Does a youth leader ever feel like they have it figured out? This hasn't been my experience. However, I couldn't be an effective youth leader today without Dan Duckworth's presentation about going from youth worker to youth mentor. Mentorship is a key concept to understand when leading youth. In his presentation, Dan talks about ways to really turn the traditional approach to leading youth on its head. How can you better know your purpose? How
can you find out their life goals? How can you build a relationship that is transformational rather than simply filling time during the weekly youth activity? You can watch Dan's presentation in the Young Saints virtual library by going to leading saints.org/14. You'll get free access for 14 days, and that will give you plenty of time to watch Dan's presentation a few times. Let's give youth the leadership they deserve.
I got an email the other day from an individual, I forget where he is in the world, but he says, Kurt, I love Leading Saints, and I listen to it every time I'm on the treadmill. And then one time during an interview, he heard that Leading Saints has a YouTube channel and, like, all the interviews, at least the vast majority of them are video recorded and you can watch the video recording of the podcast episodes. And I'm like, yeah, man. Get
on there. Go subscribe on YouTube to Leading Saints, and you can get a visual of the interview and not just an audio experience. And even if you're not a big YouTube user, do us a favor because this actually helps us gain more reach and expose our content to individuals who could really benefit from it, leaders around the world. So regardless if you are on YouTube a lot or not, go to YouTube and search for Leading Saints, find the familiar red logo, and
just subscribe. Even if you don't plan to view every episode there, that's gonna help us, gain a larger audience and more reach, dial in the algorithm, and, we'll start showing up on leaders feeds that they didn't know how much they're missing here at Leading Saints. So head on over to YouTube, search for Leading Saints, and subscribe to our channel and leave a comment every once in a while, but be nice. Hey, Everyone, this is Kurt Franco with Leading
Saints. I love these episodes not only with great people and and guests, but people who I consider a friend. And I get invited in Brad Louder, who we actually interviewed his wife not too long ago. We'll link to her episode as well because she is the youngest daughter of president Nelson and we did a phenomenal interview where she talked about dishonoring her her mother, Dansel Nelson, and, definitely worth trying out.
We'll link to that. And you'll wanna keep listening to this episode because I asked Brad what it's like to be the son-in-law to the prophet president of the church, president Nelson. And he tells a story of how he asked president Nelson for his daughter's hand in marriage and it's a sweet story, one to stick around for. And then we jump into his day job as the senior vice president at Family Search, and he talked about so many products and projects going on at FamilySearch, just a
phenomenal resource. Many of you are just the family history junkies, you know how good that
resource is. But we wanna talk about it in context of the rising generation, not only understanding the tools that are out there for all of us to use, but how can we weave these tools into youth activities and make it less of, like, this heavy burden that the we're sort of forcing on the youth, but really engaging them and igniting the fire within, the spirit within about the, you know, work of the, you know, spirit of Elijah or gathering the the House of Israel on both sides of the
veil. So definitely one for youth leaders to listen to, missionaries, whether they're full time missionaries or ward missionaries to listen to, just some phenomenal tips of engaging the award youth group through family history. And, I think you'll appreciate some of the upcoming tools they have coming out. So here's my interview with my good friend, Brad Louder. You know, welcome in, my good friend, Brad Louder, to the the studio here. Hey. It's great to be here. I tried to play
a joke. I told him we weren't doing video. And then but he still came prepared. White shirt and tie. I'm so glad I wore a shirt white shirt and tie. Now I think what threw you off is I interviewed your wife, Marjorie Yes. Who is the the youngest daughter of president Nelson. Uh-huh. And we talked about her her mother, Dansel. Yes. And, so we'll link to that. That's definitely one for the ages. I'm glad we got that recorded. Yeah. And there was no camera
there, so I'm picturing a similar thing. And, so I'm so glad I shaved and didn't wear a ratty T shirt. That was that was close. Nice. And I I mean, I I hope that just continues to bless your family and grandkids and great grandkids as we have honored dance over there. That's been a huge blessing to the family, and it meant a great deal to her father Yeah. To have his first wife, Dansel, his eternal mate, honored in such a sweet and personal way. That was was really meaningful
Well, that's awesome. To the whole family. That's awesome. So I you've told me this story, and we can cut this out if you want it. But being the son-in-law to president Nelson, because how you've been 10 10 years since you've been married? It's about 11 and a half years. Okay. So at the time he got married, he was in the quorum of 12. Yes. An apostle. So Right. We all have our story of asking the father-in-law for his daughter's hand in marriage.
So what's the story behind that? Well, the short version is Marjorie and I were at that stage in our courtship, and we knew that was it was impending. And so we well, she reached out to her dad and said, hey, can we come over next Monday night, have family home evening with you? We can work a jigsaw puzzle and have some popcorn, which is Yes. He loves jigsaw puzzles. Loves jigsaw puzzles. That's how he and Wendy unwind. That's their form of recreation. And so they accepted the offer.
We knew what our goal was. And so we're we're literally working this puzzle, and I was so nervous. I could not put 2 pieces together. And I'm thinking, this is not making a great impression on my future in laws. They're think I'm sure they're thinking, this poor guy, he just he's So did they think Oh, not quite. Did they think that what was coming or not sure. I think Wendy's very intuitive, you know, former therapist and professor of psychology and and, social work at BYU. So I I think
she could see it a mile away. And in fact, at one point, when the puzzle making, when I finally gave up on doing my own section and I thought, okay, her dad's working on this section with the fence. I'll look for all the pieces with fencing and I'll hand them to him. He'll pop them in and that'll make a good impression. And sure enough, that was successful. And so I kept feeding him these pieces. He'd pop them in, and Wendy said, plays well with others. Check. So, yeah, she I think she could
see what was coming. Anyway, Marjorie and and Wendy went to clear off the the popcorn dishes and and went upstairs. And so her dad and I are sitting at this this table where the puzzles were. And I said, Elder Nelson, I have a real important question to ask you. This is what is it, Brad? And I mentioned that I was just absolutely head over heels in love with his daughter and would love his permission and blessing to marry her in the temple. And he started crying. I started crying.
He said, of course, we would be honored to have you in the family. And and he said, I'm not going to live forever. Now, this was eleven and a half years ago, and he's already talking about He really is going to be Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Anyways, so he said, this means the world to me to know that there'd be someone to take care of my baby daughter. So, anyway, he and I are bawling.
Marjorie and Wendy walked back in the room, and Wendy's looking at the 2 of us who are wiping the tears away going, what is going on here? Nice. Nice. So we told them and and anyway, we kinda wrapped up that conversation. And and he said, you know, before we wrap up the evening, let's kneel together and have family prayer because you're now part of the family. And he said the most beautiful prayer and included an apostolic blessing upon Marjorie and me. And it was an evening I'll never
forget how kind and gracious they were. There was no feeling of of, you know, having to go through an extensive interview to get the Yeah. It didn't grill you. No, it didn't grill me. All of my concerns and fears just vanished because of their love and acceptance. And that's that's who they are. They're very core. They're just so loving and kind and accepting. It was really remarkable. That's awesome. Love it. Love it. Now you're also you're in your day job. You're a
senior vice president at FamilySearch. Is that Yeah. I've been there about 11 years. I absolutely love it. It's been such a joy to be engaged in, in this great work and to have my, my day job be helping to gather Israel, helping to be part of
this great work. It's and in fact, I haven't shared this with a ton of people who have occurred, but most of my adult life, I had this feeling like at the end of my career, I would love to come and work for the church and and offer some of my talents and experience to helping build the kingdom. And that that's something that was always in my heart. So when this opportunity came up, it just absolutely felt like a tender mercy. It's been a absolute joy to to be a part of
this work. And how would you describe your job in general? Are you, like, in the thick and thin of certain projects or Yeah. That's a great question. You know, a lot of the people who work at FamilySearch are kind of on the technical side. Software developers, probably maybe close to half of the people that work there are in the in the IT side. Essentially, it's almost like a software company, right? It kind of is. Yeah. Yeah.
When you think of the huge amounts of data that we have to manage and and make searchable and provide experiences that are meaningful while managing this giant database. I've been in the engagement division, which is more or less the marketing part. So, we're what we do is figure out how do we how do we get members involved in doing this work that in ways that are meaningful and purposeful and joyful and don't feel like, hey, welcome to the
salt mines. Here's your pickaxe. You know, that's kind of the old paradigm of everybody's got to be a serious researcher, and we love the researchers, and they do great work and are huge contributors to building the tree and providing more records. And, but the majority of our patrons are people like you and me who aren't genealogists, the people who want to, and especially for members of the church, it's really about, I want to go to the temple on behalf
of an ancestor. Yeah. That's special. That makes it so meaningful. So that's what we're all about. So the, like the emails you get with a hand, a record hand, or, Hey, we found a green temple. Here's, here's a great, great grandparent who needs to have these ordinances done. Click here to reserve these. And so we, that's really what our team does. And more specifically, the team I lead is, is very involved in engaging the rising generation.
And so that's my area of emphasis is how do we get children, youth, and young adults to embrace and love this work and get all the blessings that come from Temple and Family History. Yeah. So I'm curious to before we get into that with the rising generation, they you know, with this the swell of temple building, I mean, how does that impact family search or is that I mean, you've always sort of been engaged with Yeah. Genealogy. That's
really a cool question. One of one of the biggest ways it impacts us is just providing records for members. Yeah. So they can go in, find their ancestors, add them to their family tree, and then a green temple appears. So, now they can go and do the proxy work for their ancestors. This is a huge task for us as a department, as family search. With the acceleration of temple building, we have to accelerate our work in going out
and acquiring the records. That means doing deals with archives, with government entities, churches that have these records, and then we digitize those. We take the digital photography and then we do the indexing, mostly computer aided now. So we have had to accelerate this work all around the world because of temples coming online. So we have whole groups of people that are dedicated to doing that all over the world. Yeah. And that's one
of those things about this. You know, we joke it's it's president Nelson just like, how many more temples this time? Right? And I'm always shocked. Like, he really did 20 more temples. Wow. I think we're out of cities, aren't we? But just how the sort of that domino effect of Yeah. Now we need more temple workers. Now we need or it reengages and rallies people around this doctrine of the temple to engage them in the gospel. You
know? And that whether that's finding records or showing up at a 6 AM session to help out or Yeah. It's different. You know, think about they announce a temple in Saratoga Springs or Layton or, you know, Orem or, you know, wherever in Utah or another one in Saint George. That's a very different thing for FamilySearch. We have huge record coverage in North America and and most Latter day Saints in North America are part of the European diaspora, and we have great record coverage in most of
Europe. So we had a temple in Layton. We're not panicked about, how are we gonna get records so these people can go to the temple for their ancestors? Now, when they announce a temple in Papua New Guinea or Yeah. India, that's a huge challenge for us. Interesting. Because we have almost no records in a lot of these newly announced temple districts. So we have to figure out a whole record strategy of who has the records, how are we going to acquire them and digitize
them. And so that that acceleration has has really created a unique opportunity for us to expand the way we see our work because it's all about supporting President Nelson's vision of bringing the temples to the people. And so that creates a huge need and opportunity for us to figure that out on the record side, which is is pretty exciting if you think about it. And we just don't as lay members, we don't think about it. We just show up to temple. You got the stack of names, and here's your
name. You know? But that's and I'm thinking like India. Like, we always talk about how many people actually are alive in India, but now think of how many people have died in India. Right? It's just and how do we get access to that? Huge challenge. And a lot of in a lot of places, these records are crumbling or they've been damaged by, you know, hurricane or typhoon. And in some places like Africa, a lot of the the family history is oral genealogy. Oh, wow. So these are stories
that are passed on. So a village elder, there's a saying that every time a village elder dies, a library burns down. So, we're in a rush to capture these oral genealogies in places like Africa and then capture those and create, you know, digital records for those that are connected to family trees. So members in Africa, as a temple is announced, can connect their 4 generations to these records. So, but it's it's exciting. And the amazing thing is the miracles.
And we see the hand of God over and over in people showing up, in archivists opening their doors and saying, yes. Please come digitize our records. We want these preserved. We wanna partner with you. Yeah. We're just constantly seeing the hand of the Lord in this work. That's cool. Anything else just generally about FamilySearch that would bring context or that would interest people? Well, yeah, something that occurs to me is is an app that probably a lot
of people haven't heard about. It's called Get Involved. So you can go download it, and it gives some some opportunities to do these little micro experiences, like what we call kind of reverse indexing instead of traditional indexing, which is is kind of slowly fading out. This is taking records that the computer is learning how to index and teaching the computer how to read words and numbers
in different languages. Oh, wow. So you can go in and and look and say, for example, which ones of these are Franklin and which ones aren't? Yeah. So you're looking at handwritten records going yes, yes, no, not sure. So we do that to accelerate the the artificial intelligence of these machines learning how to index and read handwriting in different
languages and different kinds of script. Anyway, there are lots of these little experiences that that someone, maybe instead of checking their Instagram for the 40th time today, they can go to get involved and spend 5 minutes and do some of these activities that are super fun. They're kind of I don't know if addictive is the right word to use here, but they're they're sticky. It's like you wanna keep
doing them and it's so fun. And you could in in 5 minutes, you could knock out a bunch of these names and really help accelerate the work. So that's that's really cool. Get involved. Yeah. And that's a separate app. It's not part of the Separate app. So it's also a web version. So you can go to familysearch.org and look for get involved, and then there's the web version of that also. So lots of cool little experiences and ways you can
help. Yeah. Is there anything and maybe this isn't really what you pay attention to or your department, but as far as AI and FamilySearch or genealogy, is anything is I'm sure something's happening there, but A lot is happening there, and that's a different guest. Okay. There you go. Do I look smart enough to know AI? Hey. You look pretty smart. But No. We have a whole team of experts that are specifically working on that, and
that's that's really the new frontier. Yeah. And all the family history and genealogy companies are diving headfirst into AI because of how it accelerates the work, not just in in accelerating index indexing, but but are there ways that AI can help us build trees? Can we create an algorithm where the computer can figure out with all of these billions of records out there, this person is in your family tree, and here's how they're connected. And that's that's kind of the next big thing, I
think. But again, I'm not the AI guy. So But it is I mean, AI does some remarkable things with data. Right? Lots of data, more data. It can do all sorts of things and find things that And when you have such a huge dataset. And so that for us is a giant opportunity that we've got some very smart people working on. So Cool. So buckle up. It's gonna be fun to see how things accelerate there. So let's jump into the rising generation and and engaging them with FamilySearch. Where's a good jumping
off point? Well, I mentioned get involved. That's really fun. But let me just back up and kinda give set the vision for this. You know, 2018, when President Nelson gave his worldwide devotional for the youth, he called upon them to gather Israel on both sides of the veil. And he said, this is the greatest work, the greatest cause that you'll ever be involved with, And you are preserved to come to the earth at this time to do
this great work. And he asked them, will you be part of the battalion of the Lord and help gather Israel? I got goosebumps just talking about it. It was so cool. And there was this resounding, yes, the rising generation. Yeah. We're in, man. We wanna do this. And then thought about it a little bit. But like, what does it look like? Show us how to do it. Give us a little instruction and point us to how we could actually do
this. So that's part of what we're doing and part of what our team is is working on is how do we really engage them, not just engage them, but let them lead out. So, it's kind of 2 aspects to that. 1 is is, you know, if you're a bishop, a stake president, and, you know, youth presidency, what are ways the youth could really lead the work in your ward or stake? And maybe rather than prescribing, hey, here's what you got to do, 1 through 5, just empower them to figure it
out. Have them go figure it out and come back because these are bright, talented, intelligent, inspired youth and young adults who will come up with the solutions and let's let them lead out. I mean, it's just such a huge opportunity for them to truly answer the clarion call from the prophet Mhmm. Whom they love and they want to follow. So let's let them lead out. And then, you know, there are
things like the the get involved app. The first thing we ask everyone to do in the church, and especially the rising generation, is use ordinances ready. But here's the catch. Elder David A Bednar has taught repeatedly sequence matters. Now, here's what I mean by that in this context. He's taught us, you know, start with ordinances ready. You start with the savior. That's where you start with youth and young adults. So, they understand the vision and the
meaning and the purpose and the why. It's all about the savior that we can bind ourselves to the savior through ordinances and covenants. Now a lot of those ordinances and covenants happen. We do it ourselves. We take the sacrament. We get baptized, affirmed. We go receive our own endowment. But the majority of the time that we're going to perform and experience ordinances and covenants are going to be for our deceased ancestors.
And we're not only binding ourselves to the savior when we do this proxy work, but we're helping facilitating our love, beloved family members, our ancestors, for them to bind themselves to the savior. So that's where we start. And we're laying the groundwork. And this is what we're actually doing. We're not just going through these. It's not a gadget. It's not a gimmick. It's not a little tool. It's it's the why. We start there. We put the savior at
the focus. And then we say, now go to ordinances ready. That's right on the app. There's a button ordinance as well, temple and then ordinances ready. Yeah. And you can say what ordinance you want to do. If you're a youth, you can say, I'm going to do baptisms and confirmations. And then you hit the go button, and it'll come back with names ready for you to take to the temple. Now, many of
those might be your own family names. If there's no one in your tree that has a green temple, look at members of your ward, of your stake who have green temple so you can serve your neighbors by helping bless their ancestors. So that's the second step. Ordinances ready. Yeah. And is there, because I know, like, in
my family, we have our group. Right? So I can see maybe what my dad's put in there and if ordinances is that something a ward or youth has to be proactive in creating first so that they could see shared records, or does that happen when automatically? Well, it it happens automatically, but they're we're creating tools now that where families can collaborate. Okay. And they can share
information and share research and share. But you can, for example, share if you've reserved a family name for temple ordinances, you can share it with someone. That collaboration just creates some It just makes it so fun and more meaningful when your your family's involved, and it's about family serving family. Yep. So we talked about keeping the savior at the center, then ordinance ready. And then what where's the next place to go with with the rising generation?
Well, the 3rd step and here's our formula. It's really simple. Number 1, start with the savior. Number 2, ordinance is ready. It's easy. Anybody can do it. You're going to get a name and you're going to be able to print it, go to the temple and do the ordinance or take the your phone to the family name desk. They scan the QR code. Boom. They print the card for you. So that's number 2. Start with the savior. Ordinance is
ready. Number 3 is add what you know, because sometimes you're going to go in there. A lot of members in North America, they might not be as simple to find a family member, an ancestor who has a green temple ready for ordinances. So you might need to do a little bit of work to find someone that maybe is just one little piece of data away from a green temple. And some people in other parts of the world, they don't even have their first four
generations in their tree. So that's a great opportunity for them to say, wait a minute, I haven't done the work for my grandfather. My great grandfather. My father passed away. So to add what you know could be literally going in from living memory, from what you know, and from talking to family members, talking to your parents, getting the names, the dates, putting those in your family tree. And here's what here's the
magic of doing that. When you start to put in living memories, we call it these first four generations. That a lot of people can do from memory or from talking to family members. We have so many records out there, and a lot of them are already in a tree, but they're not connected to you yet. So when you add what you know, magically, we connect the tree to your grandfather, your grandparents, and now you have thousands of people in your tree that you didn't know you had.
And you can go through and find all these green temples of your own ancestors just waiting for you to serve them in the temple. Wow. Cool. So it's just that's 123. Nice. So that you don't necessarily need to, like, go and find your grandpa's birth certificate or you just need to make sure you have the dates and then they're you know? Mhmm. If you do have records you can add as a source, that's better. It's great. Yeah. But a lot of times, it's it's your mother knows
this information. Maybe a living grandparent knows the date, the place of their parents' birth, so that can qualify them. But but we do like records when they're available to substantiate as a source. Yep. And I would imagine for especially for converts to the church who, you know, for me, I'd I'd you know, we I sometimes take for granted just how much research has been done for Yeah. My ancestors, but maybe people coming to church is
not there. Yeah. Yeah. And here's something really cool that I wanted to share about converts. So many of them, I hear this over and over and over again, all around the world, by the way, not just in North America. They will prepare shortly after their baptisms to go to the temple and to be baptized and confirmed for their own ancestors. Someone they feel an affinity toward and feel like, oh, I need to do this for my father who's passed away or for my grandfather or grandmother.
And they do the work and it's a huge blessing to them. They're absolutely thrilled to get to serve their family that way. But here's something magical that happens. Someone, let's say a Templar family history consultant in the ward or administering brother or sister, or just a friend in the ward helps them set up their account and start to add some names, and they connect to their tree, and they're going. And now that they're a member, they see green temples.
That's only for members of the church because those are the the ready to go names for temple ordinances. They can see these ancestors, these relatives, and it shows all of their temple works been done in there. Wait wait a minute. Mhmm. Look at all of these relatives I have who are already members of the church. I thought I was the only Latter day
Saint in my family. That's cool. And they just weep when they see all of these names of people, and they feel like I'm not only part of this church, this is part of our family. This is part of family heritage is this faith. Isn't that cool? Yeah. That is cool. Nice. Oh, oh, and something else. Yeah. While you're talking about converts, we have created we've got such smart people at FamilySearch. I mean, I'm never the smartest guy in the room at any meeting ever go to.
But we've got these brilliant people who've created this tool called Family Name Assist. So if you're a bishop, if you're a counselor, Bishop Rick, if you're an award council, just pay attention. You forget the rest of it. Pay attention to this part. Family name assist. So, when you're a leader in Clerk Resources, and let's say someone was baptized, a convert was baptized in your ward, you're interviewing them
for temple recommend. Yeah. And they're they're that's like, I don't even have a family search account. I don't, you know, I don't know how to do this, but I wanna take a family name. So Bishop or someone he designates could be counselor, a member of the word council, can use this tool, family name assist, to help them qualify one ancestor for temple work.
So they could, in a matter of days from being baptized, with a little help from the word council or the bishop, have a card ready to go the temple for baptism and confirmation, and it's someone of their choosing. Mhmm. Part of the question is that a bishop or or someone had asked, is there someone you felt strongly about sharing the gospel with and providing them the blessings of of church membership and of baptism and confirmation? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, if it's if
it's a woman. Yes. My grandmother. We were so close. I just love her, and I just felt her cheering me on when I was taking the missionary list. I could just feel her nudging me to be baptized. And now I feel like she's waiting for me to do this for her. Okay. That's who we're going to do. Oh, cool. And they, you know, in a couple of minutes have prepared a family name of the converts choosing to take to the temple. How cool is
that? That is cool. And that's just done like, it's not necessarily an app, but it's just on the desktop Yeah. Website? It's on the desktop. It's in leader and clerk resources, LCR. Oh, okay. That's good to know. So a member of the the word council can go to it and use this tool to walk through a few simple steps. And and this convert can literally walk out of their temple recommending me with a family name card for someone they love and are excited to do this
work for. Yeah. So that's a huge breakthrough. That's really that's kinda hot off the press. Or as Marjorie's dad would say, h off the p. He loves the p. He's pretty h. Nice. And then I think that's just a good mindset shift to think about, like, when because we we we handle so much, like, paperwork almost like, okay. You're going to the temple. We gotta do the the temple recommend and but to have this in mind, like, we're
not just doing a temple recommend. We're now making sure they're in the FamilySearch universe. Right? Let's make sure they have an account and a name and just get that ball rolling. Right? Exactly. In fact, if you look at the handbook and leadership instruction, this is referred to as temple and family history work. Mhmm. So we like to see it as one work that we exist as a department of the church. The family history department of the church/familysearch.org. Mhmm.
FamilySearch International. We exist for one purpose, and that is to nourish the temples with names, to provide qualified names of ancestors of members so they can serve them in the temple and be part of that process of being saviors out on Mount Zion for their own
family. Yeah. That's why we exist. So everything we do is with that in mind is how do we get the records so that members of the church can go to the temple over and over and over on behalf of their ancestors so they can not only bless the ancestor, but bless themselves. Yeah. That's powerful. Where should we go next? What's a good, as far as the rising generation, who's talked
about some good tools? Yeah. That's you know, I'm pretty fired up when it comes to helping bless the rising generation because I see I see what happens when they engage in this work. Yeah. And I I don't even like word work. Like template family history work makes it sound like, you know, oh, this is going to be a piece of art. Yeah. It's hard work. When we do it right with the right mindset, it's joyful. And it's fun. It's engaging. It's stuff we want to share with our friends and get
them fired up. But here's something we want to really focus on. And this is this is great for leaders of the church in particular is instead of focusing on kind of this aspect of work and, hey, we gotta resolve duplicates and we gotta, you know, find more sources or, you know, whatever the kind of the genealogical side is. I want leaders to think of how's this engaging in this great effort. See how it didn't say work? That that's right. Yeah. How does it bless the rising generation?
Again, starting with the end in mind. It's like, what do we want for the children, for the youth, for the young adults of the church? And we have a list of promised blessings that have been pronounced by prophets and apostles. And these are profound. Elder Bednar, David a Bednar, he promised that the youth who engage in this great cause and are doing this are going to receive protection against the increasing effects
of the adversary. Mhmm. I mean, what bishop or what youth advisor doesn't want that for these youth? Elder Dale g Renlund, in when he was talking about many of the blessings, he talked about the power that comes to us. And one of those was the power to heal that which needs healing. Mhmm. I mean, think about that. How important is that for this generation who are just absolutely wrestling. I just say wrestle. I like you can tell I live in the country. Yeah. We're absolutely wrestling
with issues of identity Yeah. And this epidemic of depression and anxiety that is so rampant with this generation and for them to receive these blessings to heal that which needs healing. And along those lines, there's a friend of mine is professor at BYU, Doctor. Brian Hill. He's a professor of experience design and management. And he's done that done this really cool research. It was actually written up in church news and published other
places. But he did this research that found this connection between particularly older adolescents who do family history stuff, know some of their family history, know some of these stories, know about their ancestors and an increased sense of identity. I mean, how important is that? Yeah. That's huge. To have a deeper sense of who you are and what your place is in this bigger family. You know, past, present, and future. Yeah. And along those lines, a few years back at Emory University,
Doctor. Marshall Duke and Doctor. Robin Fybisch did this research that was so profound, and they found something very similar, but even deeper and broader. And that is that that children and youth who know their family stories are more resilient. They're less apt to struggle with mental health issues. They're more capable of handling life's challenges. And a lot of that is just having
a sense of knowing who you are. And a lot of that is when you know your family stories, you have these examples of people in your own family who've wrestled life's big challenges, and come through the other side better for it. Yeah. And when we I or you or our children, our grandchildren, when the rising generation learn these stories of their own ancestors, of the challenges and the trials that they had, and how they overcame those, rose above those.
They're fortified. They're strengthened. It's like, this is who I am, man. This is my DNA. I can get through this. Mhmm. Look what my grandfather went through. Look what my great grandmother went through. I got this. And that is just so powerful. And another piece of this research, it's so cool. They actually came up with a, do you know scale?
And it's 20 questions that are predictors of if children and youth know the answers to some or many of these questions, they are predictably more fortified and more resilient. Oh, wow. And that's nothing tricky. I mean, stuff you can sit down over a family dinner, Thanksgiving dinner. You're sitting around, you know, have your cheat sheet of the 20 questions and and ask, hey, grandma. How'd you and grandpa meet? Tell me your meet cute story. You know, what had you guys
meet and fall in love? Oh, cool. Hey, dad. What was your first job as a teenager? Uh-huh. Hey, mom. What was it like going to high school? Where did you go to high school? Hey, did any of your siblings or any of your family have a really, like, serious illness or injury that they had to overcome? Things like that. Those are the 20 questions. So, it's nothing tricky, nothing magic, but the magic is that when we have these experiences as families, it literally fortifies the rising generation.
Easy to do and so powerful. Yeah. So that's something to that's actionable. You can just go home and you can do it tonight. You know, next time your family's together. Yeah. Is there any thought on because, I think especially when I was a youth, like family history, genealogy was like this thing. It was almost like in this event or something you went to. Right? Like, oh, this this week for young men's, we're going down to the family history library and we're gonna
show you some stuff. For now, it's much more with these different apps and things that can it's just like a little bit here, a little bit there. Right? And so I mean, I'm just thinking about those youth leaders. It's like, okay. Like, we wanna get involved there, but there's all this other stuff we're trying to do too. So any advice on how to really just work this into the culture of I love that. That that is such a cool question.
So hear my thoughts on that, Kurt. I think the more we treat it like this kinda separate thing over here that we're okay. Now we're gonna stop everything else and go and do family history stuff. The more we treat it like that, I think the less we enculturate this. I think where the winds come is when it's a natural part of something we're already doing. Alright. So, let's just throw out a wild example. Let's say it's an institute is going
to have a dance. And at the dance, could you in, in the classroom, right near where the dance is, could you have a couple of family history experiences where they can come in and do like compare a face and find out which ancestor you look like? Or do it, do relatives around me? Yeah. I love that. Dating someone and find out if you can keep dating or not. Right? Oh, no. We're first cousins. Everybody knows. First cousins. You are now in the friend zone.
So that's what we're seeing as more successful is when it's integrated real naturally into the stuff we're already doing and not turned into some kind of special thing of now we're gonna do. Yeah. And the idea is is we want temple and family history to become this normal and natural part of people's worship pattern. Their personal worship pattern. Not just adults, but especially the rising generation that it just is, is what they do. And it feels natural. It feels normal and
it's easy and it's fun. And they just, they wouldn't think of going to the temple without a family name. Yeah. That's what we wanna see happen. It's just kind of in these organic ways. Imagine this. Sound like Carl Sagan. Imagine a world.
But imagine just every seminary teacher, every institute teacher, every religion instructor at every church university, every youth advisor, every youth Sunday school advisor, that every once in a while, not every week, but every once in a while, they say, hey, we have 5 minutes less left in class. Everybody get out your phone. We're gonna gather Israel. Mhmm. Yeah. That's our vision is let's work it into what we're already
doing. Let's make it simple and fun. We have the tools to do that so that people can facilitate an experience at the end of a class. Let's gather Israel last 5 minutes of class. The first time you say it, they was, wait, get out my phone and gather Israel. Are you crazy? Because by the way, they live on their phones. Yeah. And we have ways for them to do that. That's kind of our vision
of where we want to get. And, and we're seeing it more and more and more and more institutes are working this into the curriculum and not like, oh, you want to take the family history course? No. It's in an eternal family course. There's these little curricular insertions that are experiential. There's some doctrine, but we know the rising generation resonates with experience. They, they need to understand the doctrine, but let's not just preach to them and
bore them to death. Let's say, let's have them get out their phone and show them some really fun ways in a few minutes they can help gather Israel. That's that's where they're really cool stuff. Really helpful. And I just love the idea of, like, in using these apps in fun ways. Like, I love, you know, relatives around me. And the best thing is, like, not only is it fun to do it in the moment, but by the time you're done with that, everybody has that app on their phone.
Right? You've those that didn't you get them make sure they're on there. And then even just taking the youth to the app library and saying, alright. Search FamilySearch and, you know, ping those 4 apps, and now they're on your phone. And we're gonna use them here and there. So keep them on your phone. And then when those last 5 minutes come up or I I gotta tell you, you know, we talk I mentioned how Temple and Family History of One Work. Mhmm. Missionary.
Sharing the gospel, That's part of one work. And for me, the easiest entree for a stranger, a friend who's not of our faith into opening a door of conversation and trust is giving them a discovery experience of family history. I've had such cool experiences with this. And, the executive director of our department, Elder Kevin Hamilton,
does this all the time. If he's on a flight, he's at a dinner somewhere, like some kind of function, turns the person next to him and said says, hey, we have this really cool app that's got the family tree of the world on it. Do you want to find out if one of your ancestors on the tree? And about 10 out of 10 people go, yeah, are you kidding? And it's the find a person function on the app, on the Family Tree app.
So you go to find a person and it's simple, and I've done it a dozen times, and no one's ever said, no, I don't want to do this. And then you just say, tell me the name of a grandparent who isn't living. Oh, Oscar Elwood Louder. Okay. Well, I'm giving my family. Yeah. So tell me the name of a of an ancestor, grandparent, or great grandparent who's not living. In my family. Yeah. Harold Frankem. Okay. So I type in Harold Frankem. So do you know the approximate year when
he died? Because most people, if you go back a couple generations, they don't know when they were born, but a lot of usually, I can remember about when he died. Yeah. About what year did he die? I think 1984. Okay. 1984. Great. Famous year if you're Orwellian. That's right. You can edit that part up, but can't miss an opportunity for a rad joke. Alright. So then I type in 1984 and then search. I get a bunch of returns of possible matches, and usually the first one on the list
of returns is the match. And I show it to you and 9 out of 10 times when I do this with somebody, they grab the phone out of my hand because they are flipping out. They go, woah, woah, woah, that's him. And they push the person thing and they go to the person page and they're seeing the memories. And this is literally happened to me. They're thumbing through some of the photos, and I've had a person start crying because they say, I've never seen this wedding photo of my
grandparents. Oh, wow. And they're like choking back the tears. Yeah. These are not members of the church. This is someone who for the first time is experiencing this, and they're going, what in the heck? How do you how do I get this app? Oh, you go here and you how much does it cost? What's the subscription? So it's free. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, the for the 1st 6 months, and then I let you know it's free.
And then they always ask this question. What are they gonna ask me when I say it's free? How is it funded or Yes. He's paying for it? Yeah. Why in the heck is it free? Somebody's gotta be paying for it. So yeah. Yeah. This is funded and sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. We pay for it completely. And then they ask, why? Yeah. Why would they do this? That's got to be a big investment. And then I say, because we believe that families can be eternal.
And when Marjorie and I were married, we were married in the temple, in the house of the Lord, in the simple sweet ceremony where we were married for time and eternity. And because this is really the essence of everything we do in our church, is to bind families for eternities. We want to make this beautiful sweet opportunity available for our ancestors, so that I can go and do this for my great grandparents. That's why we do this. Now it blesses the rest of the world because they find
their families. They see their family trees. We provide these billions of records for free so they can build out their tree, and it blesses them. They feel connected to their broader family. They feel this deeper sense of identity and connection and resilience, and they feel the spirit of Elijah. They feel the Holy Ghost bearing witness of the divine nature of families, people all over the world, millions. The majority of the patrons of FamilySearch are not LDS.
By a long shot, most of them are what we call general public. Mhmm. And they're being drawn there because the spirit is moving on on them to connect to their family. So, anyway, that's just another cool thing you can do with the app. I do it all the time with peep friends not of our faith. You know, I'll be on a, waiting on the tarmac for the plane to take off, and I'll just, you know, they say, where do you work? Oh, family's here. Oh, what's that? And tell them what it is. I go, well, that's
cool. Yeah. And then I do that, and it blows their mind. Yeah. And they 9 out of 10 times, they're like choking back to tears. That's so cool. And sometimes, and again, I'm not a great genealogist, so don't email me and ask me for help with your, with your genealogy. We got real genealogists who do that. But a lot of times when I have these encounters with a stranger, I say, would you be interested in me, like, seeing if I could find a few ancestors that are lost to you or you don't
know anything about them? You do that for me? Well, what are you gonna charge? I said, no, I want to do just as a friend, just as a service to you. Yeah. So I ask him a couple of questions like, k. Tell me, you know, some information about your parents or grandparents. And who don't you know? Like, what family I don't you know? And I'll go back to my computer that night at the hotel or back at work, and I can always find something they didn't know.
And I'll email that to them. And sometimes they say, can you help me set up an account? So I help them and I hand it over to them, and I've already added some names to their tree of people they didn't know existed. And they're absolutely floored. Yeah. They're just moved beyond explanation. That's awesome. Love it. Any other principles as far as the rising generation before we begin to wrap up? Or how do we do? Can I read a quote from president Nelson?
Yeah. You know, you can't ever go wrong quoting the prophet. I know. Right? And what a prophet. Oh my goodness. He is just, just beyond phenomenal in every regard. Yeah. Here's what he said. While Temple and Family History Work has the power to bless those beyond the veil, it has an equal power to bless the living. It has a refining influence on those who
are engaged in it. I promise that lovingly performing ordinances for ancestors will strengthen and protect our youth and families in a world that is becoming increasingly evil. Please remember that you are not alone, and you will never be alone. And I would add that these ministering angels know who you are. They care for you. They love you. They will become a vital part of the fortification of your home. Cool. We expect you to seek inspiration and revelation.
And as you do that in your youth, in a world that is increasingly wicked and ever more chaotic, we promise you you will be safeguarded. You'll be guided. You'll be protected. I promise you, this is still President Nelson. I promise you that as you increase your time in Temple and family history work, you will increase and improve your ability to hear him. Isn't that amazing? That's powerful. Words of a prophet. Yeah. So it just so much we can do to help fortify the rising generation.
We just need to point them in the right direction and introduce them in a few of the tools and let them lead out. Yeah. Let them figure out what they can do to share that with their friends, with their peers and with, with the older members, members of the ward. Let's have them be the leaders. Let's have them be the ones that are seeking and receiving the inspiration, How to get a word on fire and receiving all these blessings. Yep. It's powerful. Love it.
Any other point principle story that we need to cover? Several years ago, this is probably 8 or 9 years ago, My youngest son, Dalen, was serving a mission in Houston, Texas, Spanish speaking. Great missionary. And I had an assignment that from work, from FamilySearch that took me to Houston. So I reached out to the missionary department, asked for permission to spend a day with him proselyting. They said yes, as long as okay with
the mission president. I reached out to the president, and he said, yes, you may do that. Got all the necessary approvals and made it clear that this isn't a field trip. We're not gonna go to 6 flags and, you know, have Pretend like we're working. Pretend like we're we're gonna goof off. We're gonna go do the work. And we did. We spent the day teaching their contacts, their friends.
A couple of visits were brand new converts whom we helped prepare a family name for temple ordinances because they were getting ready to go to the temple to do baptisms. Couple of people we were able to jointly lay our hands on and pronounce priesthood
blessings. I mean, the whole day was just, so profound and so sweet to get to be my son's missionary companion, to see him, how lovingly he was ministering to these people in and out of the church, how his heart was just riveted on the cross of our redeemer and serving his children, And to get to be a part of that and see him and have this joint experience of prosthining together was one of the highlights
of my life. Mhmm. Well, the only regret I had this lingering kind of gnawing thing was I got to spend a day being his missionary companion. I know it's not possible, but I wish he could have been my missionary companion for a day in Germany. In the Germany Munich mission where I served a 1000000 years ago, which is now the Alpine German speaking mission. I just had that knowing, this was so sweet. I wish he could
have had the experience I just had. Well, he got home from his mission, and we'd prepared a bunch of names to do baptisms and confirmations. So we went to the Salt Lake Temple, and I hadn't looked closely at the names. We'd done the work and got them already. I think we had 10 names, and we decided, k. You baptize me, the first five, then we'll swap, and I'll baptize you for the second five of these names. So give the name to the recorder in the baptistery.
So he he baptizes me and, for these 5, and we get to the second or third name that I was doing the baptisms for. And I read this name, and I read the information, and I started weeping and could barely speak the words of the baptism of prayer. Baptized my son on behalf of this gentleman. And, anyway, as we exit the water, you know, Dal was looking at me like, what the heck just happened, man? There's something going on
here. And, the one of the witnesses in the baptistry, like, are you willing to share with us what what just transpired? And I said, yes. I got to spend a day with my son and his mission, and I always wanted him to be a part of my mission. And that name was an ancestor from Heilbron, Germany, where I spent 7 months of my mission. That very town. Wow. Cool. And I was able to baptize my son for someone, an ancestor from a town where I served in my mission. So he got to be part of my
mission for that moment. And it's just overcome by the not only the sweetness of that experience and kind of completing that circle, but the tender mercy of our heavenly father to grant that righteous desire was just overwhelming to me. Yeah. There's just so much grace and goodness and and so many moments of feeling our heavenly father's love and feeling guided by the spirit and having our testimonies fortified when we engage in this great cause. So and it's been such a pleasure, Kurt. You're
such a good man. You're so kind to invite me. Absolutely. Any chance I get to hang out with you, I'm gonna I'm gonna take Yeah. Well, hey, if you get president Nelson to allow me to interview him, we can hang out the whole day. So I'm just I'm just kidding. Well, I'll have his people call you. Okay. Yeah. Sure. For sure. They keep avoiding my
calls. But no. Is it just the last question to wrap up, like, just a summary of encouragement you'd give to youth leaders or even the youth themselves of of encouraging them down the the gathering of Israel path with family history? Yeah. Well, just that as president Nelson said, there's no greater cause. There's no greater effort that's happening on the work on the earth today than gathering of Israel on both sides of the veil. And they are the ones to lead out. And when they do
this, they're blessed in so many ways. They're blessed with protection. They're fortified. They have a greater sense of identity. It helps heal the things in their life that need healing. It's just a multitude of blessings. And as president Nelson said, there are ministering angels that will attend to them as they engage in this great work. And so let's just get them involved, get them going on it, and just light the fire and let them go and let them lead out.
And as they do, they'll be blessed in ways that we can't even imagine. And this could be the very thing that keeps some of them on the covenant path who might be struggling, who might be questioning their faith. And this can be the thing that anchors them to the savior. That concludes this episode of the Leading Saints podcast. Hey. Listen. Would you do me a favor? You know, everybody's got that friend who listens to a ton of podcasts, and maybe they aren't aware of Leading Saints.
So would you mind taking the link of this episode or another episode of Leading Saints and just texting it to that friend? You know who I'm talking about, the friend who always listens to podcasts and is always telling you about different podcasts. Well, it's your turn to tell that friend about Leading Saints. So share it. We'd also love to hear
from you. If you have any perspective or thought on this episode, you can go to leading saints.org and actually leave a comment on the, episode page, or reach out to us at leading saints.org/contact. Remember, go listen to Dan Duckworth's presentation about youth mentorship by visiting leading saints.org/14. It came as a result of the position of leadership which was imposed upon us by the God of heaven who brought forth a restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And when the declaration was made concerning the own and only true and living church upon the face of the earth, We were immediately put in a position of loneliness, the loneliness of leadership from which we cannot shrink nor run away, and to which we must face up with boldness and courage and ability.