Since General Conference last October, I have had a strong desire to be involved in and learn about genealogy work. Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles discussed genealogy during his Conference talk and invited all members to learn about and become more involved in seeking out our dead and performing Temple ordinances for them. This talk impacted me and the Holy Ghost has continually reminded me to follow this counsel of an Apostle.
After praying and fasting about how to even begin doing genealogy work, I decided to talk to my grandpa, Joseph Vincent Yenchik III. His brother, Stephen Yenchik, is the only person I knew who had done any genealogy work for the Yenchik side of the family. My grandpa had little information, but told me that he would see what he could get from Stephen's family (Stephen died a few years ago). In the mean time, I started my own research at the Family History Library in downtown Salt Lake City, UT. I also started to learn about and work on New Family Search online. I familiarized myself with the workings and functions of the website and also started to find out more information about my family genealogy lines and the huge gaps therein.
Over the next few months, Robyn and I were able to help mom Yenchik complete Ellsworth family temple work. This was a great experience. We have learned about our Ellsworth heritage and ancestry.
While working on Ellsworth family genealogy, I continued to pray and ask the Lord how to complete work for the Yenchik line. I spoke with my parents, uncles and aunts, and other family members to know what work they had completed and what information they might have. After many road blocks and dead ends, Grandpa Yenchik called me one day and invited me to come to his home after work. When I arrived, he told me that Stephen's daughter had gathered all of his life's genealogy work, boxed it up, and delivered it to Grandpa Yenchik - all with the intent of giving it to me to start my genealogy search. My prayers were truly answered! I told the Lord that no matter how much information I cam across, I would be diligent and would do all that I could with it. Well, I received decades of work from Steve. Robyn and I had lots of work to do.
Our main undertaking was to digitize all the documents, pictures, records, etc. that Steve had accumulated. He had done vast research, but was not organized. Over the period of April-June 2012, Robyn and I digitized every document, picture, and record. We converted the second bedroom of our apartment into a genealogy room - we had multiple full-sized church tables covered with documents, computers, scanners, and supplies. It was a tremendous undertaking and taught us much about organization, timeliness, and about genealogy research.
We then made a copy of all of these records for each family on the Yenchik side. This was a great undertaking that required hundreds of hours of work, 3 scanners (we broke 2 due to the quantity of scans), and much patience. The Spirit of the Lord was our guide through this process and Robyn and I feel blessed to have been a part of this project. Now the work of correcting, adding, and searching out names and ordinances begins!!
These pictures show me (Andrew) sorting documents.
--Andrew
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