The Spirit of Elijah

I've mentioned in here before that I have a MySpace account. *gasp* And I've made some wonderful friends because of it! I've shared about the Vegas Trip I took to meet several of them and the Utah Trip I'm taking in just a few weeks to meet with them again! The other day, I shared with them some of my thoughts after attending a youth fireside on Sunday but I realized today that I never posted my thoughts in here. In the interest of time (and because I'm feeling kind of lazy at the moment), I'm just going to copy and paste...

The fireside tonight was so cool! I loved it!


One quote that struck me so hard that I almost started to cry was something along the lines of this... (I am TOTALLY paraphrasing)... (Oh, and it was by an apostle a hundred years ago, I think it was Ballard, related to M. Russell Ballard)... When the Elders are out finding people to share the gospel with, they are led by the righteous dead to find their posterity so that they will have family who are members so their work can be done.


Something along those lines. She had the youth think about it for a minute - what are the odds that they would be born into an LDS family? How many kids in their school are? How many people in their neighborhood? But they were. And they have ancestors who are righteous and are dead that need their work done. Who is going to do it for them?

I started thinking... Ryan is a first generation member and he loves genealogy work. I can see his righteous, dead ancestors prompting the sister missionaries to stop him when they saw him walking home from school.


My mom's mom joined the church because of a horrible car accident. In that accident, my mom was an infant and not in any sort of car seat or safety belt - just in a baby basket. The car rolled several times and when it finished rolling, my mom was lying in her basket OUTSIDE of the car, with a little pebble sitting on her forehead - not a scratch anywhere. The doors and windows were all closed. My grandma, on the other hand, had several broken bones, including both legs. My grandma has always said that angels saved my mom's life.

As my grandma recuperated at her mom(my great-grandma Aurora - who Rori is named after)'s house, she was bored out of her mind! When the missionaries knocked at their door, my great-grandma turned them away but my grandma called from the couch, "If you've got any literature, I'll read it- I've read everything in this house and I'll read anything you can give me!" ... She joined the church shortly after that.

I can very well see my righteous, dead ancestors being the angels who preserved my mother's life. And I can see them being the very same angels leading the missionaries to my great-grandma's door at a time when my grandmother would not let them get turned away.

My grandma did a bit of genealogy work and my aunt now has it. I need to get it from her.

When Christ was crucified, the very first thing he did was go to the righteous dead in the spirit world and proclaim that they had been redeemed, they were finally freed from their sins. He then organized them into groups to be missionaries, teaching the wicked who were dead. Those were the first two things he did! (D&C 138)


One of the missions of the church is to redeem the dead. Christ atoned for their sins but they still cannot receive all of the eternal blessings if the ordinances are not performed. So we get to do that. We get to be saviors to those who cannot do the work themselves.


It really is an amazing thought.

As I thought about our group, I was thinking how most of us were born in the church - the only one I can think of that for sure wasn't is Jenne... Jennealogy*. The first generation member in our group loves genealogy.


I just don't think this is a coincidence. Jenne, do you doubt for one moment that your righteous, dead ancestors had a hand in you receiving the gospel? Knowing that you would be able to do their work - the life saving ordinances that they could not do for themselves?

I don't.

*Jenne is obviously one of my friends. After she joined the church she fell in love with doing genealogy. Her "on-line" name is Jennealogy. The following is her response to that...

Sariah, you always make me smile. Thank you. And today I especially needed it.


You asked me about my conversion and family history. It was wanting to be with my dad again that compelled me to find religious truth so right there it was the Spirit of Elijah leading me to the church. I started with his temple work and that prompted me to get into family history and after getting started, I was hooked. And its just nice that my name works so well as a family history nickname. :-)

(Jenne's father had pased away a short time before she was introduced to the church. She had previously been Athiest but when she began associating with members of the church through a dance group, she started asking them about their beliefs in life after death.)

Here is the official quote that I paraphrased early on in my post...

"It was made known to me that it is because of the righteous dead who had received the gospel in the spirit world exercising themselves...Elders of the Church were sent to the homes of their posterity that the gospel might be taught to them and through their righteousness they might be privileged to have a descendant in the flesh to do the work for their dead kindred." - Elder Melvin J. Ballard (M. Russell Ballard's grandfather)

I thought, and still think, it is an amazing quote. Thank you Millie for sharing it with me/us!