Kadena Okinawa Temple and Family History

Thought for Day 7: I'm thankful for the commandments of God. They aren't always easy to obey. They require discipline and we can always improve our obedience. But as we continue to put our best efforts towards keeping the commandments of God, we are blessed with greater peace, joy, and stability. Keeping the commandments also qualify us for other blessings, including access to holy temples. #GiveThanks

  Thought for Day 6: I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn from my ancestors. I've found stories of faith, courage, and success. I have also found stories of less than ideal choices. I don't judge my ancestors. None of us are perfect. We all have struggles. Both the good and the bad stories from my family history challenge me to rise to the best within myself. They highlight the need to continually hold to truth and right. I'm thankful that the stories have been saved--and I can share them as "memories" on  FamilySearch --so that I can continue to learn from my ancestors. #GiveThanks

  Thought for Day 5: I'm thankful for the many amazing family members who have shown so much love and support for me over the years. Some have been consistently kind far beyond what I deserved. Some have been there to strengthen and encourage me during difficult times. Our family relationships are so precious for many reasons. But all too often I fall into the habit of sometimes letting trivial or petty issues get in the way of fully enjoying those relationships. I'm grateful that my family is patient and forgiving and continues to love and support me. #GiveThanks

Thought for Day 4: I have many reasons to be grateful to my mother but today I want to express thanks for all the hard work she put into family history. The time and effort she put into collecting and organizing information over a number of years really laid a foundation and made it so much easier for me to get started doing family history myself. And truth be told, most of the info in my family tree was input into FamilySearch by my mother. People say we all stand on the shoulders of giants and I definitely think that's true for me in the family history department thanks to my mother. #GiveThanks

  Thought for Day 3: I'm thankful for the peace I feel when I am in a temple. The temple has always been a peaceful place for me but I think that it has become more and more peaceful the more years I have attended. When I visit a temple, it calms my worries and settles me. I think this is another of the great blessings of having temples upon the earth. #GiveThanks

Thought for Day 2: I am extremely grateful for the amazing technology we are blessed with today and how this technology has been applied to temple and family history work, namely in the form of FamilySearch.org . I remember almost two decades ago watching some faithful women pull up to a friend's house and haul at least one box of family history records into the house so they could do some work together. I also remember them handling 3.5" floppy disks  and discussing usability and duplication issues related to the nascent family history computer program. THANK GOODNESS those days are gone! 😀 FamilySearch.org isn't perfect but it is lightyears ahead of the the time-consuming and duplicative ways the work used to be done. And continual improvements ensure that things just keep getting better.  #GiveThanks

I'm not much of a social media user but I'm going to share a few gratitude thoughts related to temple and family history over the next week. I'll likely keep them pretty short but I hope they are still useful to you. I think all of us can benefit from reflecting on our many blessings --yes, everyone has many--as a form of positive thinking. Thought for Day 1: I am incredibly grateful for the blessing of having temples on the earth. (As of today, there are 159 temples operating, 8 dedicated temples under renovation, and 63 additional temples under construction and/or announced throughout the world. ) In particular, I am grateful for temples because they allow us to access the amazing blessing of having our families sealed together forever--"for all eternity"--through sacred ceremonies prescribed by God. Regardless of the difficulties and challenges we encounter in life, if we maintain faith and continue to do our best in following Jesus Christ and keeping His comma

I stopped by the site for the Okinawa Japan Temple and snapped a few pictures: A new solid white metal-panel fence that goes around the entire site has replaced the see-through orange netting; this makes it pretty hard to see the inside of the construction site from street-level. But I got creative and was still able to sneak a few shots that revealed progress: And as you can see, the asphalt of the former parking lot has all been removed. The digger is also gone and there's no other signs of heavy equipment. We'll just have to wait and see what happens next.

Construction Preparation Begins for Okinawa Japan Temple (Photo Courtesy of Keny G.) It is the first week of November 2020 and construction of the Okinawa Japan Temple has started! So far it looks like they have fenced off the parking lot and set up a temporary office or guard shack of some sort. Next I imagine they'll begin to remove the asphalt parking lot. It even looks like they already have a digger on site. These are small steps of progress but it is very exciting to see things get rolling! The fact that the temple construction begins with some demolition probably has more than a few good life lessons for us, chiefly how sometimes it is necessary to get rid of good things to make room/time/energy for better, i.e. more important, things .

One less common way to participate in temple and family history work is to join in a newly started project to improve place names. You can help out via FamilySearch.org or via the FamilySearch app. Here is where the project is found on the website: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/improve-place-names/ . In the app, just click on the three lines icon on the top left and you'll find the project listed as the eighth item. At the opening screen, you can choose to select a specific country you'd like to work on or you can leave it to chance and stick with the default setting of "Any Country." Currently there are 20 different countries or localities listed. (There were actually 42 options listed just a few weeks ago.) [[Update: As of January 3, 2020, only the following six location options are now listed: Austria, Czechoslavika, Germany, Hungary, Mexico, and United States.]] [[Update #2: As of February 8, 2021, there were 93 six location options listed.]] For those of you