LDS missionaries were sent to Armenia in the 1880s. The first to be baptized was my great-great-grandfather, and his living descendants, all of whom left Armenia to settle in Murray, Utah, except for a young widow, my great-grandmother Rebecca. At age 20, and as a member of the Church, her husband died, leaving her with a one-year-old son. A man who had always loved Rebecca sought to marry her. When she rejected his proposals, he kidnapped her and forced her into marriage, but would not allow her to keep her baby son. That baby, my grandfather, was raised by his grandparents and immigrated with the other Saints to Utah. All that was known of Rebecca was that she, her second husband, and their two sons were killed in the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

Over a hundred years later, my husband, Jim, printed an Armenian name from TempleReady, a name not in my genealogical line. Armenian records are extremely rare, as many were destroyed in the Genocide. As Jim performed this man’s initiatory and endowment work in the temple, he felt the Spirit so strongly that it nearly overwhelmed him. After leaving the temple, Jim researched the name and discovered this man was the villain in my family’s history, the one who had kidnapped and married Rebecca.

Jim and I marveled that a villain was now, literally, a Saint. This was a powerful witness to us that, until the Lord says our window of opportunity for repentance is over, it’s not over, and that the principle of progression is eternal, largely because of the work we do in temples.