Wake up Calls

I awoke this morning to a female voice calling softly, "Help me!" It was a bit disconcerting. I searched the house and couldn't find any problems with my daughters. Last night I stayed up late working on family history and got up at 5:00 a.m. this morning to do more but didn't find anything I could complete today. I am going today to the temple with my daughters to have some of my female ancestors' work done. Then I went back to bed and an hour later woke up to the cry. As I sat on the couch and tried to be still, a name came into my mind: Ane Kirstine. I went back to the computer and searched for several hours and I now have enough proof of who she is. She is the niece of the ancestor I have worked on for so long: Kirsten Hansen, mother of 15 children. Every time I think I have done everything I can for Kirsten, I find more. None of Ane's work is completed, but I now have her name ready to take to the temple. She was born in 1830, the year of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I guess waiting 179 years is long enough.

Another wake up call I received was on Monday at the funeral of a woman in our neighborhood who lived to be 100. The bishop had been her friend for years and now presided at her funeral. She told him she wanted to live to 120. She also always told him that he was married to the prettiest woman in the ward! I knew it wasn't true and that her eyesight was dimming with her advanced age, but I will miss hearing that from her. From everything I could see, she faithfully endured to the end. And it wasn't an easy life. Her husband died 3 years after their marriage and she raised two children alone working as a seamstress. She never remarried. At the funeral, it was mostly family. My wake-up call was this: family is everything.