On Family Discovery Day of 2023, Elder Gerrit W. Gong and his wife, Susan Lindsay Gong, welcomed RootsTech participants into their lives. Although their union combines two very different cultural backgrounds—Chinese and Irish—surprisingly they find that their family stories on both sides reveal many important similarities. Those stories unite them and reveal patterns of faith, love, sacrifice, and hope for the present, and for family who follow in their footsteps.
They invite all to participate with them in their journey of remembering and discovering their heritage. Though the live RootsTech 2023 event is now over, Elder and Sister Gong's full family discovery story can still be viewed on the RootsTech site. The strength of their unique family culture is an inspiration to all who seek to know more about who they are and where they come from.
Strength through Shared Experiences
As Elder and Sister Gong walked in the footsteps of ancestors who came to Hawaii from China, and to America from northern Ireland, they expressed how they are part of one another's extended families. Elder Gong says, "These families met in us and continue in our children and grandchildren." For the Gongs that means bringing rich traditions and culture from Chinato blend with the Western customs and celebrations they now share with their grown children, a daughter-in-law, grandchildren, and any future family.
Elder Gong expressed these sentiments so well by speaking of “our family," which to him includes relatives from both sides, his and Sister Gong's. Their journey back to ancestral homelands amplified in each of them the experience of unity and belonging. According to Sister Gong, "Discovering and uniting families looks to the past and to the future. We understand ourselves better when we connect with both.”
Returning to Hawaii
The Gongs walked together down rural roads and past canals that have watered the sugarcane fields in Hawaii for generations, pausing to reflect at the gravesite of beloved grandparents. Elder Gong recalls warm memories of his family members who lived, among other places, in Kohala and Kona on the big island of Hawaii. He visited cousins in the summer there and also remembers visits from his grandparents who lived there, whom he affectionately refers to as Gong-Gong Char and Po-Po Char, in the traditional Chinese way.
Many of his older relatives that he has interacted with were children or grandchildren of first generation immigrants, coming to Hawaii from China. They were part of an influx of Chinese migration to the Hawaiian Islands in the late 1800s, contract laborers who came to do the hard work on the sugar plantations. Generations later, the Gongs are reaping the blessings planted by those who preceded them.
The "Great Char," Elder Gong's great-grandfather, walked some 50 miles across lava fields in Hawaii, leaving the hard work of the plantation in Kohala and going to Kona to start a new life. Their young family had little more than a donkey, 4 young children, and a few worldly possessions. Coming to Ewa Plantation to work meant many sacrifices. The qualities they modeled continue to inspire later generations.
Elder Gong relates how his grandfather, Gong Gong Char, later left the plantation and his family at age 10, to go to Honolulu by himself where he stayed with family friends. He worked in the friends' grocery store, went to school, and took his 35 cent earnings intended for food, using them instead to buy newspapers, which he resold for double his purchase price. In true entrepreneurial fashion, he made $500 in 2 years, while his parents made $36 dollars a year each back home on the plantation.
Photos and Memories Are a Way to Unite with Family
Sister Gong shared with Elder Gong the ship manifest and a photo of the sailing ship that Elder Gong's great grandfather booked passage on alone as a young man. It was an old-style sailing ship, bound for Hawaii with the promise of a better life. It illustrated for them that the Char line has multiple generations of pioneering spirit.
Reflecting on these, Elder Gong says, “There are so many different ways to be united with the family, but one of them is to know something about them, to know where they were, and what they were like, and to see a picture, and to have a feeling for what their life would’ve been. It's really what makes our hearts connect, in a way, because you’re not strangers, you’re not distant. You’re close. You’re family.”
Another chance to view photos came from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu Hawaii. Visiting the museum was a special highlight for the Gongs. A grandfather was a photographer who donated 90,000 negatives from his studio collection to the museum. Within the collection, the Gongs found portraits of Gong-Gong and Po-Po, and viewed snapshots of life events of many early Asian pioneers and Hawaiian locals. The images are priceless for their clarity, showing people who lived and are now being remembered by succeeding generations.
Looking at photos of people he knew, but seeing them in their early lives, Elder Gong observed, "We remember them older, but you have a picture and it helps you to remember that we all have different ages in our experience."
Photos of long ago events and people have meaning today. Elder Gong shared, “Sometimes we think our decisions affect only ourselves. Discovering our family reminds us otherwise. We’re more connected in our generations than we usually think. Often, the more we learn about so-called distant relatives, sometimes in faraway places with strange-sounding names, the more we realize we truly are kith and kin, close family.”
Finding Meaning in Family Stories from Ireland
In a quest to discover more of Sister Gong’s ancestral ties, Elder and Sister Gong traveled to Dunlady, Dundonald, County Down in Northern Ireland, where they met a James Lindsay who was raising cattle and on land that has been farmed by the Lindsay family for at least 8 generations. A quick check of Sister Gong's family tree on the Family Tree app helped them identify that he was a cousin.
Visiting the graves of common ancestors in Dundonald with her Lindsay cousins was a tender and moving experience for Sister Gong, especially when she recognized ancestors from her family history research. Emotions held just under the surface led Elder Gong to remark, “We sometimes talk about a cemetery being for people who are gone, but they’re not gone. We feel so close. We’ve talked about this, but it’s different to be here. It’s really different to be here.”
More family stories was one thing Sister Gong was pleased to take away from their trip to Ireland. She wishes to share them with her children and grandchildren, giving more emphasis and attention to the Lindsay branch of their family tree. As she says, “The stories we preserve and share through generations can have a lasting impact on our hearts and minds."
One family story Sister Gong relates is about her great grandmother, Mary Anne Cunningham and Mary's father, Thomas. During the great potato famine in Ireland, Thomas, who was a teenager at the time, went to England to find work. Later, he married and started a family. Within 3 short years, he lost a young son. Then Mary's mother died.
Thomas, of necessity, moved into a workhouse and left Mary Anne in the care of another family. Sister Gong's grandmother, Mary Anne, would tell how her father, despite challenging circumstances, walked to visit her every evening. Thomas then died when Mary Anne was seven years old.
The next 10 years were very difficult for Mary Anne, but the memory of her father's love helped her get through the difficult times. As a teenager, she found The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and came across the Atlantic with her aunt to join the pioneers settling in the Salt Lake Valley. This was a life-changing experience for her descendants, including Sister Gong.
Visiting her ancestral homeland brought Sister Gong a deeper understanding of her roots and an appreciation for family stories that connect generations. She shared, "Clearly people had to work hard and make sacrifices and keep trying when things were very, very difficult. That perspective makes me grateful for who they are and for what they've given me, and for the privilege and the opportunities that we have." She also mentioned it creates a sense of responsibility in her to try to emulate her ancestors' qualities.
Connecting Present Family Members to the Past
For the Gongs, new traditions blend with the old, and new stories once found need to be told and written down for future generations. For them, that meant compiling some family stories into a children's book and asking an artist to illustrate what they know about their family history. The book is entitled Once Upon a Time in Old Honolulu.
Retelling family stories for the Gongs also meant taking time to create cards with photos of Lindsay women from Sister Gong's side, featuring details from their lives, and giving them as gifts to family members. Family who received these cards loved these preserved family stories.
Knowing family history also motivated the Gongs to gather their children and their grandchildren together to walk together across the Golden Gate Bridge in commemoration of Elder Gong's father, Walter, who made the same trek with his father at the time the bridge first opened 100 years ago.
Sharing these things with their family has illuminated the faith, identity, grace, and love found in the stories that connect the Gongs to their ancestors and to their living relatives. This has also led them to ponder the eternal nature of families and the importance of making and keeping covenants in the temple.
The Eternal Nature of Families
Elder and Sister Gong both testify of the importance of the temple work and sacred ordinances that unite families forever. The Temple in Laie, Hawaii, has special meaning for both of them. They have attended there many times to worship and perform ordinance work for those who have passed on.
The Gongs concluded their Family Discovery Day address with a testimony of the power of families and eternal covenants that bind generations together for eternity.
Sister Gong expressed a hope that we will all make an effort to discover our own family stories, to record them, and to share them with our family. And as we gain greater appreciation for them, to take their names to the temple to perform proxy ordinances and enable them to have all the blessings of the gospel. She also prays that we will live "lives of goodness," to show gratitude for the lives they have given us.
Elder Gong added that, "None of us is perfect, nor is any family. But we need not be afraid to look for, discover, or embrace our family. Whatever the joys, frictions, delights, challenges in our relationships, our Savior, Jesus Christ, offers us strength and wisdom beyond our own to bring peace to our past and hope to our future.... May we become a welding link in our generations. May we connect with our ancestors and bless our current and future families, the families we have and the families we want."
