Family History How to Preserve and Digitize Family Photos When my grandmother passed away, we found eleven shoeboxes of photographs in her closet — and nobody under sixty could name half the faces in them. Rescuing those photos taught me that digitizing a family collection is less about scanners and more about timing: the people … Read more
Family History How to Interview Living Relatives About Family Stories I have a nineteen-second voice memo of my grandfather laughing, and it is worth more to me than every document I’ve ever found on FamilySearch. Getting it took one phone call and a little nerve. Here’s how to sit down with your oldest relatives, ask … Read more
Family History How to Start Indexing on FamilySearch Indexing is the most flexible service opportunity I’ve found in the Church — no schedule, no calling, no committee, and a batch of old census records fits neatly between breakfast and the kids waking up. Here’s what it actually is, why it matters more than it feels … Read more
Family History Family History for Beginners: Getting Started with FamilySearch I put off family history for years because I assumed everything had already been done. One evening on FamilySearch proved that wrong — and the first week taught me almost everything a beginner actually needs to know. Here’s that week, step by step. Updated August … Read more
Church Life & Service Ward and Community Service Project Ideas I’ve helped organize — and occasionally survive — more ward service projects than I can count. The ones people still talk about years later all share the same DNA: a real need, a clear coordinator, and a finish line you can see from the starting … Read more
Church Life & Service What to Expect When You Get a New Calling The first time a member of the bishopric asked to meet with me, I spent two days quietly panicking about what I might have done wrong. What actually happened was a five-minute conversation that changed the next two years of my life. … Read more
Church Life & Service Ministering: How to Be a Better Ministering Brother or Sister For years I treated ministering like a monthly chore I was slightly behind on. What changed wasn’t a new program — it was a slow shift from completing visits to actually knowing people. Here’s what that shift looks like in practice, … Read more
Church Life & Service How to Give a Talk in Sacrament Meeting The first time a counselor in the bishopric asked me to speak, I said yes and then spent two weeks quietly panicking. Since then I’ve given more than a dozen sacrament talks — some good, one genuinely bad — and I’ve learned that … Read more
Family & Home How to Have Natural Gospel Conversations with Teens I spent two years giving my teenage daughter excellent gospel lectures she never once asked for. What finally worked was embarrassingly simple: I stopped scheduling the talks and started catching the ones she was already trying to have — usually in the car, usually … Read more
Family & Home Family Dinner Traditions That Bring Everyone Together For years our family dinner was a refueling stop — plates down, heads down, gone in eleven minutes. What turned it into the best hour of our day wasn’t better cooking. It was a handful of small rituals repeated so many times the kids would … Read more