FHE - I Am A Child of God

Song

Sing “I Am a Child of God”

Each of us is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents. We lived with them before we were born. Our Heavenly Father knows us personally and loves us. (See Psalm 82:6; Acts 17:28–29; Hebrews 12:9.) 

Scripture Story

Explain that Moses was a great prophet who lived a long time ago. Tell the children that Moses went to a mountain to pray. Invite the children to pretend to climb a mountain; then have them fold their arms as if praying. Open the Pearl of Great Price to Moses 1:4 and say, “God said to Moses, ‘Behold, thou art my son.’ ” Explain that Moses learned that he was a child of God.

Show the picture below, point to a child in the picture, and ask, “Is this person a child of God?” Nod and say yes. Repeat for each child in the picture. Then point to yourself and ask, “Am I a child of God?” Nod and say yes. Emphasize that everyone is a child of God and He knows and loves us all.


We are all children of God and He knows and loves us.

FHE - Nurturing Love at Home

Tonight for Family Home Evening we plan to use this short video and blog post for our discussion.

 

Families come in more varieties than flowers in a garden—big, small, tall, not as tall, and everything in between. Our particular variety may look different than what we might think of as the ideal family, but each one has its own beauty, challenges, and unique family culture. We may love spending time with our families or struggle to carry on a conversation; our families may be our best friends, or perhaps we may find ourselves wishing that our family relationships were stronger.

No matter the state of our family relationships, we can always strive to create love at home—to do the small and simple things to nurture our relationships with the people who matter most to us. Living prophets and apostles have reminded us of things we can do to create an environment for love to flourish in our families and homes.

 "Love at Home" will be our song. And I made cookies last night so the treat is already done! It will be a nice night!

FHE from Elders Quorum Lesson

This is the Prezi I created based on our Elders Quorum lesson a few weeks ago to use as a Family Home Evening.  I had the thought a month or so ago to try and use the Sunday EQ lessons as the basis for a Family Home Evening lesson that would be taught the Monday after.  That way mom and dad would have talked about the lesson topic in their classes the day before, and it gives you a topic to use for your Family the next day

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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.

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.