The promise of Jesus Christ was that our eternal life in Heaven will be resurrected, with bodies; and of our-selves. In other words that we will remain the same people we are, but purged of evil by our commitment to God and his creation.
Therefore Heaven is a place of actual incarnated (embodied) persons, the same persons that once lived mortal lives here on earth; and that Heaven is a place of love between these people.
This means that there is potentially a bridge between our mortal lives and our immortal lives; and that bridge is the people we have known and loved during our mortal lives.
Simple Christians have always known this - known it more clearly, and given it far greater prominence in their faith and hopes, than most of the theologians and religious leaders.
What this means in practice is that it is possible for us to continue loving relationships with - for example, our parents, spouses and children, through eternity.
Of course, because love is not and cannot be coerced, this means that there would need to be mutual commitment - but given that, we can look forward to a perpetuation of our deepest loving relationships.
Furthermore, this knowledge itself serves to deepen these relationships in mortal life. Because, instead of regarding all our possible mortal relationships as necessarily ephemeral, and subject to the inevitable entropic changes and death of mortal life - we are instead inspired and fortified by the potential chance and choice that such relationships can be permanent, and capable of continual growth, in Heaven, forever.
Thus faith and knowledge of Heaven acts 'backwards' on our mortal life; to make this mortal life better than it otherwise could have been.
For a Christian; our love here-and-now is not just here-and-now and doomed to decay and annihilation - but may also be there-and-always.
Note: It was one of the great achievements of Mormon Christianity to clarify and emphasise these Christian facts - which had never received their proper emphasis since the Fourth Gospel, and had become neglected and obscured through the centuries.
