Recent family history events in Mongolia, the Philippines

Latter-day Saints in Mongolia and the Philippines recently participated in family history events that fostered connection and learning.

Mongolia event

On Jan. 27, the Ulaanbaatar Mongolia West Stake hosted the “Moon and Genealogy” event, organized with the aim of encouraging participants to “respect their national heritage, culture and traditions, and to keep their genealogy,” the Church’s Mongolia Newsroom reported.

Themed “Our Memory, Our Heritage,” the event included a fireside, traditional music and dance, and a workshop on entering pictures and audio recordings into FamilySearch. It also included a national wrestling event and a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new wrestling carpet.

“The members, who spent the whole day with their families and friends … left for home with memories that they will cherish until next year’s festival,” the Church’s Mongolia Newsroom reported.

Philippines event

In the Philippines, FamilySearch hosted the “So All May Be Remembered: Celebrating 50 Years of Records Preservation in the Philippines” event on Jan. 11 at the EDSA Shangri-La Manila hotel, the Church’s Philippines Newsroom reported.

Historians, genealogy professionals, archivists, librarians, museum curators, civil registrars, academics, government officials, social media influencers and media members attended the event.

Elder Steven R. Bangerter, General Authority Seventy and the Church’s Philippines Area president, along with his counselors Elder Yoon Hwan Choi and Elder Carlos G. Revillo Jr., both General Authority Seventies, also attended.

Elder Bangerter told participants that, whatever their religions or reasons for attending, their hearts are united in family history work.

“My dear friends, I believe we do what we do because of what we feel when we do it — that within our spiritual DNA, we understand there is a connection between us,” he said. “And as we participate in this great work, that connection is awakened.”

Elder Steven R. Bangerter, General Authority Seventy and the Church’s Philippines Area president, speaks during the FamilySearch event “So All May Be Remembered: Celebrating 50 Years of Records Preservation in the Philippines” held Jan. 11, 2024, in Manila, Philippines.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The event included a panel discussion with leading Filipino forensic genealogist Todd Sales Lucero; National Historical Commission of the Philippines chairperson Emmanuel Calairo; Catholic Church historian Rev. Father Melquiades Serraon; FamilySearch senior product manager Jonathan Wing; FamilySearch multiarea manager Wayne Metfalfe; and social media influencer Mona Magno-Veluz, who also served as the panel moderator.

They discussed records preservation and accessibility, and how FamilySearch helps communities maintain access to essential information — especially throughout difficulties like storms and earthquakes.

“Many people don’t realize it, but if not for FamilySearch’s and the Church [of Jesus Christ]’s microfilming and digitization efforts, many of our Spanish-period (and later) records would not have been preserved in digital form,” Lucero wrote in a column for The Freeman newspaper.

The Church’s first microfilming efforts in the Philippines started in 1973 in collaboration with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

Shortly after, in the late 1970s and the ‘80s, FamilySearch began collaborating with the National Archives of the Philippines, the Civil Registry of the City of Manila, the Philippines Statistics Agency, the Kaisa Heritage Foundation and other religious institutions, such as the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, or the Philippine Independent Church.

Additionally, since 1894, the Church and FamilySearch have partnered with record custodians worldwide to save historical records, resulting in more than 149 million images of civil and church records captured by FamilySearch in over 80 provinces across the Philippines in the last 50 years.

From left: Catholic Church historian Rev. Father Melquiades Serraon, Filipino forensic genealogist Todd Lucero Sales, FamilySearch senior product manager Jonathan Wing, FamilySearch multiarea manager Wayne Metcalfe, National Historical Commission of the Philippines chairperson Emmanuel Calairo, and social media influencer Mona Magno-Veluz discuss records preservation and accessibility during a panel at the FamilySearch event “So All May Be Remembered: Celebrating 50 Years of Records Preservation in the Philippines.” The event was held Jan. 11, 2024, in Manila.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints