Hank Smith: 00:02 Hello, everyone. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I share just one story to go with each week’s lesson. John, the section we’re in this week is in the latter half of Joseph Smith History, and Doctrine and Covenants Section 2. You know this story, Moroni comes to Joseph Smith, quotes a lot of Old Testament scripture, and comes over and over.

John Bytheway: 00:26 Three times in the night and another time in the early morning, right? Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:30 Quoting Old Testament the entire time, and the one that Joseph seems to highlight most in his history is this prophecy from Malachi, which is?

John Bytheway: 00:37 That the day is coming that will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers, and he quoted a little differently, but that’s probably good enough for what you’re going to do.

Hank Smith: 00:49 Yeah. Talks about roots and branches.

John Bytheway: 00:52 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:53 We kind of look at that as roots, meaning your ancestors, and branches being?

John Bytheway: 00:59 Your posterity.

Hank Smith: 01:00 Posterity. Right?

John Bytheway: 01:02 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:02 So family history?

John Bytheway: 01:03 Mm-hmm.

Hank Smith: 01:04 And connecting your fathers, your grandfathers, great-grandfathers, great-grandmothers to your great-grandchildren. Okay. I have a story for you, John. This was written by Trent Toone. He’s a friend of ours with the Deseret News. I find a lot of these miraculous stories come when people are doing their family history.

John Bytheway: 01:24 Gee, what could that mean? Yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:25 I wonder. Here’s the summary. Trent wrote this, “Elder and Sister Jones are family history missionaries and offer their services at a family history center in San Diego, California. These family history centers tend to be small, rely on internet, genealogy software, and loans from the main library in Salt Lake. Before launching out on their mission, Elder and Sister Jones had worked on their own ancestral lines, submitting the information in order to complete temple ordinances. One day, at the San Diego Family History Center, Elder Jones received a phone call from Gwen Whitlock. She had in her possession an antique family Bible she had received from a gentleman who had found it in the trash some 40 years before. She desired to donate it to the center. Not having much room for these things, especially a huge Bible, Elder Jones was hesitant, but invited her to bring the Bible over, especially since it seemed to contain some genealogical information.” Family trees had often been handwritten in Bibles.

John Bytheway: 02:28 Yeah. Some of them, the Bibles, even had pedigree charts in them or places to put a list of family.

Hank Smith: 02:34 In the back or in the front, yeah, you can put your family history. The rare Bible was a treasure. It was compiled by Reverend Joseph Knight and published in 1815, had the Old and New Testament, and the Apocrypha, had illustrations and beautiful etchings. As they turned the pages though, the Joneses discovered a much more priceless and personalized treasure. Inside, they found ornately handwritten genealogical records going back to the 1700s. When Donna Jones saw the last name “Hammond,” her jaw dropped in disbelief. The names, dates, and information belonged to her husband’s direct English ancestral line. Brother Jones says, “It blew our socks off. I knew that there was a big gap in our chart, and this information closed that hole. I didn’t have to look it up on the pedigree chart. I knew. It was literally,” he says, “the biggest blessing we have ever received in our own family history.” Just phenomenal.

John Bytheway: 03:41 Okay. So that comes from a Bible someone found in a garbage can and decided to bring it to them specifically. Should we say that’s a coincidence, or should we say coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous as somebody said?

Hank Smith: 03:59 John, what does Elder Holland said, “Never underestimate…?”

John Bytheway: 04:02 “Never underestimate your family on the other side of the veil.”

Hank Smith: 04:07 Can you see that in that story?

John Bytheway: 04:10 Wow. That’s a great one.

Hank Smith: 04:12 The Lord wants to connect roots and branches.

John Bytheway: 04:15 Mm-hmm, just like Malachi said they would.

Hank Smith: 04:18 Yeah. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. We’re with Dr. Scott Woodward this week. He is going to show you things because he showed us things that we had never seen before. That seems to happen to us a lot, John.

John Bytheway: 04:34 Yeah, it does.

Hank Smith: 04:35 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 04:36 We’re pretty lucky.

Hank Smith: 04:37 Yeah, but that’s okay. I don’t think we’re expected to know everything.

John Bytheway: 04:42 I wish we could come off that way, but… Yeah.

Hank Smith: 04:45 And then come back here next week. We’ll do another followHIM Favorites.