Are we making progress with our family history?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints_membership_history

The world population today is estimated to be about 7.5 billion people. According to FamilySearch we currently have about 1.14 billion records in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. Although these large numbers are impressive, they mostly show that we are lagging behind the growth of the world's population in adding names to the Family Tree. According to current statistics, about 31 million people have died in the world so far this year. See Worldometers.info. On the other hand, the world population has grown by over 44 million people. As the graph above illustrates, the growth rate of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is only slightly higher than the overall growth rate of the world's population.

If we are looking at performing ordinances for all of our deceased ancestors, we are essentially falling behind every day of every year. A few years ago, I wrote about the fact that the percentage of members who were actively submitting names to the temples was hovering around the 3.8% level. The good news is that the percentage has been increasing and is now over 5%. But if we think about the number of people in the world and the distance we have to go before we make a dent in the number of people who have lived in just the past 200 years or so, we still have a monumental task.

I often feel the pressure of all these people who are waiting for their temple ordinances to be completed in the spirit world. That in itself is sufficient motivation for me to keep working.