It was a rich experience for Alice James, her family and ward when they went to the Dallas Texas Temple to do the ordinance work for her ancestors. The forebears were among the founding settlers of Maine, and were early American patriots. "We had very, very many spiritual experiences; I knew they were there," she said.

A long wait preceded that temple experience, however, for names that proved elusive. Years earlier, in 1972, as a young mother, she had been visited by her grandmother from Maine, where her progenitors had lived since before the Revolutionary War. Her grandmother brought a prized possession: a crumbling, yellowed book that contained hundreds of names and photos of her ancestors. Her grandmother refused to part with the book even for it to be copied. So Sister James asked a friend to photograph each page. Hours after the work was done, her grandmother left. She later died and the precious book disintegrated.

Sister James saved her money and had all the film developed and printed. "Even then it cost more than $70 to have it all developed," she said. Another relative borrowed the negatives and, unfortunately, lost them.

"I still had the images on tiny prints that I could not read, so I tucked them away in a small envelope, and raised many toddlers as the years passed."

One day, about 16 years later, her husband, a jeweler, traded some work for a very expensive microscope. He brought it home and the children began to use it.

"We looked at bugs and fingerprints and such as that," said Sister James. "Then one day a youngster put a photograph under the microscope to see his face more clearly, and the Lord's purpose for making such an expensive tool available to us became crystal clear. I quickly ran upstairs and pulled out the old case that had been there for years. To my delight and amazement, the pictures were as sharp and clear as the day I had gotten them from the developers. In a few weeks I submitted about 150 names for temple work."

Despite the power of the experience, the work stopped again as Sister James experienced an illness. Now, however, with the help of a computer and scanner, the James family is continuing the effort to see the work completed for the elusive names of their noble ancestors.

Another in a series of "Temple Moments." Illustration by John Clark.