Mormons will get free — FREE! — memberships to Ancestry.com

My church, which has always counseled against addiction in any form, is now going to PAY for my addiction by giving all Mormons a free membership to Ancestry.com. I am so there.

My great-great grandmother, Sarah Agnes Turk (Coombs!) Riess

AncestryLogoImagine you’re a drug addict. (Well, maybe you actually are. I shouldn’t make assumptions.)

Then imagine that someone swoops down and offers to pay for your drug habit for the rest of your life.

Free drugs! Free, I say!


That is how I feel upon learning last week that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will now have complimentary access to Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and FindMyPast.com.

Apparently this was announced back in February, but I missed it because I was lost in the haze of crack cocaine that is Ancestry.com.

My great-great grandmother, Sarah Agnes Turk (Coombs!) Riess

My great-great grandmother, Sarah Agnes Turk (Coombs!) Riess

I’ve blogged before about my spiraling addiction to genealogy, including my surprising discovery of a Mormon skeleton in our decidedly non-Mormon family’s closet. Fellow addicts will understand my predicament: counting the hours until the kids go to bed when they can follow up on a Census lead, or the endorphin rush they feel when they see that little waving leaf above a name, which is how Ancestry.com tells them that it may have more information about a particular ancestor.

Good times, good times. And now my church, which has always strongly counseled against addiction in all forms, IS PROMISING TO PROVIDE MY DRUG OF CHOICE FOR FREE. I don’t even have to leave my house.

What’s more, this is going to go down soon. The Deseret News is reporting that the project of providing Mormons with comp access is actually ahead of schedule and should be rolled out by the end of this summer, instead of the end of the calendar year as originally planned.

If I haven’t OD’d by that time, I am so there.

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