Knowing something of the role and origin of angels in Latter-day Saint theology, it may come as comfort to knwo that, among the angels that minister to us, there can be those that are members of our family whether immediate or extended. In some items of instruction given by Joseph Smith and canonized as Doctrine & Covenants 130, Joseph Smith informs us that “there are no angels who minister to this earth but those who do belong or have belonged to it” (Doctrine & Covenants 130:5). This opens the intriguing possibility as described. Many members of the Church claim to have had special ministrations by their dead relatives. 

President Joseph Fielding Smith explained:

When messengers are sent to minister to the inhabitants of this earth, they are not strangers, but from among our kindred, friends, and fellow-beings and fellow-servants. The ancient prophets who died were those who came to visit their fellow creatures upon the earth. They came to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; … such beings… waited upon the Savior and administered to him on the Mount. … Our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who have passed away from this earth, having been faithful, and worthy to enjoy these rights and privileges, may have a mission given them to visit their relatives and friends upon the earth again, bringing from the divine Presence messages of love, of warning, or reproof and instruction, to those whom they had learned to love in the flesh.¹⁶⁶

Whether these ministrations are merely comforting visions given to us by God in our mind’s eye or confirmations that these loved ones are translated beings or the spirits of just men made perfect (see #85 THE ROLE OF ANGELS IN LATTER-DAY SAINT THEOLOGY) or something else altogether is not and likely cannot be known; but the fact that these ministrations do exist and can happen is comforting to all of us who have lost loved ones and anxiously await the day that we can embrace them again in the next life.