Indiana Jones, But in White Shirts and Ties

Wearing white shirts, ties and name tags, Elders Lochlan Campbell and Logan Homer of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have been busy visiting area grave sites to document the headstones for posterity.

"It is really cool finding these grave sites," Campbell told The Courier last week. "There are some headstones almost all the way buried, and so it is cool to unearth those."

During the post pandemic season, the missionaries with the North Dakota Bismarck Mission are busy blanketing both Dakotas and portions of Minnesota, Montana and Nebraska - visiting cemeteries long forgotten to record what they find. The missionaries photograph each individual headstone to gather names and information, and upload it all to an online database called BillionGraves for easy access.

Campbell and Homer have already visited Memorial Gardens cemetery, and uploaded the information they gathered there to the BillionGraves website.

"Its an app where you go and take a picture of peoples headstones and it links to genealogy so people can find their ancestors and where they are buried. It is super cool. It is really neat to see peoples' headstones and you can see what their personalities were."

The LDS Church has a long tradition of recording historically information.

"They do lots of ancestry work and lots of family history," Campbell said. "I think it is the biggest family history in the world."

Part of this purpose is to perform "Ordinances for the Dead."

"The family history is so important to our faith," Homer said. "Knowing your family, knowing where you come from, learning from people in the past and seeing their history - ultimately it helps us be able to help them receive ordinances."

Ordinances, also knowns as a proxy baptism or baptism for the dead, is the process of baptizing deceased persons, an important tenant in the Mormon faith allowing for those who lived before the existence of the church to receive God's blessing, adherents believe.

"It is cool to find these graves with people who may have been forgotten, to remember them," Campbell said.

The two elders are paying the service forward, of sorts, since someday, centuries down the road, someone may come along and clear their headstones.

"It is an awesome feeling to remember someone who has potentially been forgotten," Campbell said. "Their headstones have been earthed over. It is a really cool experience to unearth it and remember that person."

And the headstones provide great insight into the personality of the deceased, the elders said.

"There are a lot of cool headstones out there," Campbell said. "I have seen a lot that are big. I have seen engravings of landscapes, a cabin with a lake and some animals. You get to know the person a little bit based off of that. What they liked, and what their thing was when they were alive."

The elders are trying to complete all the outlying cemeteries in the county, since the main cemeteries are mostly completed already.

"There are a few we still need to get done," Campbell said. "There was one 30-minutes east of St. Marie. On the app for BillionGraves, you can go in and it will show a map. You can look around certain areas and it will show where they are. It will show which ones have been done and which ones need to be done and how many images have been taken of them. That is how you find the cemeteries."

It is exhilarating to get out in the wide open spaces, the elders said.

"It is definitely cool to be out here and there is nothing as far as the eye can see," Homer said. "It is a cool feeling."

The elders invite anyone they come across while out in the field to come and ask them about their faith.

"The main reason we are out here is to help people come closer to Christ," Campbell said.

They can be reached at 406-262-3311.