While many LDS teenagers are used to the idea of early-morning seminary, a group of youths living in Vernal, Utah, greets the sun with temple and family history work.
The young men and women of the Maeser 2nd Ward, Vernal Utah Maeser Stake, dedicate each Tuesday morning to indexing at the local family history center or attending the Vernal Utah Temple to perform proxy baptisms. Many live up Dry Fork Canyon which is about 25 minutes from either the temple or the family history center, so they wake up by 5 a.m. to be on the road by 5:30.
Tom Allred, a father of two of the youths, said the group originally attended the temple each Tuesday morning.
“Eventually the temple presidency had to ask our ward to cut back to every other Tuesday to let other wards have a chance at early-morning baptisms for the dead,” Allred said in an email. “(But) rather than let enthusiasm wane, our ward leaders then started using the alternative Tuesdays to do name indexing at the family history center. As (Larry Wilcken, director of the local family history center) likes to say, ‘The front door of the temple is really here in the family history center.’”
Wilcken said youth indexing groups at the Family History Center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are “catching on” since the first group came about six months ago. Three different wards come regularly, with other wards going through the training process, he said. FamilySearch's indexing program includes transcribing names from digital images of handwritten records to create an online index for researchers.
“I feel blessed to have great instructors who are able to get the youth excited about indexing,” Wilcken said.
The focus is to instruct people so they can go home and work on their own family history and teach fellow ward members, he said.
Participants include Primary, youths and Relief Society groups, Wilken said.
“We had 60 youth the other night and the center was bulging at the seams,” he said.
While Allred’s ward does early-morning indexing, he said other youths take advantage of the family history center at other times of the day.
“I work Tuesday evening at the family history center and just two days ago we had eight or 10 young Beehive girls from the Maeser 1st Ward come in to do indexing,” Allred said. “I am now getting to know those girls well because this is probably the fifth or sixth time they have been in this year.”
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