Teaching in the Home

The plan of salvation is based on families. We lived as a family before we came to earth. Here we are placed in families to learn and grow.  And when we die we will continue to have families in the hear after.  It is no surprise that as we see society degrade around us that the church has turned to a more family focused approach for learning.  President Gordon B Hinckley said, “I believe our problems, almost every one, arise out of the homes of people. If there is to be a reformation, if there is to be a change, if there is to be a return to old and sacred values it must begin in the home.  It is here that the truth is learned, that integrity is cultivated, that self-discipline is instilled, and that love is nurtured.” (October 1998 general conference)

 In the proclamation to the world on the family we learn that parents are responsible to teach their children principles of faith, prayer, repentance forgiveness, respect, love, compassion and wholesome recreation.

We learned in October that the Lord wants us to go to a two hour block of church to allow an extra hour to teach and learn at home. We are given an extra hour a week.  But is that all that is really required of us?  Just like the change from Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching to ministering was actually a change to a higher law, so is this change.  For instance, when describing the new program Elder Cook states, “We are confident that members will be blessed in extraordinary ways. Sunday can be a day of gospel learning and teaching at church and in the home. As individuals and families engage in family councils, family history, ministering, service, personal worship, and joyful family time, the Sabbath day will truly be a delight.”  This is far more than can be accomplished in just an hour. In addition he talks about how there is no set time to do this,  the newly gained hour may help provide some flexibility as to when the study could take place.  This change is looking for a deepening conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The opening paragraphs of the new curriculum explain, this is not to teach new information,  but for each of us to become a “new creature”  our aim is a change our lives patterns.  It states that the kind of gospel learning that they are searching for doesn’t happen all at once but it is a slow process that requires daily efforts, not once a week efforts.  They go on to say that the Holy Ghost is the real teacher.  “for this reason, in our efforts to live, learn and teach the gospel, we should first and foremost seek the companionship of the Spirit. This goal should govern our choices and guide our thoughts and actions. We should seek after whatever invites the influence of the spirit and reject whatever drives that influence away.”  This new initiative of the church is not a change in our three hour block it is a directive from the Lord to Change our homes.

 How do we do this? In college I studied recreation, I learned all about the psychological benefits of recreation,  why we recreate, the physical benefits, the emotional benefits the social benefits, the best kind of recreation on and on, how recreation and leisure time wisely spent strengthens the family.  Needless to say I am a very firm advocate of having fun as a family, and I know that family fun has oh so many benefits. Much of family fun can be tied in to righteous rituals and traditions, and I am here to tell you there is no better way to teach, to learn, and to build relationships than righteous rituals and traditions.  Now in the scriptures we learn that unrighteous traditions will bring down generations to come. But just like unrighteous traditions can destroy families and individuals righteous ones will save them.            

The Come Follow Me manual states that “regular family scripture study is a powerful way to help your family learn the gospel. How much and how long you read as a family is not as important as being consistent in your efforts”  This is describing a ritual. Rituals are things we do every day.  And they have to have meaning.  Everyday occurrences can be turned into a family building bonding experience by turning it into a ritual. For example. Leaving the house is an every day experience. But when I was growing up when ever my mom left my little brother would say, “Good by mom, we are buddies and friends and pals forever and ever wave to me back when you are in the car” he would then run to the window and watch and wait for my mom to wave to him back. This happened EVERY TIME my mom left. He continued probably until he left on his mission. I promise that this built a bond between my mom and my brother. This is a prime example of normal every day experience turned ritual. Traditions are similar to rituals, but instead they happen less frequently than every day, but they are repeated. We often think of Christmas Traditions, things that we do every year at Christmas time.  Other traditions are things like weekly church attendance, family home evening, birthdays. Etc.

In the introduction to their book Traditions, Kimberly Bytheway and Diane Loveridge explain, “As parents, we want to pass our values and priorities on to our children. We want them to cherish the same goodness that we treasure. We want our children to turn to the family during troubled times, and not to other outside sources. This is the meaning of parenthood: to teach our children to love one another, and to live the gospel. They will not learn this by accident, but in the quiet planned moments, purposefully taught.

This is where meaningful family traditions come in. When we spend time together as a family, day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year, we strengthen the central unit of the gospel: the family. In a day when the family is under attack from the most sophisticated sources ever devised, this responsibility becomes paramount.”

 Their book is full of fun ideas for traditions and I strongly recommend checking them out, if for no other reason than a spring board of ideas to start your own traditions. You can get it here.

Rituals

Elder Durrant spoke of some of these rituals and traditions that we should be using in his talk in last April's General Conference. Daily rituals that we should be utilizing in teaching the gospel and creating a Christ centered home, should include family prayer, family meals, and family scripture time.

Family Prayer

In our home we try and emphasize the principle of gratitude during our family prayers. Every night we ask each person to name at least one thing they are grateful for.  Even on days that have be especially hard we still require at least one thing they are thankful from that day. I also think praying over food,  and for specific blessings teaches our children where to look for all blessings.  It teaches faith, and the power of prayer.  

Family Meals

Family meals provides time for on-call teaching time.  We are like the savior, whose teaching often did not happen in a synagogue but in informal everyday settings, such as eating a meal with his disciples. By having family meals together it provides opportunities for us to talk and to process the day.  To get to know our families  better, so that we can know where to hone in on our scripture study for their sakes. One thing we have recently started doing in our home is each child has a day that they have to plan the meal, and make dinner. I have enjoyed this for so many reasons. First I no longer have to think so hard about dinner. It has also taught my children to be gracious to whoever made the meal.  It has taught them skills of cooking dinner. I have also enjoyed the time I have been able to spend with my kids side by side with them.

Family Scripture Study

Family scripture study is another thing that should be happening daily.  There are many ways that you can accomplish this.  You can read together everything, switching off verses.  Or You can determine as  a family a block of scripture, or a gospel topic, to study individually  and then set a side a time to discuss what you learned. The Come, Follow Me – For Individuals and Families, already has suggested blocks of scriptures for study each week.  Little kids could watch the church movies showing this block of scripture, or read from the scripture stories book.  You could just tell the stories of this block to younger kids. This could be done daily, and discussed at dinner, or it could be done weekly and discussed during your hour of extra time on Sundays. One thing I just thought of, is because the whole church is studying the same scripture block as grandparents it will be easier to tell your grandchildren the scripture stories, or discuss the blocks of scripture with them. The new lesson books discuss some ideas of how to help process this,  you can discuss everyone’s favorite scripture passage from the reading, you can have people summarize in their own words what they read.  You can talk about how it applies to your own life. You can answer any questions that anyone came up with during the week.  When I was young my mom would photo copy pages of the scriptures and glue them on to cereal boxes, because everyone always looks at the cereal box as they eat cereal.  She also had a ziplock bag attached inside each shower and she would put new scripture verses she wanted us to learn inside those so we could memorize scripture every morning. There are many different ways to approach family scripture study.  Now it would be easy to have a family group text about the scriptures. Pray and ask for guidance as to how best to implement scripture study in your home, and then do it.

Traditions

The new Come Follow Me initiative, when fully embraced, will deepen our family rituals and together as a family we will become more converted to the gospel.  But as important as the family rituals are, we also need family traditions that will help support and add to our gospel learning.  For instance It will still be just as important to maintain our Weekly family tradition of coming to church. Family learning continues at church. One day my older brother was asked what it meant to him to be a “Strong” (this is my maiden name) he said that being a Strong meant sitting attentively on the second row in the chapel and singing every song, regardless if you knew how to carry a tune or not, because this is how you show devotion to God.”  When I heard him say this, I realized how true it was. My parents had taught us this important aspect of worship. Weekly Family Church attendance is an extremely important family tradition.

From the sound of it our Family Home Evening structure may be flexible to change some.  Elder Cook states “This Sunday schedule allows more time for a home evening and to study the gospel at home on Sunday or at other times as individual and families may choose.  A family activity night could be held on Monday or at other times. To this end, leaders should continue to keep Monday evenings free from Church meetings and activities. However, time spent in home evening, gospel study, and activities for individuals and families may be scheduled according to their individual circumstances.”  How I interpret that is that they are still hoping we have family home evening,  however because we have an increase in gospel study throughout the week (and on the extra hour on Sunday) maybe family home evening could become Family Saturday Morning Hike. My suggestion is still have a set designated time, if Monday night has worked for you, maybe keep it Monday night. But if you have never been able to make Monday Night work, then now is a good time schedule some other time. Make it a tradition you can count on. If you do not schedule it, then it will easily be pushed off. Make it fun, build some memories, laugh together and enjoy each other, We are stuck with each other for all eternity, might as well start enjoying it now.

I noticed in the book,  that for both Easter and Christmas the book stops with the regular scripture block and has lessons for both Easter and Christmas.  These would be great opportunities to spend time focusing in on the true meanings of these Holidays.  Come up with some fun traditions to remember the reasons for the seasons.  Spend the week before Easter learning about the last week of the Life of Christ, or more fully understand the atonement. Maybe make it a tradition to participate in a Last Supper. We do this every year. Only I cheat and we have gyros, I figure it is mostly the same food, only put together in a delicious way,  flat bread, lamb… etc. mmm it is a tradition that I look forward to. But learning about things like the last supper can help you understand the atonement more.  We talk about why they ate flat bread,  why they ate lamb.  The symbolism of it. And then when I eat gyros throughout the rest of the year, I can think back to the last supper. Alright so maybe my gyro example is a bad one, but my point is find time to make the traditions for your family, even if they are dumb like having gyros for a last supper, they will mean something to your family.

            Christmas is coming up and I have way too many Christmas traditions to talk about. So I will just talk about the new Christmas traditions that we have started this year.  I have seven siblings, and it was important to my parents for us to learn to give gifts, so as a I child I gave gifts to every single one of my siblings. I love my memories of our Monday night shopping we would all go shopping for Christmas gifts for one family home evening, it was always so much fun trying to get every one’s gifts in one night, and trying to keep them all hidden and secret because all of us were all shopping in the same store at once.  As we got older we figured out we could combine our money with each other and buy stuff they actually might want, and it was always a great game to try and get something that would really make the other people happy.  It was always more fun on Christmas morning to see everyone open the gift you got for them then it was to actually open your own gifts. So because this was so fun for me, and because my parents did such a good job at instilling in me the love of giving I have carried this tradition on with my kids. No drawing names,

everyone gets everyone a gift.  This year, though, I took a big breath and Craig and I decided to change things up. We have too much stuff. I don’t want another thing to enter my house. So this year, We read a story, Soft Enough for a King, about how serving others helps add straw to baby Jesus’s manger and it makes his bed soft. So when you are in the service of your fellow beings you are in the service of your god.  And we  told the kids that instead of getting gifts for people in our family this year we are going to spend the next month serving each other and building a bed for Jesus. We have a manger with yellow strips of paper (straw) to write your service on and then put it in the manger to create a soft bed for the baby we will put in the manger on Christmas Eve. The kids are having fun looking for ways to serve others. I hope it has a lasting impact. I am still contemplating if we should read through the services preformed on Christmas Morning, or if we leave them as secret services.

My point is that it really doesn’t matter what your traditions are, so long as they are righteous, teaching your children correct gospel principles.  You can do gifts, you can not do gifts. What ever works for your family.

You don’t have to wait for Easter or Christmas to make gospel centered traditions. For example when we got married I told Craig we would go on a family vacation every year. It didn’t have to be big, but the benefits of family vacation are so numerous that it is something I really wanted to do. On each vacation we try and go visit a temple if there is one somewhere close, and I am surprised at how often there is a temple with in close distance to our family vacation.

Another example is, My sister has recently started celebrating the Day of the Dead with her family (this is November 1) and it is what the movie Cocoa is based off of.  But instead of setting out a shrine for each of her dead relatives, they look at old photos, and eat their relatives’ favorite foods, or foods from their home lands. They have turned the Day of the Dead into a family history holiday.  There are so many ways we can make our home and our traditions Christ Centered. As we do this I know that we will build stronger faith, conversion and strength in our families. Our children will be better equipped to face the challenges of the day.