End of the Year Report 2013

BURR! It's cold outside (January 2014)

Stake Indexing Year End Totals 2013

583,126 names

Arbitrated and Indexed

Totals for each Ward for the Year

• Clinton                                 20,697
• Edmond First                      49,849
• Edmond Second                  55,691
• Okc Fifth                              34,578
• Okc First                               71,681
• Okc Fourth Branch                  383   
• Okc Third                             53,665
• University                                 300
• Quail Creek                    119,780
• Village                                    64,907
• Woodward Branch                76,352  

Youth Totals for the year

• Edmond First                        4577
• Edmond Second                      464
• Okc Fifth                                 2239
• Okc First                                3865
• Okc Fourth Branch                  157
• Okc Third                               1773
• Quail Creek                            3273
• Village                              15,974 

Primary Indexing

• Okc First Ward                             164
• Quail Creek Ward                       223

The 10 top Indexers and Arbitrators will be announced this year at Stake Conference, Saturday night session, this month.

Thoughts about our efforts

  I am very pleased with the efforts that you all made with Indexing and Arbitrating this year, and I thank you for every name that you indexed or arbitrated. Our Stake  goal for 2013 was 2 Million names. Maybe that was too high. As you can see we did not make that goal. As a  goal oriented person that was a little disappointing to me. I could have worked at it a little harder but I didn't.  Sometimes life gets in the way of our best intentions.

We had 311 Stake members who indexed this past year, out of 683 who have signed up to be indexers.  I am trying to think of a way to help those who are not indexing become active again. How can we encourage them to want to index again?

In a letter from the First Presidency in 2012  it said, "[Church] members are encouraged to participate in indexing, which is Vital to family history and Temple work". Vital can mean essential, or important, but other meanings include Energetic, Vigorous and Vibrant. Vital was an interesting choice of words  for the First Presidency to use.

I can agree that indexing energizes family history work. There are times when I have seen patrons find a record of their ancestor that was only available on the computer because someone had indexed it and then arbitrated it.  If watching someone feel that joy of discovery of an ancestor was the only gift we would receive that would be wonderful. But indexing is the "Gift that keeps on giving", and it blesses the lives of those who give the services as indexers and arbitrators  by turning their hearts to the family and to the Temple. Once you have a testimony of eternal families and Temple ordinances you are  hooked on Indexing. 

2014 Stake Indexing Goal

1,000,000

This year we are setting our goal on 1 Million names. We did it before and we can do it again. I have faith that our Stake is capable of reaching this goal. This year there will also be changes coming about the way we Index.  These changes will start sometime in the New Year.

 I am going to be attending the RootsTech 2014 Conference in Salt Lake City in February and I will be learning what all of those changes will be. They will be rolled out during the year, not all at once. Starting in February there will be some Indexing Days at the Family History Center for anyone who wants to come and index or receive help. Hopefully this will be a monthly event and all are invited. Dates and times to be posted later.

Look for information on the Indexing program on this blog  or go to the  FamilySearch Indexing Blog Page or the face book page, to read the latest news.