Family Home Evening #1

Family Home Evening has been something I struggle with. If I don't have a plan prior to Monday, it doesn't happen. So after cruising around blog-land for a couple of days, I found some great ideas, and then I thought, maybe these ideas could help someone else (if anyone even reads this anymore -besides you Mom, I know you're my biggest fan!)

Sugardoodle & We Talk of Christ had some great lesson plans centered around the Proclamation on the Family, so I thought that would be a great place to start.

Tonight we focused on just this line:

"We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God…"

We talked about what a proclamation is, and what "ordained" means. We talked about Adam & Eve and how it wasn't good that Adam should be alone so God made Eve. And then talked about why marriage is so important. I briefly addressed the fact that alot of people don't think they need to get married anymore. I didn't want to get into Homo-sexuality at this point, because at this point my kids don't understand that and it would have completely derailed the lesson. (I could just see Squirt: "Wait, wait, wait... there are boys that want to kiss boys? WHAT???)

We let them know that the choices they make today will effect their lives in the future. That having an Eternal Marriage is so worth it and it's what we hope they choose. We let them know how much we love them, and stressed that one day they will have children and they will love them as much as we do, and will want to be sealed to them forever.

It was a really great lesson. The spirit was definitely felt. It only took about 5 minutes (that's usually the extent of our attention-span) and then we broke out the wedding album and let them look through it & laugh at us for a few minutes.

Prior to starting the lesson, we made homemade pretzels. (I had the dough already made) The kids had a blast rolling out the dough. They were rather ugly, but tasted yummy. And they thought it was pretty funny that Daddy had as hard a time making them as they did! We popped them in the oven, had the lesson and enjoyed them when we were all done!