Kevin's Story

Some years ago, I sat in an elders quorum meeting at church in Beijing where we were discussing family history work. I had chosen the topic of discussion and often encouraged members in our congregation to participate in family history and temple work. Family history has been something very close to my heart for a long time as I’ve found connection, encouragement, hope, and entertainment in the stories of my ancestors. However, after this particular lesson another thought came to mind that I didn’t need to keep my records or record my life experiences when I most likely won’t have any progeny.

As a gay Latter-day Saint, this was another realization that our current understanding of the gospel can sometimes hurt. This is discouraging to me because if I want to remain fully participatory in the church as things currently are, I would have to marry a woman or remain single. Even if I were to get married, to either a man or a woman, my children, if any, would probably be adopted or step-children, and the focus of family history work tends to be toward blood relatives. I realize there’s always room for more in the family, but in reality, we focus on direct ancestors.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and these thoughts returned but not necessarily about me. Instead, I thought about my ancestors that didn’t have children. Maybe they married, but they had no kids of their own. Or, perhaps they never got married. These would be my uncles and aunts of the great and grand varieties, siblings of my direct-line ancestors. Who is telling their stories? Who is remembering them? That’s when the seed of this blog was planted. Their stories deserve to be told and remembered and so do mine.

My Story

One reason for this blog is a place for me to share my own thoughts and experiences. Often there are things I would like to share, but I don’t have an appropriate forum, especially since the main Adventure Patches domain is now my business’s public-facing site. For things that are more personal in nature rather than travel or tour-related, like what I’ve shared on my Adventure Patches blog over the past 13 years, I wanted a place to share my thoughts and writings. Because of that, I’ve also migrated some of the more personal posts from Adventure Patches to this blog such as my poetry, talks I gave in church meetings, and others. This is a place for me to tell my story, as Elder Gong recently spoke about, so that I can better connect, belong, and become.

As part of telling my story, I’ll return to what I did as an elders quorum president in Beijing. Each week, in that capacity, I would send emails to my quorum members to remind them of upcoming events and meeting discussion topics. I often took the opportunity to share a message. It was a practice that helped me process things that I’d been studying and praying about in regards to my quorum and life in general. I know my messages were appreciated by my quorum and often what one or more members really needed to read at the time. I want a space to do this, so I can better put my thoughts into words.

Their Stories

My ancestors are also part of my story. Therefore, another purpose for this blog is to share stories from my ancestors, particularly those who had no descendants to remember them. Please note, however, that I will probably share stories from others too because I find them inspiring.

To summarize, I start this blog as an outlet to share my experiences and thoughts as well as those of my ancestors, especially childless ancestors, as a way to keep their memory alive and ensure we are not forgotten. That may sound a little selfish and some may say forget yourself, but I feel directed to do this.

As Elder Gong ended his talk:

The promise at Easter and always is that, in and through Jesus Christ, we can become our best story and our families can become happy and forever. In all our generations, Jesus Christ heals the brokenhearted, delivers the captives, sets at liberty them that are bruised. Covenant belonging with God and each other includes knowing our spirit and body will be reunited in resurrection and our most precious relationships can continue beyond death with a fulness of joy.

We each have a story. Come discover yours. Come find your voice, your song, your harmony in Him. This is the very purpose for which God created the heavens and the earth and saw that they were good.