How to Quickly Identify which Ancestors Need Temple Work Done

Do you already have tons of ancestors listed on your pedigree chart on familysearch.org? Would you like to do temple work for some of your ancestors but you feel lost in knowing where to start? If so, this blog post is for you.

I, like many members of the LDS church, have a lot of extended relatives who have already done TONS of family history work and temple work for my ancestors. In some wards family history committees ask ward members to complete a 4 generation pedigree chart and ensure all of those individuals have received their ordinance work. This is such a worthy cause, but in my case thousands of my distant relatives are members of the church working on the same ancestors' family history and ordinance work. My challenge is not the 4 generation chart, but rather figuring out where to begin after that.

Identifying an ancestor who needs their ordinance work completed and then doing it for them has been a goal of mine for years. This year my stake made it a goal with a deadline being stake conference. This carried with it some sense of group accountability that encouraged and helped me to follow through.

Determining to follow through on the goal I sat down at the computer. I logged into familysearch.org and began to click "back" on my family tree. I wanted to do this in an organized way so I wouldn't look at the same records multiple times. So, I went directly down my matriarchal line until it came to a "dead end" and then went down another line, looking for someone who has enough info and just needed their temple ordinance work done for them. (This might sound lazy, but it was at least a place to start.)

I kept clicking back... and back... and back... and back.... After looking and clicking for over an hour down one of thousands of potential family lines, I arrived at the year "0" without finding a "temple-ready" name. Although it was really cool to see their names and some titles like "sir" "queen" "bishop" "king" and even "Charlemagne Emperor of the West," (pictures of some of the coolest ones are at the end of this post) I felt like I hadn't helped anyone and that I wasn't any closer to accomplishing the goal.

After an hour of this interesting but not beneficial clicking I had had enough. Those who know me well, know that I really dislike totally tedious work. I like to be efficient as well as effective. Oftentimes that means using automated systems to eliminate monotonous, purposeless work. Being effective is way more important than being efficient, but if we can be effective efficiently then why not be? That's where Pandora's Hope Chest comes into play.

A few days after the hour-long family-history "click fest" a friend recommended Pandora's Hope Chest - a Google Chrome extension that syncs with familysearch.org to eliminate the busy-work of clicking around to search for temple-ready names.

HOW IT WORKS

Pandora searches through each ancestor on your chart and identifies who has enough information and simply needs their ordinance work done. Those "temple-ready" individuals' names can then be found by clicking on the "hope chest" at the stop of the screen. 

HOW TO INSTALL IT
1. Open the Google Chrome browser
2. Go to this website

3. Install the extension
4. Login to FamilySearch.org
5. Click on the green play arrow 

6. Sit back and relax as it searches through each name. (If there are thousands of names on your chart this could take many, many hours.)
7. Click on the "Hope Chest" and viola, there you will see the names of your ancestors whose information is complete enough to have ordinance work done in their behalf. 

IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER
1. Make sure it is not a duplicate: Some of my ancestors, like William Brewster, are listed 100+ times. In an ordinance worker training meeting years ago, a trainer mentioned that it took 17 hours of work to complete one individual's temple work. I imagine that was factoring in both the proxy's time as well as the time of every ordinance worker, laundry worker, recommend desk attendee, etc who may have been involved. Doing family history in a collaborative, organized and non-duplicated way as best as we can is challenging but important.
2. Reserve & Print it: If there are specific names you are hoping to do and that you are going to do relatively soon, reserve them. If you are not going to do them soon, possibly consider leaving them unreserved so a distant relative of yours may go ahead and help their work progress. 

2 years after making the goal I finally took ancestors names to the temple. 

HUGE THANKS TO 1) Whoever developed this extension! 2) Stake leaders for setting great goals 3) My friend Jason for telling me about this awesome extension

Here's to maximizing our potential influence by being effective... efficiently, ;)
Ali

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Below are pics of some of the names that stood out to me while clicking "back" on my family tree.

Charlemagne, Emperor of the West
Hey Gramps ;) My mom couldn't believe he was listed on our tree as an ancestor. 

Family line of Charlemagne

King of Cologne - That's cool ;)

Another killer name

A Duke, A Prince & a Bishop
Coolness factor: way high

Interesting... very interesting.

This was the line that went further back than any others I could find.
Augis was born around the year 100. He is listed with his dad Hulmul and his grandpa Gapt. Whoa.