Majesty

Instead of trying to retell my latest miracle, I will just put the email that I sent out to someone I worked with long ago. There are a bunch of names on this one because it's just too difficult to tell the story without them. It will also give a feel as to what kind of crazy letters I send to people :) It truly is a remarkable story that has strengthened me in ways I didn't know were possible. Hopefully this will encourage someone to start looking into their past to find their relatives. One of the biggest things I learned while taking this family history journey is that while we are working on our past we are healing our future. I really believe that. There is so much I need to do to connect my living relatives to me. I need to go and meet a lot of people while they are still alive because in doing that I gain a deeper understanding of who I am. So without further ado.... The letter:

As I am paying attention to seemingly small events in my life add up to a single convergence of majesty, I couldn’t help but share it with you. It’s one of those things that not a lot of people know enough to understand how incredible of an experience it really is. I know you will know and so I wanted to share it with you. I also wanted you to be able to see the continuing ripple in the pond from where you threw in the rock by coming here to NM and meeting my family -I still can’t believe that Heavenly Father loves me so much that he sent and entire film crew to strengthen me - crazy!

Very brief recap. I had a powerful experience with my ancestor Emma Witman Reichard. She is the daughter of my great great great grandfather Francis Witman (the casket maker and boat builder). While at the temple to seal Emma to her husband and son I had a completely unexpected and overwhelming experience with my great great great grandfather Oliver Troop sealing him to his wife and children. So. We have Oliver who had John who had Oliver who had Olivia (my grandmother- I had to call and get permission from my dad to do her temple work).  These 2 families are related by Olivia Troop marrying Tobias Witman.  

Now, I’d like to say I’m some sort of family history legend that is sleuthing around the internet all day everyday tracking down my ancestors and saving souls by the hundreds.  I’m not. I’d also like to say that my children have caught the spirit of Elijah and I can’t rip them away from the computer long enough to do school work. I can’t. The sad realities of life.  I won’t bore you with excuses - but hey, I’m teaching early morning seminary in my home. Which, btw, super excited that next year is Old Testament - studying that was a life changer for me and I can’t wait to help the kids love it as much as I do.  I also spend my days choosing to pick up my sword one more time in the defense of my children’s souls. Some days it feels like giving up would be so much easier. Jared refuses to get down on his knees and pray because the very act alone is an acknowledgement that there is a God. He is kicking against the pricks and I’m trying to survive it. I’m praying that Heavenly Father will be relentless in his pursuit of him and that I will have the strength to keep fighting. (There is a CES devotional by Elder Holland that I reference later and I love it so much because it was the perfect pep talk to keep choosing to pick up my sword)

Now. The point. I promise there is one. Around Christmas time I decided to fork over the cash and send my saliva away for a DNA ancestry match up. I got the results and decided that it was too much work to look into and didn’t look at it again. I’ve been doing little bits of work here and there but I’ve been working on clean up and then I keep finding people who already have their work done and there is no glory in that. You don’t get your little pink and blue cards to take to the temple, but somebodies gotta do it even though you have no physical proof of your hard work. Anyway I got an email notification from ancestry from someone that did a DNA test and it revealed that we are cousins. He had a public tree so I was able to look and see who our connecting ancestors were. Do you know who it was? Olivia Troop- her sister is my cousins grandmother!

I have lost all communication with my extended family. I mentioned briefly in one of my videos that doing Olivia’s work was special for me because when I was 12 I flew out to Pennsylvania to spend the summer with her. She died while I was there and I had to move over to my Great Nan and Great Aunt Barbara’s house (her sister and mother were living together). It's interesting how all of my ancestors pretty much stayed put for generations there in Pennsylvania. 

I wrote my cousin back and asked who he was related to in the tree and how it was that he was so into family history. I’m the only member and I think it is fascinating when non-members do family history. He is 29 and a genealogy sleuth-what?!  I was sitting in a cafe alone eating lunch looking through my emails when I got the response from him-which was good that I was alone because I sat in stunned amazement.  He told me that his grandmother is Barbara (my great aunt) and his Mom is Donna ( I would walk to her house and swim in her pool that summer ). He told me how he knew who I was because they had pictures of me. He told me about how I would come over to his house and play with his brother Timmy but that he, Chris, wasn’t born yet. I cannot describe the feelings I felt as I read that email. This deep eternal connection to family that I felt. This strong sense of identity. Like a piece of my life had been given back to me. I immediately called my husband but could hardly tell him anything through all the tears and emotion because this feeling of completeness or greatness or pure truth flowing was too strong. The closest I can get to describing what I felt, I just found while reading “Walking on Water” by S Michael Wilcox. 

Wilcox quoting CS Lewis speaking of a longing for a far off country “…our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere…fancy, but the truest index of our real situation.” He also quotes him saying “most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, discovered that they want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world.””I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else…All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it- tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear…Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.”

S Michael Wilcox then puts it all together.  These feelings we get sometimes that we can’t describe. He calls them “moments when the celestial breezes floats open the veil and we feel it fan our faces” these breezes, he relates with another quote from Lewis, are letting us know that  “This reality isn’t home, and no happiness here can approach the happiness that will be there.”  

My cousin Chris has been going around visiting grave sites, and places where our ancestors lived. He’s an architect that recently graduated but doesn’t have a job yet in the field so he spends his time being crazy about local history. He was also contacted by someone via the DNA test that is also related to the Troop line and has all sorts of documents and pictures. We’ve been emailing back and forth and sending pictures of my visit there when I was 12. Just yesterday Chris sent me several pictures of my great grandfather Oliver Troop who served in WW1 and was in the calvary somewhere in the southwest- possibly New Mexico. I’ve never seen a picture of him that I know of -until now- because he died in 1955. His wife (who’s house I stayed at) is Helen Osipowski and there is a very cold trail on her family because lots of her father’s siblings changed their last name and both of us can only go as far as her mother and father. There are still some of the relatives alive and he is contacting them to try and piece everything together (because he lives near them so he’s going to reach out because he’s crazy about family history). 

What I find amazing is that I have such a strong connection through the veil with my dad’s family. Both were great great great grandfathers who reached out. A tragic event in my childhood is the very link that is going to connect me back to my family.  When I stop to consider the efforts that are being made everyday by our ancestors to help get us where we need to go it’s almost too much to ponder -let alone all that our Father in Heaven orchestrates. They are working through me who is a member and my cousin (and his mom) who is not but has got a massive case of the spirit of Elijah.

Because of this experience I know a few things. What I know without a shadow of a doubt is that my ancestors are very aware of me. They are aware of the work that I am doing for them in the temple. They are orchestrating events to bring living relatives together. They want their temple work done. It’s not some nice thing we’ve thought up to comfort ourselves. There is no other church or religion or organization on this earth that can provide that work for them. The veil is very thin. When I now think back on that experience I had at the temple and knowing what I know now it’s almost too much to take in. It wasn’t indigestion I was feeling or something else, it was my family ( I now have pictures of a couple of faces that might have been there).  Mighty miracles are being worked all around us all the time, we just have to be willing to see.  When given such glimpses of heaven and miracles I’ve got to be willing to act. I’ve got to get on a plane and go meet my family and weld some more links in the eternal familial chain together….and perhaps bring a portable font with me to dunk them ;) haha 

Lastly is the testimony of Elder Holland from the “evening with a general authority 2015” it was a CES broadcast. I don’t know if you saw it, but if you didn’t it was awesome. It was a rallying of the troops powerful message that got me ready to go back into battle. He spent the time answering questions -which was much needed instead of the standard “if you’re teaching by the spirit you should naturally have the skill set you need to not stink as a teacher" kinda talk. haha This quote captures exactly what I feel after this family history experience. 

“What conceivable historical, or doctrinal, or procedural issue that may arise among any group could ever overshadow or negate ones consuming spiritual connection regarding the Father’s merciful plan of salvation, His Only Begotten Son’s birth, mission, atonement, and resurrection, the reality of the 1st vision, the restoration of the priesthood, the receipt of divine revelation both personally and institutionally, the soul shaping spirit and moving power of The Book of Mormon, the awe and majesty of the temple endowment, ones own personal experience with true miracles, and on and on and on. It is a mystery to me, talk about a question! It is a mystery to me how those majestic first level truths so central to the grandeur of the whole gospel message can be set aside or completely dismissed by some in favor of obsessing over 2nd or 3rd or 4th level pieces of that whole…."

There’s a lot happening in the world. I haven’t been compelled to do a lot of things that I feel guilty about not doing to help. I’m trying to know what my part in the plan is and enact it. To learn the difference between my will and my Father’s will. I may not have been born to do anything that the world will ever take note of, but I do know that I was born to save my family. In the end, isn’t that all that really matters anyway? In the words of CS Lewis “here at last is the thing I was made for.” 

I know for myself the source of true and lasting and pure joy. A joy like nothing this world can duplicate. A joy that has attached to it a deep longing for home. That deep longing for home gives me the courage to take a step out of the boat and onto the water like Peter. I can reach out my hand and grab ahold of the Savior to receive the enabling power of the atonement to accomplish everything that is asked of me. My mantra this last year with the seminary students was “replace fear with faith.” It’s amazing what you can do and the miracles you can be apart of when you act in faith instead of fear. (which includes sending a very long and probably confusing email to someone who probably has better things to do than read it who may also regret ever giving out his email)  

Hoping that you are doing well and that your faith remains strong and unmovable and that your eyes can see miracles and your ears can hear the voice of the Lord.