 and Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, your host for Pinoy Power Hawaii. We want to thank, thank that Kauai for giving us the opportunity to come to your homes every week live at 12 noon. Today is a very special program. It's an enlightening and empowering program with members of the Latter-day Saints Church. We're going to focus on genealogy and our segment for today is called the Missing Link. It is a pleasure to introduce to you our three wonderful guests, servants of the Lord. We're going to start off with brother Elder Walter Kauai-Ai, and he is the Family Certes Specialist. Brother Kauai-Ai, welcome to Pinoy Power Hawaii. Thank you. Aloha, Amy. Good to be with you. It's always a pleasure to sit with you and to share some of the things that we're currently involved in, or at least I'm involved in. As most of, you know, people watching out there, I'm born and raised in Hawaii, local boy, lived here all my life, member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, currently serving a church service mission, working at the remote operation center located on Beckley Street in Kalihi at one of our church buildings, and excited about the work. It's a pleasure to have you on board, brother Walter Kauai-Ai. Next we have Peggy Chi, historical record specialist. Tell us a little bit about you and welcome to Pinoy Power Hawaii. Thank you for helping me. I am born on Moloka'i, the island of Moloka'i. As a young woman, I was introduced into the genealogy records and fell in love with it. First time they asked me who my grandfather was, I said, my tutu man, of course, and not realizing there was a lot more to it. But over the past 50 years, span of time, I've spent years and hours enjoying myself in the field and look forward to be able to share some of the information and experiences that I've had to be able to help others find their ancestors and to care more lovingly for them. Wonderful. Thank you. 50 years and you're only 35, yeah? I know, it's a gift. That's the joy in serving the Lord. Math is different on Moloka'i. Okay, next we have Sister Elizabeth Uen, Honolulu lead rock. Welcome to Pinoy Power Hawaii. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I appreciate being here. I am Sister Elizabeth Uen. I do serve a church service mission and I am the lead for the remote operation center. We have presently 17 church service missionaries that serve in this location. We are direct support to family search and all of the different projects that helps to support the digitization of this. I was born and raised in Moloka'i up until five years old. Since then, I have been a resident of Oahu and my career previously took me to California, but I have since retired and I serve my time with the Lord. Wonderful. And you are the rock, Sister Elizabeth. She is the rock. I try. Thank you. You know, genealogy is something that I've been asking Brother Walter for a long time. Please come and share because I know the importance. To some of us, it is called the missing link because some of us never have a chance to broaden or touch upon it. Tell us about the importance. I couldn't help but laugh because you're looking directly at me and using the word missing link. I look like the missing link. All of us have personal experience in genealogy work. I started doing my own family genealogy years ago when I first joined the church back in 1971. I was attending the University of Hawaii, majoring in Hawaiian studies and had a project to go and interview all of the senior members of all sides of my family. And so I did to complete the project. But what happened was life changing because I really realized that these were real people, you know, and I share their DNA. So from that time on, I spent days and hours in the Hawaii State Archives and a shout out to Adam Jensen who we work with. And I just fell in love with connecting. And so in the world of genealogy today, for example, I think the buzz words are connect and discovery. So many, you know, we're all part of the human family. Everybody, regardless of your ethnicity, your religious background, everybody wants to connect and they want to discover their ancestors. I mean, if you go online, you'll find so many websites that are all geared to family search, family history. And of course, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has kind of been the forerunner. I mean, family search was formerly known as the Genealogical Society of Utah, which formulated 120 years ago. So they've, you know, they've been in the forefront in terms of preparing people, helping people to find their ancestors, coming up, you know, keeping up with the technology and the times. And so in the world that we live today, we've gone from microfiche, microfilm, and today we're in the digitized world. And the good thing about digitization is that it makes these kinds of information about one's ancestors available and accessible. So let me say have a smart device. Who doesn't have a smart device? Yeah, that's the word. It's available. It's accessible. You know, in these days and times, there are a lot of sites out there, but they always want something, a fee, for you to access their records. And in our records, it's available to all who ask for it. Sure. I mean, a family search and a lot of people, not just members of the church, but non-members freely come to family search. There is no charge. There's an app that's out now. It's quite exciting. It's Family Tree that's put up by Family Search. And it's open to everyone. There's no fee. And I've worked in the past with the Boys and Girls Club of Eva. And we were showing them how to use it. And one of the most amazing things that they come across is as soon as you open the app and you log in appropriately, you put your name in. Many times names pop up. They populate your family tree automatically because of the things that have already gone on before. And it's almost like your ancestors are there waiting to be found. And you get information that is already there. And it's shared openly. And there's a lot of different functions that it does. It has memories. It has pictures. It allows you to do so much. And it's free. And it's right out there in the front. That is so awesome. It brings me to the familiar phrase, knock and it shall be open. And that's what you're doing, Sister Elizabeth, with the records and genealogy. So tell us what you've discovered. There is the technical part of it. And looking at the remote operations center, we have missionaries that actually staff it. When you come to the center and you're welcome to come and visit, we are there and we work with computers. So throughout the entire shift, they are actually doing a lot of indexing or putting together what would be projects so that it will be available for the indexers to index. And we also have three missionaries that are assigned to support and help the Hawaii State Archives. That has worked quite well. They do get involved with a lot of auditing of these records. So that when it is published worldwide, at least it is accurate and it will be for everyone to view and to use also. So these records are constantly being updated, correct? Yeah. I mean, you know, the process, Sister Elizabeth was describing. So you have these missionaries at the State Archives, for example, and whatever the archivist there gives them using highly sophisticated image capturing equipment will capture the information on index cards of varying sorts. And that is uploaded onto the computer. The missionaries back at the center will index, will extrapolate from that information the necessary genealogical pieces, you know, name, place, date, that kind of thing. And it'll be uploaded eventually to family search. And that's what goes worldwide. So in the world that we live in today, you know, this whole process of the remote operations center supports, you know, we're kind of like the feeder for family search when people are looking for names, like Sister Chi referred to the app. Like every week I get up at least once or twice a week, I'll open up my app, and there'll be new names that have just like like a magnet, they just pop up to my tree. And I'm like, I don't even know these people. But thanks to what the record remote operation center is doing globally, as the feeder of these names as their index and made available. So the whole process just makes things more accessible. It also helps to preserve original records. And so we're very much for that. Because a lot of these records that some of them that these Sister Chi and Sister Yu and have seen go back to the 1800s, they're very fragile. So how do you preserve them forever? Digitizing them is one form of preserving it. If something, you know, should ever happen to it. But this way we'll have it for future generations. The key here is also to make it available. The archives right now is really interested in letting people know that these records are there and they're available. So if you can't get to the archives, they have a whole bunch of information that's already been made available. And as it becomes available, and it's indexed, it's added to the algorithm, and that's how you turn your thing on your app on. And there's all this information there. There's a joint effort. There are other repositories that have signed contracts with Manu Search. It'll allow us to get an even broader spectrum for everyone to be able to find that missing link. That's awesome. For somebody like me who would be coming in for the first time to use our facilities, I know is user friendly, right? And you have the missionaries available to help. What could they expect when they first enter our doors? There are two parts to the program. There is a family history program that we have. And there is a family history center that serves the public and all of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The remote operations center are the busy bees. They do all the computer work. So we don't actually have patrons that come in that we talk to and work with. So it would be our family history centers, and they're located all over on every island. As long as you can find a stake center or you Google it, you will be able to find the location, the phone number, and the address. That is awesome. So I want to reiterate once again that these records are available not only for just members, but for the general public. We have a lot of non-members, just the general public that will come in to use the family history center. Everyone is searching. And it's basic. So you ask, if you were to come in, how would you start? Well, it starts with you. And you just begin to start to identify, to build your tree, just assuming someone is from scratch. And you identify mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, both sides of the family. And you build your tree and you start to go back there. You acquire the necessary information, and you start to build and build that way. So it has to start with me. I know that my ancestors are waiting for their records to be started and to be open. I got to get the work done. And Brother Kay and I have had long discussions that, you know, what am I going to start? He started his way ahead. And in your search, Brother Kay, I know that I heard one time that you discovered that lineage that is part of the Hawaiian dynasty. Yeah, I had an ancestor during that time when I was at the archives back in the 70s. Going through and back in those days, you could actually call for the 1924 issue of the advertiser. They'd bring it up. And I was looking through that one day, and I came across the advertiser. So it was 1924, front page, second page, third page, all in Hawaiian, which if anybody knows Hawaiian history, you know that that was a period of time. That was the generation of Hawaiians that were told stop speaking Hawaiian, begin learning to speak English. And there was no malice intended. It was trying to get the Hawaiians to learn another language. But in the process, they spoke English, and slowly the Hawaiians started to fade away. Anyway, so there was, I had copies made, took it to Tutukovana Pukui. She translated it. What it turned out to be was my entire genealogy, tracing all the way back to this woman whose picture was in the article. She lived to be 101 years old. She was born in 1823 in Avini, North Kohala. She was the great granddaughter of the foster mother of Kamehameha the Great. And so in it contained her connection, her tie, all the way back to that foster mother. And I was able to connect all the way from my generation back to this woman. She became my sixth great great grandmother. And so that was, you know, that was just an eye opener for me. And once you experience something like that, you can't stop. You can't stop. It bites you. Yeah, it bites you. So I'll tell you, I'm coming to your house and then you started. Oh, yes. Thank you, Brother Kei. Thank you for sharing that very pertinent information. And we encourage you, our lawyer listeners, our viewers to come and visit us at the steak center and open up your genealogy. We're going to take a quick break and we will be right back and again connect the missing link here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. We'll be right back. Hey, loha. My name is Andrew Lening. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii, live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that, you know, may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of Konnichiwa Hawaii, Japanese talk show on Think Tech Hawaii. Konnichiwa Hawaii is all Japanese broadcast show and it's streamed live on Think Tech at 2 p.m. every other Monday. Thank you so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. I'm Yukari Kunisue. Mahalo. Welcome back to Pinoy Power Hawaii, our second segment. We're going to go more into details about genealogy and the missing link. I want to thank again my guests, servants of the Lord, Brother Kay, and Sister Elizabeth, and Sister Peggy for taking the time to stress and share the importance of genealogy. So we're going to go right back into it because there are other pertinent discoveries and a search that you have discovered. Well, you know, for me, I was just, when you mentioned the word discovery, the discoverer, I'm like, what does that actually mean to me? So I think back to that time that I, you know, I found this ancestor and then I, and then from there I just led to, you know, discovery of all and my ability to connect to all other people that were much closer to me in generation. And it made me realize that, you know, I need to learn about these people. Who are these people? Because I share their DNA. And perhaps, you know, part of why I am who I am is because of my connection to them. So that to me is part of the discovery. You really are identifying who you are. So that, you know, that goes far beyond just the vital statistical information of genealogy, gathering, you know, place, born date, that kind of stuff. You really get to feel a sense of who you are belonging and then perhaps it gives you a, you know, some sense of confidence, you know, sometimes you always have, you know, you need to know, it's important for you to know who your family is. That's the reason why it gives you, you know, you're not better than anyone else. You just know that this is your place. This is who you come from. And when you learn the people, your ancestors from the past, realize that, you know, you have, you have a certain responsibility to behave a certain way. You know, these are your ancestors. They're looking down upon you, perhaps. Yeah. So behave. I will. I promise. In your discovery, you learned that you, you are connected. We are connected in the bigger picture. So before we got together, we did not know each other. So one day, Sister Liz and I were sitting down and we opened up the app and we were playing with it and we talked about, Hey, remember that app? Let's take a look. A part of it says, find a relative. And so we did tell him what happened. Okay. Tell us. So what will happen is you go into the family tree app, everybody needs to have that app on their phone. And when you go into it and you click, there's a feature relatives nearby. And when you go into that app, it will search and determine based on your genealogy and tree that you have in family search, as to if there are people that are related to you that are using this app. And so what we found out is all three of us are related. Her name popped up. I said, Oh, we relate it. I said, let's do him. Oh my gosh, you relate it to him. I think. But you know, when they, when they found that, the idea here is, okay, how are we related? What line is it? And we all trace back to the Po-Hina line. It's a common ancestral line that we connect to. That's a common name. Po-Hina is not common. No, it's not. But more important, maybe it being a run brother cage too much. That's probably, you know, that is, but in doing some research, we found that the Po-Hina line served under the royalty, under the elites. And I found that information while auditing some records at the archives. But the point here is that when we look for the missing link, we're usually looking far into the past, but it gives us the opportunity to see what's here before us right now. And somehow that's created a better bond, a more sacred bond, because we're looking for the same things. Mind you, in 1970, in the seventies, I was doing genealogy. And the way we did is you got the paper out and you wrote everybody's name. Ours at ours. And I mean literally ours. And then I would send it to Salt Lake and wait six to nine months and hope everything was right. If I had an era when they sent it back, well, you got to make that correction and you send it back now. And you wait again. Yes. But now with the technology that's available, I can sit down, I can write a name, I can send it in immediately. I will get an acceptance or reject. And it's instantaneous. It's everybody. Everybody has this opportunity to have that. The world of technology. Yeah, that right at your fingertips. And it allows us to find broader base both near and far, both long ago and right now. And that's how we share what we have and it grows that way. I'm going to pick on sister Elizabeth because she has Pinoy power connection. So I'm wondering if our power connection connects. Yeah, so I have yet to do my work. Because I like to think that I was related to your mom, which became very, very important companion, visiting teachers companion for me. And we've been companion for many years. Yeah. So perhaps in another session, we come on and you'll have the app, we'll get our phones. Yeah, I got to get started. I'll get you started afterwards. I'll see you at your holiday tonight. Yeah, so I realize now the importance because I know that I cannot wait for others to do the work. And a lot of us played a waiting game, hoping that a relative or somebody that we are related to will do the work for us. But it's probably not the case for me. Well, and you know, you're not alone because there are a lot, a lot more people in your situation, but they're anxious. They want to find out they sincerely want. And this is of any time in the world, this is probably the best time because there's so much availability and accessibility due to the digitized world that we're now in. And it's really fun. You know, I mean, I was listening to sister Chi talk about, I remember those days. And so, but you know, a credit to the old school way of submitting, it causes that's why if you go to the archives and you watch how she works, she's extremely patient. She's very diligent to be and very meticulously caring in terms of accuracy. Well, that lesson probably was learned in those days when it takes you six months, you set them in, they send you back a error, and you got to hunt a hole and do it all over again. Those days don't exist anymore. And the support, I have to tell you, she's sitting here quietly. This woman is technically part of way beyond what I can do. And she's just a technical giant for us in our work, working with her because she'll get you places. Yeah, I just see you in is she's the man. I mean, she's the rock. She's the rock? She is the rock. She literally is. I mean, she just her personality, her nature. She has no ill towards anyone. She's loving to everyone. Doesn't make you feel stupid. That's important. That is really important because we're bringing things forward. Seriously, we're bringing that, we're bringing forward very precious things. And that is our, and I'm just speaking from my experience. I'm bringing forward my family. They're precious to me. And I want them to be treated properly. And so I'm on the computer trying to learn and to get, oh, this is so wrong. And she would come over and she would make the corrections never once making me feel inadequate. In fact, I thought I could do all of that until she walked away. This is you and let's hear from the rock. I know how did this get featured on me? But what I would like to share is that there's many parts to the automation, the digitization, and the part that maybe is not that known because you'll find images. And that is always readily available in most of the sites that you would go into. So looking at the remote operation center, we have one primary program, which is indexing. So think about it, you would see the image, but if you had a summary of what that image is, say it's a marriage record, would that not be easier to find what you need in your research for your ancestors where you have it right there? And you can always look at the image. So what we do is actually the indexing, which summarizes what that record is. And so it takes people to do that. It is opened up to the public. Anyone can register and do indexing. And we do have special projects specifically for certain areas where they can actually do specific records, for example, Hawaii. And all that is being imaged and digitized from the Hawaii State Archives. It is now being indexed. So it takes about six months to a year before you see anything that has been digitized, image captured, and then released for the indexing that was done. What's really important to emphasize here is there are, there's much time that is taken so that it is accurate. All the information will get done. It will be reviewed. It will be proved. And for those records that may be difficult in order to index or, you know, put into what would be a summary, it gets reviewed again and again. And once it is determined that everything has been checked, then it gets released. And that adds to the time before it gets released. So I'm glad there is a checking, checking balance system in place so that you just can't go in and put every Tantik and Harry that you just wish to be in your genealogy. I think the term we're looking for here is the source. The source. And that was never available before I could put down my uncle's grandfather's brother told me that this is who this is and that's how I know. And a second person would come across with some other information that may not be the same, but having a source is key now and it's paramount in the work that we do to ensure the accuracy. And there's many steps. There's many ways we can go about doing that, but the work is awesome. Well, there's a lot of work to be done and our time has come up. We invite you to come back again and we can discuss more issues and pertinent information about genealogy. I want to personally thank you for taking your valuable time to come and share this very important information for all of us so we can get started and start on our genealogy, the missing link. My name is Emmy Ortega Anderson, your host for Pinoy Power Hawaii, thanking each and every one of you for joining us for this very special segment, Genealogy and the Missing Link. Thank you. Maraming, Salamat Bo and Mabuhay.