“Just Cuz!” A family history project where you get to be a “Detective”

What are you looking for? The goal is to find all the descendants of your parents, or one set of your grandparents or great-grandparents. Most of these will be your cousins. Hence the name “Just Cuz!”

Objectives To help you learn who your living relatives are that make up YOUR FAMILY. To help you identify, find them, make contact and exchange information such as pictures and stories. Why? To strengthen the family. After Mom and Dad pass away, the extended family takes on greater importance. Sometimes they are the only ones who can or will offer support and help. You may also find deceased family members whose temple work has not yet been done. Make sure you get permission from the nearest family members before doing this work. No permission – no work!

What good will it do? Getting connected with your extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins will give you a sense of belonging. God designed families as the basic unit of society for many reasons. Fostering extended family relationships can provide many benefits to all concerned. Great joy and satisfaction can come from getting acquainted and sharing your lives together. Holidays are usually family centered. If your immediate family is not close, look to your extended family.

More Objectives In your doing this, you will need to talk first to your parents in order to get information about your ancestral family. We are hoping that by doing so that your parents or grandparents may then get interested and begin to do Family History work. Many people say “I don't know who my cousins are.” Finding these cousins can be fun and you will learn new skills that will be be valuable in doing ancestral research as well.

Let's get started! Start by going to the Family History Lesson Series. come/site_resources.asp%3FwhichResourcePage=fhlesso nseries Read the first lesson- Perform Descendancy Research After selecting an ancestor enter all known information in a Personal Ancestral File (PAF). Download a free copy from here: come/simplePAFRegistration.asp Talk with your parents, grandparents and other family members to obtain more information.

How to start a PAF file

Using the Internet Read Lesson 7 of the Family History Lesson Series Use the Internet for Family History Research come/site_resources.asp?whichResourcePage=fhlessons eries This will gives you some tips on how to use the internet to help find your cousins. How to find living relatives for free. View other lessons in the Family History Series for additional ideas and suggested activities. Record any new names in the PAF file.

White Pages Using the White Pages on the internet you can search for people and their phone number and address in several different ways. Many times it will tell you associated people which may help you determine if its the person you are searching for. Just for fun type in your name without a location and see how many people have your name.

Recording contact Information In the PAF file for each individual is a Notes section. Use this area in which to record contact information: Mailing address address phone number etc. You can also place any other information about this person in the notes section such as stories.

How to Add a Note to PAF

Adding Pictures If you can obtain a picture then these people will really begin to come alive for you even though they may live a long ways away. Pictures can be added so that when you click on one of your cousins, their picture will appear next to their name. This will really help you to get connected to that person. Bro. Ken Phillips of our FH Center Staff is our expert on adding pictures and will be happy to help you do this.

How to add Multimedia to PAF f

f Using PAF to print charts and reports and even a book!

How to turn off LDS data If you are not LDS or just want to turn off all the LDS data, you can go to this link to see a demo and step by step instructions for doing that: Down the left hand side, under Additional Preferences, select General and view the demo and step by step instructions to turn it off or on.

How to turn on Relationship Indicator You can set the Relationship Indicator to show how you, or any other person that you designate as the root person, is related to any other person in the PAF file. Go down the left hand side to Additional Preferences and select File and then watch the demo and step by step instructions to see how to do this. The relationship of the two people will show automatically at the lower left side of the PAF file in the status bar.

Map 'em! A fun thing to do is to plot their locations on a map. This is also a good place to put contact information which then can easily be shared with others by simply supplying them with the link to your map. Go to Google Maps and learn how to make your own map showing where all your cousins are located. You will have to study to learn how to do this. Click on My Maps to view a short video tutorial to get started.

My Strange Cousins Here is a demo link to some of my Strange cousins so you can see how it looks: 8&msa=0&msid= b92955a86fb6e291&ll= , &spn= , &t=h&z =4 For just one set of grandparents there are over 200 descendants. I have left out lots of details such as phone number, address and other notes that I could have made on the map itself. I find google maps a little frustrating to work with and will be happy to help anyone as best I can. If you become expert, you can teach me!

What to do with this information You could write a family history of either yourself or you and your cousins. Create and maintain a family website. Create and edit a family newsletter. Help plan a family reunion (you have contact information!) Make a digital picture book of the family. Make a family board game – ask Google! Give support (emotional, spiritual, financial, etc) to a family member who is struggling.

Print your genealogy on one large sheet! Standard Pedigree Descendancy Chart Others Up to 3 ½ x 6 feet! Let your family reunion see where everyone fits in! alogy.com/

Becoming a “Forever Family” Do you ever fight with your brothers or sisters? Usually these are just a passing thing but sometimes they go on and on and may divide the family for years. Family members stop talking, reunions are not held and the family drifts apart. Resentment becomes a mountain when it only started as a mole hill. Don't let this happen in your family! Forgive that you too may be forgiven.

Where to obtain FREE copies Of this program plus Bob's Ward Family History Progress Chart with a Quarterly Report Bob's Overview of Family History Bob's Duties of Family History Consultants Indexing Flyer And more! Please share freely with others