Holding on to history and studying it allows people to learn from those who have gone ahead. As George Santayana said, if we don’t study history, we are likely to repeat it. That, of course, was a key reason we have the Book of Mormon…that we may be wiser than the peoples of the book were. We not only have to learn from our forebears’ folly, but also from their faith and faithfulness so we can appreciate what they gave us. The Saints have always been concerned with keeping records. President Spencer W. Kimball wrote, “From time immemorial the Lord has counseled us to be a record-keeping people. Abraham had a book of remembrance, and Adam had one.”[1] Today the Saints continue to keep records.
How tragic it would be to lose our records. Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander said, “A life that is not documented is a life that within a generation or two will largely be lost to memory. What a tragedy this can be in the history of a family.”[2] Likewise, the document of a life that is lost or damaged is also a tragedy.
The following series of podcasts is a faith-affirming “homecoming” talk from a pair of senior missionaries, Elder Phil and Sister Doreen Lear, who in the fall of 2018 returned from the Frankfurt area where they had served for two years as archival missionaries collecting stories, artifacts and documents from throughout the 38 countries that constituted the Europe area. They have some very faith-affirming stories–we’re sure you’ll enjoy them.
LATTER DAY RADIO
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