OCR Text |
Show DON'T TRUST YOUR MEMORY By W. M. Everton In th Logan river, years and years ago, a little girl was baptized. bap-tized. The next day she was con- ; firmed in the ward meeting and , the ward clerk gave the parents a little slip of paper, giving the rec- ord of her birth and baptism. The parents put this slip of paper in an envelope and stored it in a little tin box. They forgot all about its existence, ex-istence, and all about the date of the baptism. The clerk had failed to record the baptism in the ward books. It was on the stub of the certificate and that was lost. ! The little girl grew to be a, woman wom-an and wanted to get married in the temple. 'They could find no record of her baptism. They for-gAt for-gAt to look in the little tin box and it seemed to be recorded in no other place. The temple author- j ities insisted on a record of her baptism so she had to be baptized over again. The father was embarrassed. He j decided that it would not occur ! again - and he bought a book in which to record the important j family events. Then he proceeded ; to write the record of births, bap- tisms, etc., in the book. When he could find no record he used his memory which he thought was very good. He remembered very well when his little girl was baptized bap-tized and confirmed, so he wrote it down in his book. Years went by and the father passed away. The woman who was the little girl got the tin box. She found the book her father had written and the record of her own baptism. She also found the envelope enve-lope where the baptismal certificate certifi-cate was stored away. She discovered discov-ered that her father had forgotten the date of her baptism. He had also forgotten the name of the man who confirmed her and the date of the confirmation. And all this because he forgot in the first place that he had a baptismal certificate cer-tificate made at the time of her baptism by the ward clerk. This is a true story and this man did not have a poor memory. Under Un-der like circumstances most any man wouhl have forgotten just as he did. All the trouble and all the mistakes mis-takes were caused by the failure of the father to provide a book, a real record book, not a little memorandum mem-orandum book, in which to record such things as births, baptisms, ordinations, marriages and deaths when they occur. Had the little girl's baptism been recorded in a book, a real record book, the members mem-bers of the family would have seen the book from time to time and would not have forgotten about the record as they did about the little slip of paper in the bottom of the tin box. |