State of the Family Address:
A personal history of Our Personal History

Once upon a time, in a strange land far, far away, many missionaries labored with very little success. They have been laboring now in this land for almost 150 years, and never have they experienced much success. But one day, as the story is told, two young missionaries in this land began visiting a poverty-stricken family who did not even have enough shoes for all of their children to own a pair. The missionaries were good, and taught the Gospel as they do...and the old, shoeless Dutch family resisted change, as they do. Still, the missionaries continued to visit, to prod and to gently persuade. And as it goes, no commitments came.

But then this story takes a bend; in the throes of desparation (a condition so very well-known to all Dutch missionaries past and present) a brilliant deal was struck. The Dutch father proposed the baptism of himself and his family if the missionaries would buy pairs of shoes for the children. Well, that sounded win/win! The missionaries agreed, and the rest is history.....the history of my family and yours. Those family members were our first Dutch ancestors to join the Church in Holland. Sound a little strange? Well, dear reader, it is. Nevertheless, out of small, highly questionable beginnings, very great things have come to pass. Read on...

I love accomplishing temple work for my ancestors. I consider this to be perhaps the greatest responsibility I have in my life (and one we all have, naturally). In the first place, without the Dutch/German language skills I gained on my full-time mission, I would not have been able to do the work for my family, my Dutch maternal grandparents having immigrated from the Netherlands to the United States in 1948. My paternal grandfather was pure Swedish, and his wife is pure Danish. Hence, we have no American ancestors at all, and all the research to be done is in Dutch, German, Danish or Swedish. I have worked very hard on my language skills, but have also been blessed with the gift of tongues in order to do this work. It is my extremely sincere hope and prayer that some other family members, perhaps nieces or nephews, will be able to carry on the work when I'm gone--that they will learn the language(s) and have the Spirit of Elijah and testimony to pick up where I will have left off. I'm praying for someone(s) to pop up that I can train--so the baton can be passed on and not drop dead. Ach, bitte!

I work on my maternal Grandparents (Dutch) side exclusively---which contains some German and Belgian lines as well. My great Aunt Willi Van Weezup, Grandpa Flink's sister, began the work; she recently died, but before she died I received a paper copy of all her work. She and her husband, John Van Weezup, spent their lives in a career working for the Family History Library in SLC. They were the Church's Dutch experts for several decades, and the Church sent them out to microfilm records in the Netherlands and many other places---they were employees for the Church rather than missionaries (we have other relative who held important leadership positions in Genealogical Societies in Holland and the US---our family has perhaps one of the largest bodies of accomplished temple work of any Church members of Dutch descent). My sweet little Dutch great-aunt Willi did tremendous work with the help of her husband John---she researched and performed the work for at least 2,000 of her (our) ancestors. A great accomplishment--much harder in those days than it is today! I have expanded her work and added 4,000 more ancestors (have almost completed the temple work for all of those). I hope that she is able to look at this from "the next world" and is happy to see her work expanded. Many thousands are also done on Grandma Flink's side--Great-grandpa Riebeek was president of the Genealogical Society of the Netherlands. My personal goal is to take care that I submit work for 20,000 individuals by the time I die, with 8,000 of these individuals having ordinances completed by me and my family and close friends (the other 12,000 submitted to the temple). This may seem huge, but it's very do-able if I live to be 85-90. Good to have goals! Perhaps at some point I will move on to some Swedish and Danish ancestors. Don't know yet--just try to follow feeling as I get them. Thanks to those early twentieth-century missionaries and their shoe deal, great and marvelous things are coming to pass.

It is my conviction and knowledge that millions and millions of those who have lived on this Earth have accepted the Gospel and are simply waiting very anxiously to have their ordinance work done in Temples. And when we do this work for them, they are strongly empowered to bless us in a very personal way. If any person is struggling greatly in any aspect of their lives, they should turn themselves to this work, and their problems will melt away like snow before the Spring sun. Or at least the problem will be greatly diminshed. Countless miracles have happened to me as a result of this work. I am glad to see that some family members have this same testimony, and are faithful with the work, and I hope that many more will catch "genealogy fever", and take full advantage of this great oppurtunity and great responsibility that we have. Please "experiment on the word" in regard to this commandment. You won't regret it, and it will change your life in ways you didn't imagine.

Many, many of our ancestors took a very active part in the Protestant Reformation. We have at least 100 direct ancestors that were protestant ministers in Holland and Germany. We have many scholars, academics, writers, painters and professional musicians coming down through some of these lines, along with thousands of poor laborers in other lines. Perhaps I'll write some little blogs about interesting individuals in the family tree.

We have been working hard on a family named "Broedelet" who is French-Belgian, Wallonian, in origin (they became Protestants and immigrated to Utrecht, Netherlands for religious tolerance). Did you ever wonder where that strange brother Tom came from? His French intellectual flair came from the Broedelets. Did you ever wonder where the family's artistic, musical, reading/writing disposition came from? The Broedelets. They were a highly accomplished and well-known family in Dutch History, including several important Dutch authors and painters. We will accomplish the temple work for everyone in the entire world who has ever held the name Broedelet since 1500! The broedelets are almost finished, with just a few left....

Now we will be moving on to help our German ancestors, who lived generally in "Ostfriesland", a province found in the north-west corner of modern Germany. They spoke "Low German" in that region, which could be described as 60% Dutch and 40% German. Also of note; most Spencer grandchildren have loads of German blood, since almost all of the spouses to my siblings have lots of German blood. So as a group we have a great responsibility to our German ancestors. Then there is some of that Scottish/Irish thrown in there (Tom, Warren, Michelle and Robin's families), but I'm afraid I can't help there!

Whoever you are, discover the fascinating story of your ancestors---they are watching you and waiting for all of us. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting is hard (something I'm well-acquainted with). If we solve their problems, they'll solve ours. They are around us every day, and we can feel their presence quite tangibly and regularly if we seek for that. Temple work brings us to a spiritual neavou achievable by no other means. This is the only extensive soap-boxed subject you'll ever hear from me. I hope this message was somewhat interesting, and that you recognize the humor in paragraph 1 (though it's a true story through and through!).