FHE - The Commandments

Our second week of Family Home Evening was Lesson Two: The Commandments—Gifts from a Loving Father:

Loving Parents Give Rules for Their Children 

Explain that the first rules parents give children are for their physical safety, such as “Don’t go in the street” or “Don’t touch the hot stove.” But as children get older, parents also want to protect them from ways of behaving that will bring them unhappiness. They then make rules to teach them good behavior. List a few of these rules, such as “Be kind to everyone, “Share with others,” and “Be willing to help others.” 

Our Heavenly Father is also our parent. He loves us even more than our earthly parents. He is also much wiser than any earthly parent. He knows what will bring happiness and unhappiness, and he guides us to happiness. He planned it that way because he loves us.

How to Press Forward

We were talking the other day about looking "forward" and moving on from the past, and how it is important to keep developing your testimony and creating new spiritual experiences as opposed to just relying on old ones.  This article was on the main page of LDS.org today and made me think of it:

How to Press Forward by Elder Anderson

Press forward implies something more than simply going forward. Press implies something is preventing your advancement, and you must push through it. To go forward in this life, you must press temptations aside, press through obstacles, press the doubt and the fear under your feet, and embrace the divine qualities of faith, hope,and love.

And a scripture that goes along with the concept of being guided by the Holy Ghost as we press forward:

2 Nephi 32:5

For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do.

Building Our Family through Home Evenings

This week we started using the Family Home Evening Resource manual for our weekly FHE lesson.  For now, we have just decided to go in order, so we began with Lesson 1: Building Our Family through Home Evenings.

The lesson opens with the following:

Before we were born, we lived in a family. There we were loved and taught. As we grew in knowledge and understanding, we wanted to become like our Heavenly Father. We wanted to share in his joys. We wanted a family of our own. Our Heavenly Father also wanted us to be able to have families of our own. He sent us to earth to get our bodies, to test us, and to train us to be parents eternally. This is what godhood means. 

After we come to earth we can begin to develop our own eternal families. If we succeed with our families in this life, we may return with them to our Heavenly Father. Then we will establish our own heavenly homes and be able to continue to have families. This is our Heavenly Father’s plan for us and the highest reward we can receive. He has made it possible for us to return to him, to be with our earthly family, and to become gods and goddesses, having families forever.

We noted that it puts heavy emphasis on the parenthood aspect of godhood.  I think this is a very unique concept that we believe as Mormons, and it definitely puts all of the elements of earthly life into a different perspective.   I have recently become a father, and love it more than anything!

We sang "Love is Spoken Here" as our song for the night:

 

Family Home Evening

This year we plan to be much better at having regular Family Home Evenings each Monday night.  To help with this, I've decided to use the old Family Home Evening Resource Book that was last updated in 1997.

There are plenty of topics to use, and it's pretty easy to just open the lesson manual to at least have a discussion about one of the topics.  As we plan better, we can do more of the activities and such.  It should be a great year!

To help plan out the schedule, I am trying something new this year.  I am using OneNote and creating a monthly list and then by date so I can have all of the notes for each lesson saved.  You can use OneNote on the PC, tablets, or the phone, so it is easy to transfer and save things across different devices, and then for the actual lesson we just read from the tablet.

President Howard W. Hunter

The 2016 Elders Quorum (EQ) and Relief Society (RS) lesson manual is Teachings of Presidents of the Church - Howard W. Hunter.  This completes the series of all of the Prophets up to President Hunter, so my guess would be that next year we will be studying Gordon B. Hinckley.  

The lessons are taught on the 2nd and 3rd Sundays of the month, with a total of 24 lessons.  The updated Calendar feature on LDS.org automatically plugs in all of the lessons for you when you create a new class calendar for EQ or RS.  It's a nice feature.

This week we held a combined Priesthood meeting since a few people were still out of town.  Typically the 1st Sunday is taught by a member of the EQ presidency, and it is open to any topic of choice.  I decided to use the section on the Life and Ministry of Howard W. Hunter from the manual, and there was plenty of material to discuss.

One of the interesting facts in the manual was that President Hunter wasn't baptized until he was twelve because his father would not give his permission.

Because Howard had not been baptized, he could not be ordained a deacon when he turned 12. “By that time, all my friends had been ordained deacons,” he said. “Because I wasn’t an official member of the Church, I wasn’t able to do many of the things that they did.” Howard was especially disheartened that he could not pass the sacrament: “I sat in sacrament meetings with the other boys. When it was time for them to pass the sacrament, I would slump down in my seat. I felt so left out.”

Eventually his father did give permission, and was baptized himself about 8 years later.

As President of the Church, President Hunter extended two invitations to all members of the church - to follow the Savior's example, and to look to the temple of the Lord as the great symbol of our membership.  He dedicated two temples during the 9 months he was President - the Orlando, Florida and Bountiful, Utah.  I was able to attend the dedication of the Bountiful Temple, and remember the wonderful feeling on that day!  I have loved being able to continue to go to the Temple and learn and feel the Spirit while being there.

This turned out longer than I thought, and didn't take very long!  Hopefully I can keep it up as the year goes on!

You can download the book on Amazon for the Kindle or other devices for free.

New Year, New Posts

Welcome to 2016!  It's a new year and time for a new years resolution.  I've always planned for this blog to be a space where I would write about past and future lessons from Church on Sunday, and hopefully this year I can be better at accomplishing that goal!  The LDS.org website makes it easier and easier to study and utilize all of the resources available, and I plan to try and incorporate things from there.

My second goal this year is for our family to hold weekly Family Home Evening, and my preference would be that we plan them out in advance and it isn't always a last minute thing.

2016 is going to be a great year!