Where's your history?

Friday I had an amazing experience. I was invited to teach at a youth conference for a ward in our stake. It was a culminating weekend of a couple months' work for the youth in this ward. They have been learning about Family History and preparing names to take to the temple (they had 71 family names to do baptisms for!). So my part was to teach four 40 minute classes about Blogging, Scrapbooking and Journaling. I have been preparing and praying for direction for about 3 weeks! It went really well. I really feel like the youth were receptive-- for the most part. There was only one boy in one class that I felt stonewalled from. And I don't think it was me. I think he is struggling right now. So I'm glad he was there. It really was fun. They all wore name tags which made things WAY more fun because I could call them out by name. We started with a scripture, 3 Nephi 23:6-12, and a quote from President Spencer W. Kimball: "I am glad that it was not I who was reprimanded, even though mildly and kindly, for not having fulfilled the obligation to keep my records up to date." Quote from here. Then I would call someone out - usually one of the boys who was not paying attention - and ask what they would do if the Savior asked to see their journal or records. Seriously, the faces I got were hilarious! Deer in the headlights! One resourceful priest said he would go to his room and start writing like crazy. Anyway from there we went into their ideas of how they were keeping their records. Usually one of the first things mentioned was Facebook. But also video, audio, email, letters, pictures, etc. We then talked about each of the ideas they mentioned with special emphasis on using technology and the internet because I feel like that is were they are spending their time. I asked for ideas about how to make Facebook a permanent record of their lives (because it isn't permanent *shock*). In two different classes a deacon mentioned he could just keep reposting his statuses. 'Cuz that's gonna happen? Anyway, it usually came back to copy and paste. We talked about blogging. Two of the classes were interested enough in blogging that we actually went through the process of setting up a blog. This meant that for a couple of days I had 2 weird blogs attached to my profile but I have gotten around to deleting them. We talked about scrapbooking and digital options for their pictures. We wrapped it up by me handing out a paper for them to commit and write down one way they were going to keep their record and when. I hope they really felt the desire and urging to keep a history of their lives. I know preparing and presenting this has inspired me to be more faithful in keeping a history both here and in my personal journal.