Because it is so common in today's world for people to use your first and last name only, and most of them do not even know what is in between, you can imagine how surprised I was back on Nov. 8, 1978, when I received a phone call from a man asking to speak with Dorothy Maxine Evans Flint.

My first thought was, "Who could possibly know all that?"

Once I identified myself, the caller told me he was John Sheets. Then my heart really did a flip-flop, because just a few months earlier, my husband and I had taken the names of my great-aunt, Blanche Newman, and her husband, John Sheets, to the Ogden Utah Temple to have their endowments and sealing done. My immediate thought was, "That can't be; John Sheets died a long time ago."

As it turned out, this John Sheets was a grandson (my third cousin). His wife, Barbara, had grown up in Utah, but had been less-active for many years.

A year or so before this, John had attended a meeting in Sacramento, where Elder Ezra Taft Benson spoke, and his heart was touched. He began to take missionary lessons, and had been a member of the Church only for a short time when he and his wife enrolled in a genealogy class at their ward.

John kept insisting that nobody in his whole family had ever been a member of this Church. He just knew he would be wasting his time to look at the microfiche. What a surprise when he found that temple work had recently been done for his very own grandmother and grandfather.

A few months later, John and his family visited Utah so we managed to meet. Needless to say, this was the beginning of a wonderful friendship, and a lot of ancestors receiving temple ordinances who might or might not have ever been found, if we had not found each other.

My mother had passed away when I was 2 years old, and my father lost track of his wife's relatives. Though he never joined the Church, my father remarried to a wonderful Latter-day Saint woman who taught me the gospel and helped me begin my genealogical research. This has been a wonderful and enjoyable hobby and pastime for over 50 years. I still am one of only three living members of my family who joined the Church on this earth. Hopefully, a couple of thousand have received the message, and I will have a great heritage, of whom John Sheets will always be one of my favorites. — Dorothy M. Flint, Buhl 3rd Ward, Filer Idaho Stake