We have our own rich heritage, our life challenges and successes that we need to share with our posterity. We should be active in preserving our thoughts, stories, and testimonies for our posterity to remember us by. And…who better to write OUR history than us. We experienced our stories; others have only heard about them.
If you have trouble thinking of any specific stories, go through your old photos to help you remember events in your life. Once you have a story in your mind, write it down and then SHARE it with your family. FamilySearch has a "Memories Section" where you can attach photos to the story and easily share this page with family members. Along with the story, briefly share your feelings or life insights about that story with them as well.
If you need any help with scanning photos to attach to your story, find a local FamilySearch Center as they will often have scanners that can scan slides, photos, and negatives.
Upon first moving to Idaho Falls, ID back in 1968, we bought a yellow rubber life raft to float down the river, just below Palisades Dam. We had a take out point down the river around this old bridge crossing the river. My mom would pick us up. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out quite the way we anticipated.
I like to add a “moral to the story” after telling a story so my posterity can hopefully associate the story with some meaning in their own lives.
As a Naval Shipboard Medical Officer, I had an experience where our ship came across a small sinking vessel with two young families in it around 10:30 pm at night. A rescue was completed and the young families brought onboard. These were Vietnamese boat people in the early 1980’s leaving the war of Vietnam behind. I wrote this story up and then shared it with my children. My two youngest boys responded back “dad, you never told us that story!” After thinking about it, I realized that they had not even been born yet.
