“MA, nakatuntong na ako sa States!”
From Feb. 27 to March 7 2026, I was in Salt Lake City upon the invitation of FamilySearch to become a VIP high-level delegate from the Philippines at the international conference RootsTech 2026, along with National Library of the Philippines deputy director Ed Quiros, the National Commission on Culture and the Arts committee on archives’ Emma Rey, and assistant national statistician of the Philippine Statistics Authority Marizza Grande. We were accompanied by area famfly history manager Emmanuel Abraham and area field relations manager Felvir Ordinario. We were hosted by Thomas Nelson, the content preservation manager of the Records Preservation for the Pacific and Philippines at FamilySearch International.
FamilySearch, supported by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has been working on a big human family tree since it was established as the Genealogical Society of Utah in 1894 by collecting birth, baptismal, death certificates and other historical records, storing them by microfilm first in 1938, then in CD-ROMs by 1990, and storing them in a mountain bunker in Utah and making them accessible in LDS churches upon request free of charge for members and nonmembers alike. They have preserved the important records of our ancestors through these “libros de bautismos” of old Philippine churches and municipal registries, even grave markers, some of which were eventually destroyed by calamities. In 1999 familysearch.org was launched where people can access the birth records of those who passed away and records that are legally in the public domain.
Today, they have an app called Family Tree in which people are encouraged to upload, not just old photos of their relatives, but also other related records and stories so they wouldn’t be forgotten. Especially for the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, they are encouraged to be historian themselves, put accurate details of their life, find and upload credible source materials about them for what they believe to be a spiritual purpose: to bring families together past, present and for eternity.
Because I have LDS relatives from my paternal granduncle Vivencio “Jun” Mancenido Derecho, Jr., I opened the app and I was able to connect to my paternal relatives dating back to 1810 from Mauban Quezon, and my maternal relatives up to 1844 from Pampanga.
I even got to a realization from just merely looking at the records of the courage of my grandma Constancia “Ching” Derecho Chua to be perhaps one of the first ones to leave Mauban in five generations, to meet my Tsinoy grandfather from Paniqui, Tarlac, Quintin Chua (Chan Huan Tit). If they never met, my father and I would have never been born. My LDS relatives lovingly uploaded photos of our families whom I never met. But the public cannot access the records of living persons.
In this sense, FamilySearch is actually, in the truest sense, a work of public history where the public actually actively participate in the making of historical records. They are encouraged to be researchers themselves.
This was emphasized to our delegation on March 3 when the VIP delegates began their participation for two days leading up to the actual RootsTech conference, the Archivists and Records Custodians Symposium, a gathering from various areas of the world of people who can influence government policymaking and public opinion about records management and sharing access to the public in a proper and legal way. I share the same belief about historical records. It is important to protect records and preserve them, but they are useless if they are not shared to researchers.
We had a tour of the FamilySearch Library at Temple Square and we were shown not just the different genealogies and records that are stored which included microfilm and microfiche and books from the US, Canada and around the world, but also state of the art scanning devices with employees and volunteers scanning on them simultaneously. For lineup for scanning in their library we saw in the numerous shelves the Tsinoy book of Teresita Ang See, books by Todd Lucero Sales, and books from the Kapampangan Studies Center. Scanners are also available for everyone to use for free and FamilySearch staff can help you find what you might need. Although our library services in the Philippines are improving, I wish there is that facility where I can scan books and manuscripts on my own for free.
Then, they also showed us a state-of-the-art recording studio where people can come in and talk about their life. With the use of artificial intelligence, they can transcribe and store their stories for future generations.
But why does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have a preoccupation with family history? Why should we bother? Let us talk about that next week.
