User Story: Mango Stories and Reunions Unite the Medel Family

Tintin Medel is from the Philippines and has a real passion for sharing pictures and stories with her family. In 2008 she discovered MyHeritage as the site to do so and the result is a sizeable tree, a family site that she shares with many family members and plans for a family reunion. This is what she told us:

I’ve been interested in my family’s history for as long as I can remember. My father often tells stories about his childhood days and I have always enjoyed that.

I traced my ancestors back to my great-grandparents through talks with my father’s cousins. There are close to 200 names in our tree but is not yet complete. Our tree really grew in January 2009 when I met my father’s cousins and their children who live in California. We met at a family wedding of my second cousin and after that they became members and contacted relatives to communicate with me to update the tree.

We use the site in English, mostly and Filipino sometimes since it is the mother tongue for most of us. I really enjoy meeting new relatives even if it is by email and/or text message. My close relatives think creating a MyHeritage website was a great idea. And everyone is excited to share their pictures on it. Most of their pictures are taken during birthday parties when relatives gather, such as the ones published here,

which is of a surprise party for my father. Other pictures are just family everyday photos and vacation pictures.

One of my favourite pictures is of my great grandparents. I was at the house of my father’s aunt one day and found out that she had a copy of the family portrait of my great-grandparents with my grandparents when they were still kids. I found out my great-grandfather was a pure Filipino and my great-grandmother was of Indian decent, however I am still trying to find out more about them, where they met for example. We photographed the portrait, printed and framed it so we both have a copy.

We had a family reunion in 2000 where my relatives grew up in Gomez, Pangasinan, in the Philippines. It was interesting for me to meet the people of my father’s stories. My uncles and aunts showed me where they used to play, where their house was before, the land they owned and so on. At that reunion my father also showed me a mango tree that he has some great memories of. My father has an uncle who has a very peculiar sneeze. He sneezes continuously for several minutes without stopping and my father always thought this was hilarious. One time the uncle climbed this mango tree while my father waited to catch the mangoes he would drop. Suddenly my uncle got a sneeze attack. Afraid that he would fall, my father shouted at him to hug the tree. Whenever my father would tell this story to me, he would demonstrate how his uncle looked hugging the tree while having his sneezing spell- very funny!

We didn’t have our website yet at the time of this reunion but my father and I are planning to have one in 2010 and I’m convinced MyHeritage will be a great tool to help disseminate information, gather new members, and update our tree.