Family Home Evening

Jacob and I do a lot of posts about the temporal aspects of Provident Living, especially having to do with home production and storage and physical health.  These are important aspects of Provident Living and areas where we are currently learning and doing a lot. Sometimes I forget about sharing some of the other ways we strive to live our lives more providently on a daily basis. Some of the things that we do really seem so commonplace to us because we do them all the time and we have been doing them for a long time that I forget they really are important parts of living a provident life too. One of these important areas of provident living is taking care of our spiritual and emotional needs. Every week (in addition to our Sunday church services) our family participates in something we call Family Home Evening. We take one night a week together as a family to spend special time with one another to focus on spiritual things. During this time we sing songs, have a lesson that is spiritual in nature, and do family activities. These nights allow Jacob and I to give our children and ourselves more in depth spiritual instruction and they give us that spiritual uplift that helps us to get through the upcoming week. Because our children are still very young, we keep our lessons short and sometimes make our activities a bit longer. We also sing spiritual and uplifting songs, which is something we all enjoy very much and we try to learn new songs as well. We encourage our children to ask questions and participate a lot in the lessons we have planned. In fact, each week we assign different family members to plan various aspects for the next weeks Family Home Evening.  This helps each one of us to develop different skills and allows to share our talents with each other. We love Family Home Evening. I especially love the feeling of peace and unity that it brings into our home as we talk about the Savior Jesus Christ and His Gospel and our great love for Him.

We have decided recently to to begin preparing our Family Home Evening Lessons from the most recent General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. We prepare and plan our lessons and activities from the talks that were given at this conference. We also include appropriate hymns and scriptures that go along with the topics as well as an activity that usually involves treats ( our kids favorite part).

Yesterday, I prepared the lesson from a talk entitled, "For Peace at Home", given by Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Scott, spoke about the things that we can do to bring more peace into our homes. Some of the principles he mentioned were family and personal prayer, scripture study, and weekly Family Home Evenings. He also talked about the importance of making Jesus Christ the center of our home, and promised that when we do this there will be peace and serenity. He also suggested that as we work to achieve this goal in our homes we reach out to others in friendship, love, and service, so that might feel that peace in their lives as well.

After our lesson, and some songs, together as a family we made a family treat with the intention of sharing some of our treats with a family in our neighborhood that is moving away.

We made "Scripture Cookies" which reinforced the importance of reading the scriptures in our home and also gave us a way to serve those around us. It was a fun activity. The kids loved listening to each scripture for the clues they needed to make their cookies.

Family Home Evening is just one way that we use in our home to strengthen ourselves and our children spiritually and emotionally. We know that as we hold weekly Family Home Evenings our lives our enriched and blessed and we experience more of the peace and serenity that is promised us as we strive to center our home around the Savior Jesus Christ.

Below is the recipe for Scripture Cookies. We hope you enjoy them at your next or first Family Home Evening.

Beat Together:                                                            Key:
3/4 Cup (Psalms 55:21)                                            1. Butter
1/3 Cup (2 Nephi 26:25)                                           2. Milk
1&1/2 Cup (Jeremiah 6:20)                                      3. Sugar
2 (Isaiah 10:14)                                                          4. Eggs

Add:
2 Cups (1 Kings 4:22)                                                5. Flour
1 tsp. (Solomon's Song 4:14)                                    6. Cinnamon
1 tsp. (Doctrine & Covenants 101:39)                     7. Salt
1/2 tsp. (1 Corinthians 4:6)                                        8. Baking Soda
3 Cups (Doctrine & Covenants 89:17)                      9. Oatmeal
1 Cup (Samuel 30:12)                                                10. Raisins

Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. While baking read (History of Joseph Smith 1:37 and Doctrine and Covenants 133:11) to remind you to watch them carefully so they don't burn.

For access to the 2013 edition of the scriptures for the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints click here.