The Spirit of Elijah

In 2002 I started a journey to find out more about my extended family.  I was enrolled in a Family History class at college.  We started with just a basic family tree that included myself, my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents.  Easy right? Except that I'd never met one of my grandfather's, and I had no idea what my great grandparents names were.  So the search began.

7 years later, I found out that the grandfather I'd never met had actually been married previously and had a son (a half brother my dad never knew he had).  I wrote a letter to George Moranz and received a real handwritten letter in response.  He knew his dad's parents names!  So I could finally finish that family tree.

Present time: Recently I've felt like I still didn't know enough about where I come from.  So I started doing a little more research but I took a different approach.  Instead of looking backwards, I thought there have got to be living relatives of some sort out there still, and maybe they know more than I do.  I happened to come across an obituary of a nephew of my grandfathers, and this listed ALL surviving relatives of the deceased.

Through the process of googling contact info for all of these relatives (scary right? Its amazing how easy this is) I have now been in contact with 4 relatives.  Three of my 2nd cousins, and one of my dad's first cousins, who actually lives in Salt Lake City! What are the odds?

Here are some pictures they shared with me

 My dad's first cousin Sheila (who lives in SLC) with her husband and kids.  Her daughter Eva is around my age and also has MS.

 My 2nd cousin Evan (who used to be a professional ballet dancer) with his wife and daughters

 The Engel family (grandchildren/great grandchildren of my great uncle Meyers)

My 2nd cousin Susan with her husband Isaac, and their niece.

2nd cousin Marshall and his wife Janice.

I spoke with Susan and Marshall on the phone, and got emails from Sheila and Janice, along with Susan's brother Alan.

This post is mostly for me to stay organized and remember who people are, I don't expect it to be very interesting to everyone else.  But I definitely feel drawn to finding out where I come from, and preserving it for my kids so they know where they come from too.

If you want to read a pretty straight forward talk from Elder Russell M. Nelson that explains why I believe I've been working so hard for so long at this, you should look at this.


"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers..."

                   Malachi 4:5-6