In August 2008, shortly after my last post, I was laid off from a job I hated. Even though being laid off was not fun it was good to get me out of a company that makes it millions on lies and false hopes. I now work for Adobe (yes, that Adobe) in their Search Marketing Suite division. My job is much better now than it has ever been in the past and that includes working for my own father. I feel appreciated and that there is room for me to advance in the company with promotions, pay increases, and more knowledge to make me a more competitive individual.

Also, I have started to ref high school basketball games. I have done it for years as a volunteer for the LDS Church but I am finally getting paid to do it at a High School level. I do about 2-3 games a week and will continue to do it for many years to come. It is even more fun than I thought it was going to be.

Well, that’s all for the Mineer search index increase post for the day (probably year) for that matter.

Mineer.com – the Mineer website is being worked on and will hopefully be done sometime in the near future. Since the waiting is tough I figured I could offer this cool new tool to give you something to do until then. It is on online journal to keep your personally history. Click on the link below and you will be able to create a free account.

Sincerely,

Mike Mineer

Fortunately, I only dropped to number 3 so passing ancestry.com back up is not going to be too hard. I just need to make sure and remember to blog at least on a weekly basis.

Since my last blog I have heard some from 3 or 4 different Mineer relatives from around the US. California, Ohio, and Arizona seem to be the most popular locations of Mineer’s. Each time I get a post to this blog it makes me excited. I immediately read and respond to the post. Nothing to me is more fun than Family History and the stories that are out there to be told and heard. People live amazing lives and I like to hear those from those people that are related to me.

This is a short post, I just needed to add fresh content to the site and repeat the Mineer name a couple of times so, until next time, Adieu.

8. We rhyme with Pioneer.
7. It is truly unique – not many of us out there.
6. I personally rank number 1 on Google (Yahoo and MSN suck).
5. We are a funny family (and not just funny looking).
4. We are a good looking family.
3. We have a great family history pedigree.
2. My Grandpa Mineer was a great man.
1. We are Mineer’s for crying out loud – enough said.

Are you wondering what the Mineer email address will be like ? It is a gmail account (Google’s Email service). It is web based, gives you 2 gigs of memory, and, in my opinion, the best email program on the internet.

As of late I have been getting about a weekly post which is always fun.  My father’s cousin recently contacted me and so did my cousin in Florida (that is where she was last time I heard her).

So the Mineer blog has been serving a good purpose as of late because; first of all – I am number one on Google.  Number 2, it is helping me learn how to get other, more important, domains to the top of Google.   Right now the focus is the website www.constructionleadjournal.co, which is a money making website for me.  In just the last two weeks I have gone from out of the top 1,000 on Google to number 188 on Google.  If I break the top 10 then all heck will break lose when it comes to my income.

This is a short Mineer blog post but I will add more later – and sooner than this blog came around.  Have a great day and Long Live The Mineer’s.

Grandpa Mineer was a jokester.  Everything to him was about making everyone else laugh.  He even seemed to get even funnier with age.  Even grandma would just sit there laugh at the end of his life.  My favorite thing about him and his jokes was his joke card.  He kept his best jokes he had collected over his life on a card in his wallet.  That way when the crowds had gathered he could pull it out and reference it for additional material.

A veteran of World War II and a member of what I consider, and Tom Brokaw, to be the greatest generation that has ever lived.  After growing up during the great depression with almost nothing they put their lives on the line to defeat the same enemies we face today.  They then returned home from war overseas and developed our country to be the greatest country in the world.

My grandfather served other before himself and became very wealthy as a salesperson for Circus Peanuts and later Phillip Morris (they bought Circus Peanuts).  He never sold anything to do with tobacco as that was against his religion. 

The next person I meet that knew my grandfather and has anything negative to say about him will be the first.  He truly was loved by all.  I don’t mean for this to sound like an obituary – simply a collection of thoughts about the greatest Mineer I have ever known.

 The biggest reason why I wanted to write this entry today was because of how bad I miss him.  I don’t have much of a relationship with my Dad or Older Brother and my grandpa was really all I left.  He was the man I most looked up to and the man who I hope I can be like throughout my life.  I pray that my life will be as worthwhile as his and that I can be as beneficial to others.

I will never forget Grandpa Mineer and look forward to the day when he and I are reunited for time and all eternity.

Thanks grandpa.

Bridges and Eternal Keepsakes

Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander
Of the Seventy

Genealogies, family stories, historical accounts, and traditions … form a bridge between past and future and bind generations together in ways that no other keepsake can.

Dennis B. Neuenschwander, “Bridges and Eternal Keepsakes,” Ensign, May 1999, 83
Brethren and sisters, every family has keepsakes. Families collect furniture, books, porcelain, and other valuable things, then pass them on to their posterity. Such beautiful keepsakes remind us of loved ones now gone and turn our minds to loved ones unborn. They form a bridge between family past and family future.

Every family has other, more valuable, keepsakes. These include genealogies, family stories, historical accounts, and traditions. These eternal keepsakes also form a bridge between past and future and bind generations together in ways that no other keepsake can.

I would like to share a few thoughts about family history, bridges, and eternal keepsakes. Family history builds bridges between the generations of our families, builds bridges to activity in the Church, and builds bridges to the temple.

First, family history builds bridges between the generations of our families. Bridges between generations are not built by accident. Each member of this Church has the personal responsibility to be an eternal architect of this bridge for his or her own family. At one of our family gatherings this past Christmas, I watched my father, who is 89 years old, and our oldest grandchild, Ashlin, who is four and a half. They enjoyed being together. This was a bittersweet moment of realization for me. Though Ashlin will retain pleasant but fleeting memories of my father, he will have no memory of my mother, who passed away before his birth. Not one of my children has any recollection of my grandparents. If I want my children and grandchildren to know those who still live in my memory, then I must build the bridge between them. I alone am the link to the generations that stand on either side of me. It is my responsibility to knit their hearts together through love and respect, even though they may never have known each other personally. My grandchildren will have no knowledge of their family’s history if I do nothing to preserve it for them. That which I do not in some way record will be lost at my death, and that which I do not pass on to my posterity, they will never have. The work of gathering and sharing eternal family keepsakes is a personal responsibility. It cannot be passed off or given to another.

A life that is not documented is a life that within a generation or two will largely be lost to memory. What a tragedy this can be in the history of a family. Knowledge of our ancestors shapes us and instills within us values that give direction and meaning to our lives. Some years ago, I met the director of a Russian Orthodox monastery. He showed me volumes of his own extensive family research. He told me that one of the values, perhaps even the main value, of genealogy is the establishment of family tradition and the passing of these traditions on to younger generations. “Knowledge of these traditions and family history,” he said, “welds generations together.” Further, he told me: “If one knows he comes from honest ancestors, he is duty and honor bound to be honest. One cannot be dishonest without letting each member of his family down.” 1

If you are among the first to have embraced the gospel in your family, build bridges to your posterity by recording the events of your life and writing words of encouragement to them. In 1892 sisters of the Kolob Stake in Springville, Utah, wrote letters to their children and sealed them in a time capsule to be opened March 17, 1942, the centennial anniversary of the Relief Society. After recording a brief genealogy of her family reaching back to those who first joined the Church, Mariah Catherine Boyer wrote the following to her two children: “Dear children, when you read this, parents and grandparents will be sleeping in the silent tomb. Those hands that toiled so hard in love for you will toil no more, and those eyes that gazed in love and approbation on your innocent brows will see you no more, until we meet in heaven. Dear children, … may the bands of a sister and a brother’s love entwine your hearts. … Do right by your fellowmen, follow the dictates of your conscience, ask God to give you power to resist all temptations to do evil, and let it be said of you, ‘that the world is better for you having lived in it.’ Keep the commandments of God. May your paths in life be strewn with flowers, and may you at all times do right. May you never taste adversity. May the Spirit and blessings of God attend you at all times is the prayer of your mother. I will enclose the photographs of our family. Goodbye my dear children, until we meet.” 2 These tender and beautiful words have now bridged six generations of a faithful family.

Family history and temple work have a great power, which lies in their scriptural and divine promise that the hearts of the fathers will turn to the children and those of the children will turn to their fathers. 3 Woodrow Wilson stated: “A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.” 4 Well might this be said of families also: A family “which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.”

Second, family history builds bridges to activity in the Church. Family history work solidifies converts and strengthens all members of the Church. Family history research and the preparation of names for the temple can be most valuable in the retention of new members. Faith and confidence grow as family members are included in the saving ordinances of the gospel. During a recent stake conference, I met John and Carmen Day, who were recently baptized. They told me that they had already prepared family names and were planning to enter the temple as soon as they could. Is retention a question here? A new member of the Church can be introduced to family history and temple work very quickly by missionaries, friends, neighbors, and priesthood and auxiliary leaders. Participation in temple ordinances is, after all, at the center of our gospel experience. No official call is required to participate in family history and the accompanying gospel ordinances.

Recently I read an article in the Improvement Era of August 1940. I quote: “A year ago last April Conference, Dr. John A. Widtsoe of the Council of the Twelve asked the mission presidents of the Church what single phase of the Gospel was most responsible in their respective missions for making new friends, new interests, new converts. President Frank Evans of the Eastern States Mission looked into the subject and concluded that genealogy, and its attendant Gospel ordinances and beliefs, was the greatest factor in his mission.” 5

A more recent Church study reveals that early involvement in finding and preparing family names for the temple and, where possible, participating in vicarious baptisms for them are major factors in the retention of new members. The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve have encouraged a much broader use of family history and the Family History Centers™ in the retention of new converts and the activation of those who have fallen out of regular Church activity. Priesthood leaders, missionaries, and Family History Center directors all play important roles in the expanded use of these centers.

Third, family history builds bridges to the temple. Family history work leads us to the temple. Family history and temple work are one work. The words family history should probably never be said without attaching the word temple to them. Family history research should be the primary source of names for temple ordinances, and temple ordinances are the primary reason for family history research. President Gordon B. Hinckley has said: “All of our vast family history endeavor is directed to temple work. There is no other purpose for it.” 6

Family history research provides the emotional bridge between the generations. Temple ordinances provide the priesthood bridge. Temple ordinances are the priesthood ratification of the connection that we have already established in our hearts. Mother Teresa said that “loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” 7 The thought that this poverty of loneliness—this being unwanted and separated from loved ones—could extend beyond this life is truly sad. The promise of family history and temple work is eternal connection born of both love and priesthood ordinances.

Brethren and sisters, family history and temple work are the eternal family keepsakes that build bridges. They build bridges between the generations of our families, bridges to activity in the Church, and bridges to the temple. It is my desire that each of us will recognize the great keepsakes we have received from those who preceded us and our own personal responsibility to pass them on to future generations. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Gospel topics: conversion, family history, temple work

Notes

1. Dennis B. Neuenschwander, personal journal, 14 Aug. 1975.

2. Mariah Catherine Boyer, letter to her two children, Irena B. Mendenhall and Richard Lovell Mendenhall Jr.

3. See Mal. 4:5–6.

4. Quoted in The Rebirth of America (1986), 12.

5. Improvement Era, Aug. 1940, 495.

6. In Conference Report, Apr. 1998, 115–16; or Ensign, May 1998, 88.

7. Quoted in Church News, 20 June 1998, 2.

And, from everything I have read, heard, and learned, the Mineer clan in Arizona is a pretty great group of people.  They have given us even more to be proud of for our name.

Please feel free to post if you have any information on the Mineer family no matter where they might be.

 My family consists of Myself Michael, my wife Taralyn, and my three children Mikayla – 6, Marc – 4, and Megan – 7 months.  Currently we live in Lehi, Utah and love our home.  We live next door to a 2-acre park that, with the exception of my children, gets very little traffic.  My kids call it their park.  It is awesome.

Tara and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple, June 5, 1999.  We were introduced by her mother, even though I didn’t think that her mom like me.  After a little confusion as to who Tara actually was we went on our first date December 12, 1998.  I went home from that date and told my sister that I was going to marry her and she told her mom that same evening the same thing.  As they say – “The rest is history”.

I will add additional info on my Mineer family in the future.  For now enjoy my family picture.  Notice, Megan (7 month old) is pasted into a family picture from before she was born.