Lest They Forget – Inaugural Canadian Black History Summit

Lest They Forget – Inaugural Canadian Black History Summit

Freedmen SchoolAbraham Lincoln once said, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” On 1 January 1863, he issued a presidential proclamation and executive order known as the Emancipation Proclamation.

Emancipation freed approximately 4 million slaves. In turn, the Freedmen’s Bureau was established to help those once held in the bonds and tyranny of slavery to transition to living life as a free people and as citizens by providing food, housing, education, and medical care. As citizens, for the first time in U.S. history, their names were recorded and preserved so that future generations would know and never forget those who blazed the trails of freedom before them.

To help make those records accessible to those tracing their family history and wishing to learn about their slave ancestry, the Freedmen’s Bureau Project was created. The project is a collaborative partnership between FamilySearch International and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Afro­-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS), and the California African American Museum. The objective of the project is to help both Black Canadians and Black Americans reconnect with their Civil War-era ancestors by focusing on records of former U.S. slaves who became citizens. Thousands of volunteers are helping to type, and index information from the Freedmen’s Bureau records so that they are searchable in an online database. As of early May 2016, the project is 78 percent complete.

Freedmen Bureau ProjectMarcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, orator, and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League once said, “A people without knowledge of their past history is like a tree without roots.” On 16 April 2016, approximately 500 people gathered at the Etobicoke Ontario building of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, for the inaugural Canadian Black History Summit. FamilySearch International (the genealogical arm of the Church) and the Ontario Black History Society co-hosted the free conference. Those participating in the conference had the opportunity to connect with Black genealogy experts and Black history, and to learn more about the Freedmen’s Bureau Project.

Rosemary Sadlier, a presenter at the summit, described the proceedings using a word from the Ghanaian Twi language – “Sankofa” – which translated means “go back and get it.” She remarked that the event was an excellent opportunity for those participating “to go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward, … so we can understand why and how we came to be and who we are today.” Thom Reed, the senior marketing manager of FamilySearch and a specialist for the Freedmen’s Bureau Project, commented, “We are tearing down walls because not having an ancestry is like not existing. The records we will be releasing in the fall are making it possible for individuals to find themselves for the first time.”

Inaugural Canadian Black History SummitGuests at the summit included members of Parliament; government officials; leaders of black history sites, black churches and black organizations from across Ontario; and Ontario Mormon leaders. Nikki Clark, president of the Ontario Black History Society, gave the opening remarks. The presenters at the summit included notable Black history experts. Among those presenting at the conference were Darius Gray (author, historian, journalist and co-director of the Freedman’s Bank Project and Bryan Prince (author, historian, and consultant). Shannon Prince (curator of the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum), Thom Reed (FamilySearch senior marketing manager), Rosemary Sadlier (author and historian) and Dr. Bryan Walls (author and founder of the John Freeman Walls Historic Site and Underground Railroad Museum) were also presenters.

The experience of the summit was both eye-opening and life-altering for many of the attendees as they learned how important it is to research their family history, and the brick walls that many descendants of former U.S. slaves have faced when searching their family history beyond 1870.

 

5 BYU Grads Influenced by Mormon Background Become Important Management Thought-Leaders

5 BYU Grads Influenced by Mormon Background Become Important Management Thought-Leaders

Marriott School of ManagementFive Brigham Young University (BYU) graduates were among those named on the prestigious Thinkers50 list of the best business management thought-leaders of 2015. In fact, this year, for the first time, BYU graduates made up 10 percent of those listed. The graduates that were listed include Clayton Christensen, the Harvard business professor who introduced the concept of “disruptive innovation, at No. 2, Dave Ulrich (27), Liz Wiseman (43), Hal Gregersen (46) and Whitney Johnson (49). As a note of interest, Christensen finished first in the biennial rankings in 2011 and 2013.

Dave Ulrich commented, “Like a smaller boxer who succeeds against bigger fighters, “BYU outpunches its weight.” But a person might ask, “How does this happen? Why does BYU make up a substantial portion of the Thinkers50?”

A Sunday, 3 January 2016 Deseret News article suggests:

The answers range from the mundane — how lists are compiled — to the intriguing — what the dean of BYU’s business school calls the Clayton Christensen Effect. Christensen earned an economics degree at BYU and went on to write “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” which “deeply influenced” Apple’s Steve Jobs. His ideas on innovative disruption have had such a broad impact that “disruption” is becoming a household term describing, for example, what is happening right now with cable TV cord-cutting. Gregersen and Johnson have worked directly with Christensen.

Influence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

LDS MissionariesDave Ulrich suggests that perhaps a more viable answer to the questions can be found in the influence that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has had on the lives of the 5 BYU alumni that are listed. He further commented, “Five LDS people on the list is amazing. I credit the LDS learning system. BYU, I think, through the missions served by so many of its students, gets that benefit. I don’t think the world understands how great missions are for learning. Gospel and theology learning, of course, but also social learning, organizational learning, personal management learning. An 18-month or two-year mission is like five years working at one of the world’s best consulting firms.”

This is not the first time that the idea of a prodigious Mormon impact in business and business management has been considered. In 2010, a Financial Times article titled “The rise of a new generation of Mormons” indicated that the LDS culture has given birth to “a professional elite.” In 2012, Harvard Business Review published an article titled “How Mormons Have Shaped Modern Management.” Christensen and the late Stephen Covey made the first Thinkers50 list in 2001, 2003, and 2005. Ulrich, who was named by HR Magazine as the father of modern human resources in 2012, joined Christensen and Covey on the list in 2007, 2009, and 2011. In 2014, speaking.com ranked Ulrich the No. 1 speaker in management and business. His creation of an index to gauge the leadership strength of an organization earned him a spot on the short list of eight people considered for the 2015 Breakthrough Idea Award.

The Dynamic BYU 5

Clayton ChristensenLiz Wiseman, the developer of the idea of leaders as multipliers (people who double the brainpower inside an organization by attracting talent and making people around them smarter) and diminishers, joined Christensen and Ulrich on the Thinkers50 2013 list. She earned a Bachelor Degree in Business Management and a Master Degree in Organizational Behavior at BYU, and was Oracle’s global leader of human resource development. In the past five years, she has written three best-sellers including Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter.

Hal Gregersen earned a Master Degree in Organizational Behavior at BYU and served as a BYU faculty member. He is the executive director of the MIT Leadership Center. In 2015, the Forbes list of the world’s most innovative companies was based on methodology Gregersen created with Jeff Dyer, a BYU business professor. In 2011, Gregersen, Dyer and Christensen co-authored The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. According to the Thinkers50 list, Gregersen is presently working with Christensen on a study about “the power of questioning and how the most successful leaders are able to identify the right question — rather than the solution — to unlock a vexing challenge.”

Whitney Johnson earned a music degree at BYU and later switched to studies in business. Last year, with more than 54,100 followers, she was listed as one of the 55 most influential women on Twitter by Fortune. Along with Christensen, she is the co-founder and prior president of the Rose Park Advisors’ disruptive innovation investment fund. In the fall of 2015, using Christensen’s theory of disruption and applying it on an individual level, she published Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work.

In the 3 January 2016 Deseret News article, Lee Perry, Dean of BYU’s Marriott School of Management, further noted:

I think the experiences we have in Church help us become more sensitive to leadership and organizational issues. I don’t think it’s just happenstance BYU had one of the earliest and strongest organizational behavior programs. We basically have a laboratory for leadership opportunities in the LDS Church that come with maybe even some additional challenges because it’s a volunteer organization.

They’ve done this by themselves, he said of the five Latter-day Saints in the Thinkers50, but I think their LDS and BYU backgrounds provided a nice little jumpstart.

 

Mormon Family Becomes YouTube Millionaires

Mormon Family Becomes YouTube Millionaires

Of the many social media venues that are available to users worldwide for sharing their content with family, friends, or other users in general, YouTube, which is currently available in 76 different languages, is perhaps the most popular. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, YouTube is a video-sharing website that was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, purchased by Google for 1.65 billion dollars in November 2006, and now operates as one of Google’s subsidiaries. The site allows users to upload, view, and share both user-generated, as well as corporate media videos, including videos from such corporations as CBS, the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations which offer some of their material via YouTube as part of the YouTube partnership program. Available content on the site includes video clips, TV clips, music videos, and other content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.

The Butler Family – YouTube Millionaires

Shaytards Mormon FamilyCorporations are not the only ones who can earn monetary compensation for their contributions. There are many general users, such as the Butler family, who also earn revenue from the videos they upload to their YouTube channel.

Shay and Colette Butler, or the “Shaytards” as they are known online, are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and live in Pocatello, Idaho, have five children, and earn millions of dollars per year through sharing their videos on YouTube. Because of their success in daily video vlogging, they have been dubbed one of YouTube’s first families, and were recently featured on ABC’s “Nightline.”

For the past four years the Butler family has been known to the world as the “Shaytards” on YouTube. That family name is a combination of the father’s first name, Shay, and also makes reference to the unitard that he wore in his first video in 2007. The family created their YouTube channel on 1 October 2008, and now, 7 years later, they have amassed a viewing audience of over 1.9 billion with 3,841,080 subscribers to date.

During the recent interview with “Nightline,” Shay (also known as Shay Carl) explained why he believes the family has been so successful, “The ultimate answer to the question, ‘Why do people watch your videos?’ is because inside I think people want a happy family. I think that is a longing for a lot of people. And I think that is why a lot of people watch, to get hope that they can have that.”

The Butler’s Talk about Their Mormon Faith

Brigham City Mormon TempleOn 4 September 2013, the viral family posted a video that was dedicated entirely to talking about their faith and what they believe. During that video blog, which is nearly 18 minutes in length, the Butlers talked about attending the Brigham City Temple in preparation for Shay’s brother, Logan, leaving on a two-year full-time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ in Argentina. Shay himself served a two-year mission in the West Indies (Trinidad, Barbados, and Ghana). Shay began the video by explaining what temple worship means. He said, “It’s a place where we go to make promises to our Heavenly Father.” He then continued by explaining some of the basic beliefs of the Mormon faith:

What we believe is that Jesus Christ is our Savior. He is the central figure of our church. The real full name of our church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We’re called the Mormons because we believe in another book of scripture called The Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ. We believe that Christ came and lived on the earth, just like you’ve heard of in the Bible.

Shay also addressed the problem of discussing religion online, stating that such conversations can easily end in confrontation. He commented, “It would be great to just be able to sit down, one-on-one, and have a religious conversation in an open environment where there is no, ‘Well, I’m right and you’re wrong’ mentality and attitude. So I’m hoping we can do that in the podcast.”

The Butlers were also featured in a Mormon Message video titled “Our Fun Family Vacation” which was released by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in September 2013. The video features clips of the Butler family spending time together and with extended family. In the video Shay comments

In our lives these days there are so many things that are trying to matter to us: emails and phone calls and advertisements, and all these things that kind of barrage us. But I feel like some of the strongest, happiest, moments that I’ve ever felt in my life are when I’m with my children, when I’m with my family.

Butler’s Viral YouTube Videos Play Vital Role in Conversion of British Woman

Lois and Lewis Herbert - EnglandIt is true that we may never know how many lives we touch through our humble efforts and example. For Shay and Colette Butler, the fruition of the missionary groundwork that they are laying through the production of their videos was realized through the conversion of two families – Lois and Lewis Herbert of England, and Mandy and Rick Vellinga of Holland.

In an email to Deseret News in January 2015, Lois Marie Herbert wrote:

I just stumbled across one of their videos. I clicked out of the video, and then something made me go back and watch. From then, I was hooked. I went back that day and watched every video they had made. I found them both hilarious. They were so happy. There was just something so different about their family.

I guess I was just lost. I saw how they were as people, and I wanted to be like that. I was unhappy in my relationship with my boyfriend at the time, and I wanted the love that they had for each other.

Back then, I didn’t really pick up on their religion, or I didn’t take much notice. They just made me happy and laugh. Before I found out more about the church, I would always watch a Shaytards vlog (video blog) in the morning and think to myself, ‘Today, I am going to be happy like they are. Nothing is going to get me down, as other people’s opinions don’t matter.

The Herberts eventually made contact with missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ, and they began teaching Lois in her home. At first, Lewis showed no interest in the lessons the missionaries were teaching, but seeing the happiness that learning about the gospel brought his wife, he agreed to allow the missionaries to continue coming. His views about religion began to change and before long the family began attending church, reading the scriptures and praying. They continued to meet with the missionaries, Elder Goodson and Elder Wolfgramm, twice a week and were introduced to members of their ward. Lois and Lewis were baptized on 13 December 2014. Lois continues to watch the Butler’s videos as she embraces life as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ.

Shay Carl’s Video Play a Vital Role in Conversion of Dutch Couple

Mandy and Rick VellingaRecalling the first time that he came across one of the Shaytards’ videos on 20 June 2010, Rick Vellinga wrote the following in an email to Deseret News, “I noticed they were so happy and friendly. It made me really happy. I wanted to show the video to my wife, Mandy. It put a smile on her face, and this was the beginning of our Shaytards life.” From then on, the Vellinga’s watched each new video the Shaytards posted and became drawn to Shay’s mantra: “Happiness is a choice.” The couple even named their daughter, born on 2 July 2013, after one of the Butler’s children, Avia.

It was during Mandy’s pregnancy with Avia that she and Rick heard Shay Butler explain his religious belief that families can be together forever. Still healing from Mandy’s earlier miscarriage, this idea intrigued the couple. The 10 March 2015 Deseret News article further explains:

That was something that made us curious, Rick said. So I was searching on the Internet for the Book of Mormon that I wanted to order. After leaving my name and address, there was a page that said, ‘The missionaries will be contacting you soon.’ I thought, ‘No! That’s not what I want,’ and my wife laughed really hard.

Two days later, in September 2013, Elder Spencer Rudolph and Elder Jonathan Knudsen, missionaries for the LDS Church, knocked on the Vellinga’s door. Mandy let the missionaries know they were interested and told them come back when her husband was home. Later that night, the missionaries returned.

We sat down and their first question was if we could pray. We said, ‘Of course,’ “Rick said.”The second question was if we believed in God and Jesus Christ. We said, ‘No, but we believe there must be something more.’ So they began to teach us more about God and Jesus Christ, the Prophet Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon. After a few weeks, we learned a lot, and we got a really good feeling about this.

The Vellingas began attending Church in the Spijkenisse Ward and continued learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ. They were baptized on 4 January 2014. One month later, Mandy was pregnant with their second child, and their son, James, was born 11 October 2014. Rick has further commented, “Shay and Colette are the perfect examples of how to be a good mother and father, husband and wife, and church members. Without the Shaytards, we probably wouldn’t be LDS members.” Rick and Mandy continue to watch the Butler’s videos, and they hope to teach their children what Shay and Colette taught them.

 

Top 10 States with Largest Mormon Population

Top 10 States with Largest Mormon Population

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be found all over the United States, as well as, in many different countries of the world. When most people think of Mormons, they envision that Utah, where the Salt Lake Temple and Church office buildings are located, has a higher percentage of Latter-day Saints than any other state, and they are correct.

The table below lists the top 10 states with the highest Mormon population (as a percentage of the overall population). It should be noted that all data is based on numbers from the Pew Research Center and Mormon Newsroom. It should also be noted that Colorado; Washington, D.C.; Maine; New Mexico; Virginia and West Virginia all claim 2 percent of their total populations as LDS, whereas all other states have LDS populations of less than 2 percent.

 

State Percent LDS Membership Missions Congregations Temples Dedicated Temples Under Construction
Utah 55 2,00,554 10 4,971 16 1
Idaho 19 430,757 4 1,117 4 0
Wyoming 9 67,199 1 157 0 1
Arizona 5 416,192 6 844 5 0
Alaska 5 33,375 1 86 1 0
Nevada 4 182,072 3 330 2 0
Oregon 4 153,226 3 306 2 0
Montana 4 48,968 1 123 1 0
Hawaii 3 73,660 1 138 2 0
Washington 3 282,356 7 549 3 0
The Church of Jesus Christ Honored for Volunteerism

The Church of Jesus Christ Honored for Volunteerism

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are taught from an early age the importance of serving others, and the blessings that are reaped from such service. They understand that when they are in the service of their fellow men, they are in the service of their God, and so they are always at the ready to volunteer their time and service to help those in need.

Honor to Whom Honor is due

Mormon Helping Hands ProclamationAt a luncheon held in late June 2015, volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ who had given their time and talents last year were honored by GRACE (Grapevine Relief and Community Exchange), a faith-based, nonprofit relief agency, providing food, clothing and other emergency assistance to people in need in northeast Tarrant County, Texas while encouraging self-reliance. At the luncheon, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was named Volunteer Group of the Year.

The award was accepted by Ben Siebach, a coordinator for JustServe, an online service which was developed by the Church to match organizations that need volunteers with volunteers who are willing to help. He commented, “By partnering with the GRACE organization, our efforts in the community are more focused and impactful. GRACE identifies the needs. We bring the resources and efforts to fill the needs.”  Lara Hohweiler, GRACE volunteer manager remarked, “Often times I have called with last minute needs for volunteers. The response, without hesitation, is always, ‘How many and where?’ Then they magically appear.”

Copyright © 2024 AboutMormons. All Rights Reserved.
This website is not owned by or affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes called the Mormon or LDS Church). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the position of the Church. The views expressed by individual users are the responsibility of those users and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church. For the official Church websites, please visit churchofjesuschrist.org or comeuntochrist.org.