Before you select an appropriate task for you to focus on in family history work, consider the following analogy to help you understand how things fit together. Just as we have missionary work to do on this side of the veil for the living, we also have missionary work to do for those who are on the other side of the veil. Good missionaries for the living become proficient at finding people to teach, preparing them for baptism, and then helping them become baptized. Similarly, Ancestral Missionaries should be able to find people who need ordinances, prepare them for ordinances, and then provide needed ordinances.
In the past, we have struggled to find ancestors who need ordinances and have basically just bypassed the preparing step. Helps the Church has provided in 2014 allow us to realistically succeed in both of these responsibilities. By preparing we mean correcting and completing a persons information before we check for duplicates and submit for ordinances. Failure to complete and correct personal information and relationships before we submit people for ordinances results in duplication of work and sets the stage for future duplication. We need to slow down and take people to the temple one person at a time. Be prepared to spend an hour or so getting each individual you take to the temple ready.
The activities below will help you become capable ancestral missionaries. In addition to finding, preparing, and baptizing, we should also seek to preserve living memories (pictures and stories) and assist in preserving and making accessible the records of mankind (indexing).
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