will do with our time and other resources. We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives."

After pondering this message over several months, I've began to rate how I'm choosing to spend my time and energy. It is time for some persoanal shanges. It is quite disturbing to realize that an entire evening has gone by as I've parked myself in front of the television or the computer. SO one of the things that I done is to volunteer on Family Search program for "Indexing". It takes about an hour a week to do a batch. Simple enough!

"What is "indexing?"' you might ask? Well...... it is a volunteer program done in the comfort of one's own home, using the internet to download information to be extracted from films of vital records such as Census Records. The key life events of billions of people are being preserved and shared through the efforts of people like us. Using the church's online indexing system, volunteers from around the world are able to quickly and easily transcribe the records—all from the convenience of their homes. The indexes are then posted for FREE at familysearch.org. They just finished the 1920 US Census and the 1916 Canadian Census. Next they'll be working on England and Wales Census Records. Millions of rolls of microfilm provide census, vital, probate, and church records from over 100 countries for indexing projects. Governments, churches, societies, and commercial companies are also working to make more records available

Generally a file is about 50 people on one page. It takes 30 minutes or so to recover the information and key it into a digitized form. Once done , and reviewed, then it is sent into Family Search. It will to help add additonal information to the available free public access to the U.S. census indexes and other records! You can easily register to volunteer and get started indexing right way. Check it out at www.familysearch.org. Try it, you'll like it!