September 2025

The real destination of discipleship is literally to become as Jesus Christ is.

Elder Michael B. Strong

OneWork Conference

We recently attended a "OneWork" conference at the church office buildings and the FamilySearch Library in Salt Lake City. The conference was for Area Authorities, Communications Directors, JustServe Directors, and Temple and Family History Advisers, all from the coordinating councils that make up the U.S. Central Area (which used to be the North America Central Area). This was the first year that TFH Advisers were included in the conference. 

We got to participate in training sessions conducted by people who work for FamilySearch, several Area Seventies (including elder Ames), Elder Gary L. Stevenson , the Presidency of U.S. Central area, and Brother and Sister Hutchins (lead TFH Advisers for the Area). If I had to sum up the focus of all the training, I would have to say it would be to be this: start everything that we do in our callings with Jesus - start with Jesus and make him the primary focus. Then add the rest - then add missionary effort, efforts to get people to the temple, to do family history work, to serve in the community and so on.

Today we would like to share some of what we learned with the hope that it will help to get you in the mood to listen to what the Spirit wants you learn from it.

First though, we have to give kudos to Elder Ames for a great talk to the whole group on the importance of coordinating all that we do in the service of this "OneWork. " What we want to share here though is focused more on the TFH side. Brother Hutchins put together a slide deck for the TFH group. Much of it was taken from this year's RootsTech Leadership Instruction. I hope that you will take time to review it even if you have watched it before - it's the whole video, about 30 minutes long. You can also watch it  in the window below.

Now to the slide deck. I've broken it into sections so that we can point out a few things here and there. It's a Google Slides presentation - the player controls in the lower left-hand corner of the window are active, so you can scroll through the slides right in the window.

Isn't that an interesting comparison! There sure has been a lot of progress in the way that we do family history and the way it's so tightly integrated with temple work - and so accessible.

A few things at this point it might be good to think about:

Slide 21 makes reference to a leadership meeting from the April 2025 General Conference. "These things should happen" is a quote from this pdf summary of the meeting - there is other information in that summary that's interesting, too. 

The idea is that the church is embracing technology to hasten the work of salvation - including temple work, and especially temple work.  That idea continues in the next section, with an emphasis on the new Name Assist feature in LCR. We have covered that in previous issues of the newsletter, but here is a link to Brother Hutchins' video, and one to the church training page. When you go to the church page, try the "Try Demo" tile to get a sense of what the the tool is like for those with LCR access.  Note - TFH consultants now have access to LCR through the "Temple" tab when they are signed in to their account on the church website (churchofjesuschrist.org). That's nice to know! Who has access to LCR? Check out this FAQ from the church website.

In the next set of slides, you will see the amazing results that Brother Hutchins got with the tool when he served as the mission leader for the Monte Verde Branch in Boulder Colorado. That's in slide 7.  It's so great to see so many new converts going to the temple early on, especially considering how much more likely they are to remain active in the church having had that opportunity to expand on that spiritual experience that comes with baptism and confirmation.

One other thing before you go on: the "submitted" category on the Family History Activity Report (FHAR) is counted like this - if you submit a name in a calendar year, your submission is counted only once, regardless of how many names you submit during the year, or how many times you submit names. If I submit 1 name or 1000 names, my statistical contribution to that measure is a sigle data point. I know that's been a source of confusion to me - thanks to Glenn Adamz for that clarification during our training!

That's Brother Hutchins with his new convert branch members in the collage at slide 8.

Let's continue...

The last set of slides comes from some of the training by four of the area seventies and President Teixeira, president of the U.S. Central Area. 

There are a couple of slides that don't have text. Slide 3 is a picture of strands of a multi-colored rope, slide 4 is a picture of those strands united in a single rope. Of course you can guess the commentary that accompanied these pictures. The single rope made up of the separate strands was the more sure rope. Elder Renlund had a similar theme in a BYU address recently when he talked about covenants giving strength. In that talk, he invited 3 students to come up to the stage area. To the first he gave one exercise band around his wrists, to the next, a band wrapped around the wrists twice, and to the third, a band wrapped three times. He then asked each of them to test their strength against the tension of the bands.  As expected, the third, with three bands, had the hardest time trying to fight her way free. He said that covenants have the same effect, that is, they constrain us to a narrow way as we walk the covenant path. 

Likewise, the commentary goes, the separate strands of Temple and Family History, JustServe, and Communications have more impact when they work together, especially when combined with missionary work, welfare work, and all of the other facets of the work of salvation and exaltation. Hence, the OneWork title for the conference.

There is a reference on slide 6 to a Covenant Path Progress Report.  I wasn't familiar with that term, so I did a bit of looking in case any of you hadn't either. From the church site, here is the overview: The Covenant Path Progress report is used to help new and returning members track their progress along the covenant path during their first two years of Church membership or returning to Church activity. 

That FAQ also has a video demonstration (available below). The print is tiny, so watch it in Full Screen mode.

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Ordinance Preparation

We have been anticipating this for a while! September 24, 2025 is the date we have now for the rollout of this new system. It is a change from the process that we are used to when we prepare a temple patron for a living ordinance. Instead of the temple office sisters gathering the necessary information, it will be the priesthood leaders' responsibility now. The priesthood leader and the patron will work together to make sure that all of the information for the ordinance is correct. The patron will also be able now to make his or her own appointment in the new system. It looks like most of the work will land on the bishops. Temple office staff and recorders will continue to provide support.

Take a look at the video below to get an idea of how the new guided process will work. You will probably be interested in discovering ways that you can assist, too.

We know that the Area Seventies have the assignment to provide training to the wards and stakes, so this is just another heads-up.

The documentation is also available here when you want to take a closer look!

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Conference Bonus!

I know that there is a lot of information about how to use FamilySearch, especially when it comes to leaders helping members. But now he FamilySearch folks have created a place where you can go, one-stop! They gave us some pass-along cards with a brief advert and a QR code, and if you want some, please let me know, but for now, you can click here to go to the site they made. 

Or, use your camera to scan the QR code for it:

Please note that this site is also listed in the Resouces page of this site. To get there, click the Resources tab in the upper-right corner of any the pages on this (Newsletter) site.

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