In a recent address, Quentin L. Cook reminded us of an obvious but sometimes forgotten fact: family history, like families, runs on love. As I thought about his remarks, I concluded that we can do family history research from a sense of responsibility, as a hobby, out of curiosity, as a profession, or for any number of reasons. Still, the deepest motivating force when it comes to families, whether here or departed, is love.

Because we love our living families and friends, we surround them with memories and details of their ancestors’ lives. Because we love our ancestors, we don’t want them to be forgotten. And because we love ourselves, we want to understand who we are and how our ancestors shaped our lives.

At this special time of year, we at The Family History Guide Association want to express our love for our ancestors, and your ancestors, and all of you—we’re all in this family history journey together. We said it on Facebook, and we’ll say it here: we are so grateful for the countless hours of dedicated research, training, and sharing that so many of you have offered. Sometimes it’s openly rewarded, and sometimes it goes unnoticed, until that golden moment when someone else discovers what you have documented and left for others to enjoy.

You could say that The Family History Guide itself is  a labor of love, and that would be pretty accurate. As a non-profit charitable organization, we spend many hours of work that are not compensated, as many of you also do. Whether our donations run high or low, the main motivating power behind what we do is, and will always be, love.

We love that people around the world are finding ancestors and learning about them, with help from The Family History Guide. We love developing new approaches, activities, and answers for those wanting to connect just a bit deeper with those who mean so much to them. And we love that we’ve been given this opportunity to help family history work roll forward!

May it always be so.

Sincerely,

The Family History Guide Management Team