Welcome to the Bluffdale South Stake Temple and Family History Page

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RootsTech 2025 - March 6-8

RootsTech is the world's largest family history conference, occurring annually in Salt Lake City at the Salt Palace Convention Center. RootsTech offers almost 300 classes on everything to do with family history, with classes for beginners to expert. RootsTech offers online and in-person classes, and in 2025, all online classes are free! In-person classes require you to pay for a pass, costing $129 for the entire, three-day conference, or $79 for one day. Whether you attend in person or online, you have to register in advance.

As part of RootsTech 2025, on Saturday, March 8, the Church will host the Family Discovery Day live session, a free event that will be online and in-person. Elder Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and his wife, Sister Kathy Andersen, will speak at 1:30. The Piano Guys will perform on the main stage before them. Attendees at the Salt Palace can enjoy games, art projects and fun activities for the kids. Dozens of free family history classes are available all day on Saturday, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., including special sessions for youth taught by John and Kim Bytheway, Scott and Angelle Andersen, and a special session with T.C. Christensen.

Register for RootsTech

Class Schedule

President Nelson on Blessings of Worshipping in the Temple

Temple and Family History Ideas from the Wards

The Pitchfords of the 15th Ward visit families to do family history game nights "Jeopardy" style.  Sister Tressa Christensen says that when they came to her family, she invited some extended family members to join them.  The Pitchfords had personalized a Jeopardy game for them using family history information from FamilySearch.  They even brought a treat to share at the end!  Sister Christensen says that by the time it was over, "I felt like they loved my family as much as I did."

The 8th Ward is thinking of doing a competition between the Young Men and Young Women this year with prizes for family history goals.  We'll let you know how that turns out!

Lori Cornell of the 13th Ward has a niece who wrote a picture book of stories about an ancestor.  She used AI to illustrate it and gave copies to children in the family for Christmas.

A person who wants to remain nameless in the 5th Ward 🤣 says that she compromised with her sacrament-meeting-phones-out-teens by introducing them to the "Get Involved" app.  Now, instead of playing games during sacrament meeting, they are helping the indexing effort!

Reminder about a great stake activity that you could recreate as wards--the stake invited some older people to sit at stations around the gym while youth traveled around in groups to each station and listened to them tell stories from their lives.  Youth could learn how to interview older family members this way.

The Temple and Family History Leaders of the 14th Ward attend the 5:30 a.m. temple baptistry trips of the youth in their ward.  (That's a sacrifice, by the way.)  They do this because they want to develop a relationship around temple and family history with the youth in their ward.

The 5th Ward had their first of two big temple trips this year.  They did an endowment session together in the Jordan River Temple and it was very well attended.  Afterward they met at their bishop's home for ice cream and socializing, and some youth also came for the ice cream part.  It was a great evening!

The 15th Ward set a goal for 2025 to take one person a quarter to the ROB for an individual family history consultation with an expert who can help them advance past roadblocks in their family tree.

The 14th Ward set up a family history table at their ward Christmas party.  The Nobles set out some beautiful ancestor portraits and had a spiral bound children's coloring book made from coloring pages downloaded from FamilySearch (click to download and use in your ward!).  Each page had a family history task written at the bottom.  They passed these out at the party to all the children.  They also had a family interview sheet with many questions that ward members can discuss with family members in the ROB's story recording room or that ward members can use for any family activity.

They are also tracking finial progress carefully so they know who has their two finials and who has already had them.  They are hoping to get through the whole ward this year.  When somebody has had the finial, they put a small picture of the temple on their front door so that nobody gives it to them again.  (Finials are ugly and imposing statue-like mantle decorations the stake found at various DIs.  Families have to display them until they have done some temple and family history tasks determined by the ward.  After that, they pass the finial on to a neighbor of their choosing.  If your ward doesn't have any finials, you can contact Ken and Scerinda Johnson at 801.530.9377 or you can go DI shopping for some yourself!)

The Relief Society is encouraging sisters to find names for temple baptisms, especially sisters who have a hard time doing the baptisms themselves.  The Young Women are helping perform those baptisms.  An adult Young Men Specialist goes to Ward Temple and Family History Committee meetings ("huddles") with their youth member to support him.

The 9th Ward had a family history dinner.  Everyone brought a family heirloom and those were used to decorate and as table centerpieces.  After dinner, each person at a table told a short family history story to the others at the table, and after everyone at the table had a turn, they voted on who had the best story.  The best stories from each table were retold in front of everyone, and judges determined the best story of all.  Prizes were awarded and it was a great evening. 

The 9th Ward has a great temple and family history webpage.  You can find the link to it on this page.  Each quarter they issue a challenge.  Here is an example: 

2024 4th Quarter Invitations  (October, November, and December) 

For this quarter we would like to ask everyone to start by rereading President Nelson's talk in General Conference. Often the announcement of additional temples to be built overshadows some of his very important pleadings. 

To quote just a little bit of his talk this October:  

"Brothers and sisters, now is the time for you and for me to prepare for the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Now is the time for us to make our discipleship our highest priority. In a world filled with dizzying distractions, how can we do this? 

"Regular worship in the temple will help us. In the house of the Lord, we focus on Jesus Christ. We learn of Him. We make covenants to follow Him. We come to know Him. As we keep our temple covenants, we gain greater access to the Lord’s strengthening power. In the temple, we receive protection from the buffetings of the world. We experience the pure love of Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father in great abundance! We feel peace and spiritual reassurance, in contrast to the turbulence of the world. 

"Here is my promise to you: Every sincere seeker of Jesus Christ will find Him in the temple. You will feel His mercy. You will find answers to your most vexing questions. You will better comprehend the joy of His gospel." (See Alma 26:16) 

Our invitation, then is to worship in the temple more often, that President Nelson's promise may come true in your life, too. We would also like you to study again all of President Nelson's General conference talk. 

A second invitation is to take 3 minutes and register for RootsTech this coming February. Registration is free for online participation and now available on the RootsTech website which can also be reached from the FamilySearch website. 

The 14th Ward has a ward sealing session the first Friday of every month. Sister Noble organizes two sealing rooms at the temple with help from others who reserve spots for the ward.  They pass signup sheets around and a week before the sealing session, Sister Noble contacts everyone on the lists to make sure they are planning to attend.  They have so many signups that she has a waiting list, which she draws from when she has cancellations.  The secret?  Reminders and very active organization.  People can depend on the ward being there every first Friday.  They have done successful ward temple nights every month for 12 months in a row.

The 1st Ward has a large mosaic puzzle of a temple with 1000 pieces.  It is posted on the east hallway bulletin board at the Parry Farms building.  When ward members do any temple or family history activities, including things like taking little children to the temple grounds, interviewing a grandma, doing temple ordinances, indexing, or helping someone fill out their four generations, they get a piece of the puzzle and tape it in place.

The 5th Ward has regular monthly temple trips, but they are planning to do two "big" temple trips a year in which they really encourage everybody to be at the temple for the same session.  They are encouraging their ministering brothers and sisters to invite the people they minister to to attend the temple with them. 

The 13th Ward has specific goals for their ward each month and they discuss progress on these in their huddles.  Here is an example: 

January 

Everyone – Set personal and family goals to do Family History work and attend the Temple during 2025. 

Family goal – Talk about traditions.  Review old traditions and decide if you want to start any new traditions.  Talk about some Temple goals. 

Beginner goal – Make sure that you and your family can log into FamilySearch.  This includes everyone 8 years old and older. 

Advanced goal – Identify the hints in your family tree and work on addressing them.  Index 1 batch. 

The 8th Ward has a ward temple and family history leader who tries hard to set a good example of frequent temple worship. 

The 15th Ward does sealing sessions twice monthly and an endowment session months.  Their endowment sessions are on Wednesday or Thursday nights, and last time 19 people came.  People are inviting other people to come to ward temple night with them.  About half of the ward, including youth, are taking their own names with them when they attend the temple. 

At a ward party, they did the "Relatives Near Me" app on Family Tree and found a bunch of cousins.  They say that this is a great way for new people to start to feel connected with others in the ward.  

They encourage newly baptized children to do a voice recording of how they felt and add it to FamilySearch. 

They are planning to give ministering brothers and sisters instructions to check on correct phone numbers, email, and whether or not somebody has a FamilySearch login and if they have their four generations done.  Ministering brothers and sisters can help them do these things.  Visiting the ROB together is good.  The activity they do at the ROB in the spring has around 100 people who come. 

Below is a list of the suggested Family History topics that can be referenced.  Each topic title is a link to an article or video that covers the topic. Simply click on the title and it will take you to the article or video.

• How to create a FamilySearch Account (familysearch.org)

• Getting started with Genealogy (familysearch.org)

• How to change FamilySearch Account settings (The Family History Guide)

• How to Get Help (The Family History Guide)

• How to Navigate in the Family Tree Pedigree (The Family History Guide)

• How to view a direct ancestors details (The Family History Guide)

• How to view children and other spouses (The Family History Guide)

• How to use Find and Recent option (The Family History Guide)

• Using the other Pedigree modes (The Family History Guide)

• How to update the Vital data for an individual (The Family History Guide)

• How to add missing ancestors (The Family History Guide)

• How to attach sources to an ancestor (The Family History Guide)

• How to add and tag Photos in Memories (The Family History Guide)

• How to add and tag Documents in Memories (The Family History Guide)

• How to add and tag Stories in Memories (The Family History Guide)

• How to add and tag Audio files in Memories (The Family History Guide)

• Merging Duplicate Ancestors (The Family History Guide)

• Find Your Family Names Pamphlet (PDF)

• My Family Booklet (PDF)