Kadena Okinawa Temple and Family History

There was still no sign of construction progress on the Okinawa Japan Temple as of February 28, 2021:

Here's another belated construction update. There was no progress on construction of the Okinawa Japan Temple as of January 17, 2021:

   Okinawa Japan Temple Groundbreaking Ceremony, December 5, 2020 The groundbreaking ceremony for the Okinawa Japan Temple was held on December 5.  As part of the ceremony, a dedicatory prayer for the temple site was offered by Elder Takashi Wada of the Quorum of the Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Per the invitation of a local church leader, I went back and re-watched the prayer. It took a couple minutes for me to locate the dedicatory prayer. At first I mistakenly searched for it in the recording of the temple groundbreaking fireside. Eventually I looked at the groundbreaking ceremony and found that the dedicatory prayer began right after  55:12 in the video . Some things that stood out to me during the prayer were the repeated invitations to live temple-worthy lives and to be prepared to serve in the temple after the edifice itself is built and dedicated. These ideas dovetailed well with one of the themes that I noticed in several addre...

I recently saw the exciting news that there will be free family research help as part of RootsTech 2021 :  https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/RootsTech_Connect_Research_Help . You can receive help in two primary ways: by attending a group session: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/RootsTech_Connect_Research_Help#Group_Research_Sessions . by scheduling a personal online consultation:  https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/RootsTech_Connect_Research_Help#Online_Consultations . Group sessions, which will be held generally between midnight and 7am Japan time, are being offered on the following topics: British Isles Nordic Countries Asian Countries Germany Latin American Countries US and Canada FamilySearch Research Wiki Digital Library For the personal online consultations, the point is to get more customized help so there is a huge variety topics you can choose from. Consultations, which are mostly available in the mornings Japan time, are offered in four languages: English, ...

   A month ago, I posted about an update on improving place names on FamilySearch . Well, I checked back on the feature, which is available online and via the FamilySearch app, and now there are over 90 different locations to choose from. (Specifically, there were a whopping 93 locales listed.) Some of the locations are nations/countries that no longer exist today, such as Prussia. This is definitely a welcome change. Based on this change, there appears to be plenty of work left to be done. So if you are looking for a "small and simple" way to help out or just  an opportunity to use your foreign language skills , try out the improving place names feature on FamilySearch.

I previously posted a basic introduction into indexing . Once you get the hang of it, indexing can be pretty simple and actually kind of fun. In fact, it is even something you can do together with kids, including elementary school children. Aside from the many spiritual blessings that come from spending time doing family history work , here are a few other benefits for my elementary school kids that I saw when I included them in my indexing efforts: Cursive Handwriting : Doing indexing is impossible without being comfortable with cursive writing. Since some people today never learn to fluently read and write in cursive, this is something new kids will learn while doing indexing. My kids still struggle at this point but they are getting more comfortable with cursive and starting to be able to read it some on their own. Typing : My kids had started learning to type, so indexing together gave them another opportunity to practice. This was nice because they only needed to type small chunks...

Have you heard about the annual family history conference called "RootsTech"? It's a multi-day event with inspirational speakers as well as workshops on various topics related to family history. Well, it's that time of year again. RootsTech 2021 will be held February 25th through 27th. (That's Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in the United States, so it will be mostly Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Japan/Korea.) This year's conference will be 100% online and 100% free. It is a great opportunity to learn more about FamilySearch , learn about family history in general, and be uplifted. Here's the main website for this year's conference: https://www.rootstech.org/?lang=eng . Here's a spot where you can learn more about RootsTech: https://www.rootstech.org/about?lang=eng . Registration is very simple. It takes maybe 1-2 minutes. You can use the live chat function to have a robot register you or you can register yourself here:  https://www.rootstech.org/...