The parable of the apple tree

When I was young I used to like to eat apples.  We would go to the tree and pick the apples that we could reach, but when we picked all the apples below, we had to climb the tree and go down the branches in order to get the apples.

The same principle applies to family history.  When we use Family Tree to find individuals in need of ordinances, especially for those of us who are descendants of the early LDS pioneers,  we find most, if not all, of the ordinances have been completed.

My grandparents and great grandparents were active in collecting genealogy and having the ordinances performed for many of the ancestors.  They went up the family tree and got as many ancestors and their families as was possible for their era. 

Think about some early member who had a number of children.  They may have as many as five or six thousand linear descendants in five generations.  If all these descendants were active members of the church, then there would be very few ordinances available. 

The solution is to climb the trunk of the family tree for five or six generations and then go down the branches.  Not every descendant of most family trees was a member of the church or even associated with the church. 

In my own family I have a third cousin who not only is not a member of the church, but was amazed that she was a descendant of one of the early Mormon general authorities.

With census records on-line and better access to recent records, it is much easier than finding ancestors in the 16 or 17 hundreds in lands outside the United States.

There are records in Family Tree that need ordinances, but most of them are out on the branches and not near the trunk of the tree.  It is our responsibility to find all the apples on the tree.