Thursday, April 4, 2013

Land That I Love: RootsTech Tabernacle Choir Mini-Concert

Mormon Tabernacle Choir RootsTech Mini-ConcertOne of several events Thursday night of RootsTech was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir min-concert, “Land That I Love.” The theme was immigration, to spotlight the need for indexers to help with the FamilySearch U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Community Project. My memory is getting pretty foggy, so I hope I don’t mess up the facts too badly.

We heard the choir sing “High On the Mountain Top.”

Land That I Love - Mormon Tabernacle Choir Mini-ConcertWe watched a short video presentation about immigration in general and Irving Berlin in particular. We heard the choir sing, “God Bless America.”

We heard short remarks from Elder Allan F. Packer, FamilySearch chairman of the board, and a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He mentioned research done at Emory University by Dr. Marshall Duke and Dr. Robyn Fivush. They found that the more children know about their family history, the greater their self-esteem and well being. (See “Do You Know…: The power of family history in adolescent identity and well-being.”)

Elder Packer also quoted Alex Haley:

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.

Elder Packer reminded us of the great success of the 1940 U.S. Census Indexing Project. He then invited us to help out with the immigration project.

The choir finished with what I consider to be their trademark piece; it is one of my favorites. We heard them sing “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

For more detail about the concert, see “RootsTech Irving Berlin Concert Highlights Need to Index Immigration Records.”

3 comments:

  1. As I told Paul Nauta afterwards "That was a totally awesome concert!!!", and indeed one of the highlights of our "nearly 6 days" in Salt Lake City for research time and then RootsTech 2013.

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  2. Thank you for posting this! Wonderful inspiration to get going on the "Immigration Records" thank you so much. Wish I could have been there!

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  3. I want to let you know that two of your posts are listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2013/04/follow-fridayfab-finds-for-april-5-2013.html

    Have a great weekend!

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