The Rexburg temple district went “online” Friday with the new FamilySearch Web site. BYU—Idaho students and Rexburg residents have a new resource to expedite family history and temple work.

The new Web site—www.new.familysearch.org—was alluded to by President Hinckley in the October 2005 General Conference: “People in various nations simultaneously work on the same family lines . . . We, therefore, have been engaged for some time in a very difficult undertaking. To avoid such duplication, the solution lies in complex computer technology. Preliminary indications are that it will work, and if this is so, it will be a truly remarkable thing with worldwide implications.”

The new system is designed to reduce the duplication of temple work for the same individual and simplify the process of submitting names to the temple. The Rexburg Temple will no longer support the previous 16-step process—TempleReady.

Under the new program, members organize their family tree online and can update sources and other details known about their ancestors. In addition, records can be compared and combined with those prepared by others.  Members then select which ancestors they want to do work for and check to see if any work has already been done for those individuals. Members then print out a barcode for the selected ancestors.

Then off to the temple.

Temple workers scan the barcode and within minutes print off the pink and blue ordinance cards that are used for tracking temple ordinances.

Before FamilySearch, there was little help to determine if temple work for an individual was already done. The TempleReady program was only current up to December 31, 1999.  For example, the grandmother of Elizabeth Lovell—a junior from Henderson, Nevada—actively attended church until the end of her days. Now, years after her death, her grandmother’s work has been repeated six times.

Members create a username for the Web site by supplying their membership number and confirmation date. The Web site offers a number of tutorial overviews that walk first-time users through the menus and features to help them get started.

Douglas and Ardene Poole are the Family History Directors for the BYU–Idaho campus. They recommend that students keep offline copies of their research in programs like the Church’s Personal Ancestral File (PAF) and that they do their research from those records.

Many areas outside Idaho and Utah have had the new FamilySearch for some time.

Temple districts in Idaho and Utah are being introduced one at a time.

There have been no dates announced for large LDS population areas such as the Salt Lake, Provo or Jordan River temple districts.

For more information, visit www.new.familysearch.org

By James Valentine