Ozias Strong Harward
Family Council News Letter for Spring 2012
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O. Harvey Harward served a mission in South Africa
Spring edition 2012
Missionary work has always been a part of our lives. November 1921, I was called to fill a mission in
Enos Curtis is the Grandfather of
Frances Eva Curtis and was our family’s first missionary.
Enos Curtis was born 9 Oct 1783, the eldest son of Edmond Curtis and Polly Mary Avery. Enos moved to
In 1831, at the age of 48 Enos was baptized into the LDS Church [on a trip to Kirtland, Ohio] by Lyman Wight. According to Louise Durfee Rooney, shortly before the birth of their last child, Celestia Curtis Durfee, the family became converted to the restored church — the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Brigham Young says in the fall of 1831 Alpheus Gifford, Elial Strong and others came to Mendon to preach Mormonism, which I heard and believed. (pp 5 & 6 quote: "Five Mormon Elders, from an isolated branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in Columbia Co., Penns. were making a tour through the state of
This story was told by Ezra H. Curtis:
After the meeting where Brigham Young
heard the five missionaries including Enos, bear testimony of the Gospel, he hurried home to his wife who was sick
in bed. He went to his room and in praying to the Lord, he asked: "If
this religion is true, to send the missionaries to his home, that they might
pray for his sick wife and also explain the Gospel to her." The next night
as the Elders were passing his home, they were impressed with the tidiness of
his yards and said any man that has that much pride in his home must be worth
visiting, so they went in. Brigham was watching from the window to see if his
prayer would be answered. He hurriedly opened the door and welcomed them in.
They administered to his wife and she seemed more at ease. Brigham then told
them he had prayed for them to come and that he had faith she could be healed
through their administration.
From autobiography of Heber C. Kimball, p 6 "Heber C. Kimball says, about three weeks after I joined the
*Note: Elial Strong was a son-in-law of Enos Curtis.
Missionary Training at
the MTC
My wife and I have served at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah for the past 3 years and currently I serve in the French Branch Presidency. Missionaries come to the MTC for a period of 1 to 11 weeks depending on whether they are senior missionaries or young missionaries and what mission language they will speak. Missionaries assigned to the French Branch are there for 9 weeks unless they will also learn Tahitian. They are there for 11 weeks.
It amazes me still that these young missionaries can enter the MTC with little or no experience with French and leave in 9 weeks being able to teach in that language. One of the main reasons that they can do that is because they start teaching in French the first week they are here as limited as that may be. Of course that is because they receive the gift of tongues but that only happens as they are obedient to the rules of the MTC and the keep their covenants. It also depends on how diligent they are in their studies. What that means is that the gift of tongues depends on the efforts of each missionary and they don’t receive it all at the same time.
We have seen close to 1,000
missionaries come through our branch and soon we hope to join them as we have
submitted our papers to be full time missionaries ourselves.
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Russ and Dixie Harward
The
Ozias Strong Harward Family Council is on-line with a Blog at www.oziasstrongharwardfamily.blogspot.com and a Facebook Page dedicated to Family
History. That Facebook page is closed
and only those who are invited to participate on it can see it. If you would like to join, please send me an
e-mail at russharward@msn.com so that I can invite you into
it. It will require that you set up your
own Facebook page which is free. If you
have any questions about how to do that, just ask any teenager in your family. Computer technology has revolutionized family
history work as well as missionary work as predicted by President Spencer W.
Kimball many years ago. The newest
innovation in family history research will soon be added to the LDS church site
newfamilysearch and is entitled Family Tree.
Here is what it will do.
The Family
Tree will let you:
·
Connect and collaborate with others who share
an interest in a common ancestral line.· Add, edit, and delete relationships between individuals in the Family Tree.—Coming Soon!
· Edit vital and other information for all of your ancestors.
· Discuss and source family tree information to improve conclusions over time.
· View the history of changes to your ancestors, providing increased understanding and control over changes and revisions.
· Add specific ancestors to a personal “Watch List” to receive notifications whenever information about those ancestors is added or changed.
· Try out new features and functionality as they are added over the coming months.
Social Networking and Genealogy
Not many years ago, the only way to talk to people was
either in person, by telephone, by the occasional telegram or through letters.
Pre-computer and pre-Internet genealogists were usually prolific letter
writers. Today, that has all changed. Personal contact is still nice, but
telephones to some extent and personal letters are mostly a thing of the past.
As far as genealogical research goes, these changes in communication have been
for the good. It is now much easier to identify and communicate with distant
relatives. I have had a fairly constant
stream of contact from distant relatives for quite a few years now, people who
I didn’t know existed before online communication through social networking. It
is true that there are people who spend an inordinate amount of time in social
networking, but when treated as a means to an end, the online social networking
sites can be a valuable tool.
Social networking sites generally allow individuals to
create their own page. You can then create links to other individuals on the
websites by adding contacts (often called friends) with whom you can then share
comments in the form of posts or comments on posts. On Facebook, Twitter and
Google+, as well as other sites, commercial companies can also have pages.
Subsequently, most of the larger genealogically related companies, such as
Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org and the software companies like RootsMagic,
Legacy Family Tree, Ancestral Quest and many others, have pages on Facebook. There
are also a number of genealogical societies that have Facebook pages. Here is a
brief sample of some of the hundreds of genealogically related Facebook pages
with links to their Facebook page:
- Ancestry.com
- FamilySearch.org
- RootsMagic.com
- Legacy Family Tree
- Ancestral
Quest
- Family Tree Magazine
- GenealogyBank.com
- MyHeritage.com
- National Genealogical Society
- Utah Genealogical Association
- New England Historic
Genealogical Society
All
of the above companies and societies, plus hundreds more, have genealogically
related Twitter sites also. Posts, called Tweets on
Twitter, are limited to 140 characters at a time. As a contrast, both Facebook and
Google+ have very large
posting limits, so you can communicate a lot of information at once. Many of
genealogically oriented bloggers also have corresponding Facebook, Twitter and
Google+ sites. Most of the active bloggers post regularly on Facebook and
Twitter and some post on other social networking sites also.
With
most social networking sites, you have the option of having your page public
and open to the world, or private and available to only selected users. If you
are trying to find lost relatives, it does little good to have a private site
because the very people you hope to connect with cannot find you. On the other
hand, you may wish to limit the types of information you put online if you have
a completely public social networking page. There is really no reason to share
what you are doing each hour of the day if your main goal is to find
genealogical information.
