Speaking in Church

I was asked to give a 15-minute talk in church today on Making our Homes the Center of Gospel Learning. I don't mind speaking in church since I have had plenty of opportunity to talk in front of people, but preparing a talk takes time and I didn't finish this one up until about 2:00 AM.

A couple of hours later, Baby Doll woke me up to confess that she had thrown up in the bathroom sink. Her tummy was a casualty of the amazing shower we had for Beauty and Princess, but I will talk about that one tomorrow. Since today is Sunday, please indulge me while I share my talk with you in written form. It is against the rules for filming to be done in our chapels. I have changed all personal names to blog names just to keep you from being confused.

Brothers and Sisters, I’m grateful for the opportunity to speak today.  The subject I have been given is Making our Homes the Center of Gospel Learning. For those of you who know me well, you know that this is one of my favorite subjects. My life is all about family. Let me just give you a little background. My sweetie and I were married in 1983, just months after I graduated from high school. I grew up in Ephraim, Utah, the 4^th of 8 children. My sweetie is from Mt. Pleasant and he is the oldest son of 6 children, but his father was married before and had 2 children making that 8 total for him as well. Needless to say, family was important.

My dad worked 3 jobs trying to support us. His main paid job was teaching high school math, but he also ran a small farm and taught drivers ed. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent riding to nowhere in the backseat of the drivers ed car. Even so, Dad still tried to take the time to do a little teaching when he got home, but Family Home Evening was a struggle as were the Parent/Child Interviews. Dad was so busy with work and Mom was just trying to keep us all fed and clothed. 

Because of these challenges, Gospel learning was not the highest priority on their list, but teaching and learning happened just the same. Dad taught us about hard work and clean living. He loved being outdoors and working on the farm and he insisted that we herd sheep when we weren’t in school. Those hours we spent while the sheep grazed were the perfect time for reading and pondering the universe. Was this a time that I received direct instruction from my dad? That depends on how you look at it. Dad put me in the right place at the right time in my life so that I could figure out my place in the Lord’s plan.

My sweetie grew up in a family that was much different from mine. His father was raised by a young widowed mother who lost her husband in the flu epidemic of 1918. Vernal was not quite 2 years old and she was expecting yet another child. Rather than remarry as women traditionally did, she became the city recorder and was able to take care of her 4 small children on that salary and plenty of hard work. I know I’ve told some of you that I don’t like it when bad little children get a lump of coal for Christmas. Vernal is the boy that rejoiced when he received his lump, because he knew that meant he would be able to use it one night of the year when he really wanted to sleep the entire night without having to get up and feed the old wood-burning stove which was their only heat source.

Vernal was 20 years older than my sweetie’s mother, divorced with older children and a WWII Veteran when they met. A master sergeant, Vernal had been plunged into some of the worst battles of the war and survived. He was a hard worker and a plumber by trade, but he was rarely around and completely inactive when it came to church. He loved to drink coffee with his buddies and he never pretended to be something he wasn’t.

My sweetie’s mom was the daughter of the bishop (who happened to live across the street from the family). She served as the Primary President and then the Relief Society President. She worked hard to have Family Home Evening and church activity in their home. My sweetie’s dad wasn’t resistant to any of these teachings, he simply wasn’t there.

My sweetie thought he knew his dad well in their many hours of working together, but it wasn’t until after his dad’s death that my sweetie began to understand the level of Vernal’s commitment to choosing the right. Vernal was the protector and constant source of support for the widows in the ward. He would (and did) come running during an important holiday celebration just to unclog a toilet for someone in need, and when she couldn’t pay, he did the work for free. Vernal had a magic pocket that almost always had a little gas money for us when we lived in Logan. 

As a plumbing contractor, he worked on a hospital in Dugway and when the contractor went belly up, he tried to convince all of his subs including Vernal, to declare bankruptcy and move on. Vernal refused. It took him over a decade, but he paid back every cent he ever owed to anyone. He was the epitome of the Scout Law… trustworthy, loyal, helpful… he was more Christ-like than anyone I knew. 

Two months before he died, my sweetie and I were traveling from our home in Salt Lake to visit the family. Just outside of Fairview, we hit a deer. We didn’t even see it; it came right at our windshield, the weight of it shattering glass all over the inside of our car. I was 8 months pregnant with Drama Queen and we were all ever so grateful for seatbelts. To make a long and amazing rescue story short (since this was before the days of cell phones), we finally made it to Mt. Pleasant. While my sweetie was busy seeing to the car and the tow and all that, my mother-in-law was comforting Bossy and The Beast and distracting them from the situation. Somewhat in shock, I sat in the kitchen on a hard-back chair. My sweet father-in-law came in to check on me and that is when he noticed I had been wearing flip-flops because of the swelling in my tired feet. He knelt down beside me and examined them for only a moment before he stood up, headed for the sink and filled a bowl with warm water. Slinging a towel over his shoulder and picking up a soft rag, he once again knelt at my feet and gently began washing the tiny shards of glass and blood. He large rough hard-working hands were so gentle as he carefully took care of something my pregnant body could not do.

My father-in-law avoided church because he had injuries that really bothered him when he sat for even an hour on those hard benches. For my sweetie and for me, Vernal was an amazing example of service and love. No, he didn’t teach with a book in his hand. He WAS the book.  

Teaching doesn’t always have to be in Family Home Evening or in a fireside setting. Many of our greatest teaching moments will be driving in the car (I spend way too much time shuttling my kids here and there to their various activities!) or while waiting to pick someone up. These are the times when I have to choose between texting on my phone and largely ignoring the child sitting two feet from me who is probably texting on his or her phone as well…

In an April 2018 Conference Talk, Brother Devin G. Durrant, First Counselor in the Sunday School General Presidency, shared similar thoughts, “Parental teaching is like being an on-call physician. We always need to be ready to teach our children because we never know when the opportunity will present itself. We are like the Savior, whose teaching often “did not happen in a synagogue but in informal, everyday settings—while eating a meal with his disciples, drawing water from a well, or walking past a fig tree.”

My parents raised me to have faith in the family unit, to believe that it was important above all else. That even though we may fight and harass each other, if someone outside of our family unit was doing the harassing, we would stand together.

When my sweetie and I were dating, family was one of the things we talked about often. I told him I wanted 10 children (expecting perhaps that it might be a deal-breaker since at the time my heart wasn’t quite fully committed). I was surprised when he readily agreed. (He probably would have agreed to anything at that point.) We both knew that to bring that many souls into the world would be challenging and difficult, but that the eternal blessings would be immeasurable. How would I teach them the many things they would need to know? Thankfully, I was given many tools, starting with Family Home Evening. 

I have always loved the idea of having one night of the week when we could forget about the cares of the world and just be a family. We could learn together or play together or whatever as long as it was together. And I would recommend that if you are implementing a program like that into your family activities that you have an Autistic son to make sure you never forget. And just for the record, our family home evenings were far from perfect. The kids would roll around on the floor, poke each other, fight over crayons… There were seriously days that I wanted to give up. But then I remembered a conference talk where we were promised that if we took our children to church and stayed with them, that they would all eventually return to full activity. Given some of my children’s current activities, I hold tightly to that promise, knowing that none of them are lost, at least not permanently.

But seriously, for our families to learn together, someone needs to be in charge, but that same person doesn’t have to be the one to do the reminding. The day I sat down with Dog Walker and told him that he was in charge of making sure we read the scriptures every night was one of the most inspired things I have ever done. WE DID NOT MISS!! I remember a couple of times after turning off the lights and comfortably drifting off that suddenly I was aware of a presence standing next to my bed, staring down at me. “Mom,” he would start off quietly, but I’m telling you, it was not something I could ignore. His persistent “Mom,” would get progressively louder until I finally responded and he would matter-of-factly remind me that it was time to do scriptures. I would moan, but then roll out of bed. It was just not worth fighting…

I’m sure you all know that we have 12 children ranging in ages from 34 – 8. It has been a challenge to keep them all engaged and learning at the same time. My sweetie recalls the day I approached him, all excitedly, “I found it!” He was a bit cautious, not knowing anything was missing. “These kids do come with a manual!” I held up my Personal Progress books for the girls, scouting and Faith in God for the boys. He smiled and shook his head like I was crazy as usual, but I became an expert at combining requirements in their various scouting, Personal Progress and Faith in God books so that each one of them could progress in their respective goals. 

Now the Come, Follow Me program has made all of that so much easier. We are all on the same page and learning about the most important thing, the life and Atonement of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I know every family is different, but I want to share with you what has been working for us. Of our 12 children, we only have 5 still living at home with us as well as my 83-year-old dad. Many of our other children are married and have children or are well-established in their own homes. But even with our 5 left at home, it is difficult to get everyone together. 

We start our week of gospel learning on Sundays, often right after church, but when meetings or extended family commitments get in the way, we study together in the evening before bed. These study sessions come directly from the Come, Follow Me book as we read and share the messages there and the scriptures that go along with them. We discuss things that confuse us and we ask our children for help in deciphering things that may be difficult to understand. Honestly, even though we have read the New Testament half a dozen times as a family, we have never read it like this. I’m always amazed at the insights of even the youngest children. They are so much more in tune than we are. 

We gather together every night of the week and study the scriptures. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we read from the Book of Mormon. Not all of our family (parents and grandpa included) can meet every night, but I learned a long time ago that if we wait for everyone to arrive, feasting on the gospel might not happen. So when we call the family together, the ones that come are the ones that learn. And if we have extras in the house that don’t actually live there (I’m thinking of Teach and Drama Queen, although it is often my other children as well), they will join in the gospel teaching moments and participate like they have never been away from home. They have new perspectives and wise counsel that they leave with the younger kids. In fact, I count on their good examples to light the way for the younger kids to follow.

Every 2^nd Sunday of the month, we have what I call our BIG Family Home Evening. This is a standing invitation to all of our children to bring their families, enjoy dinner and togetherness, and then share the lessons of the week from Come, Follow Me. My sweetie will ask 2 of our children (in advance) to plan to share their family’s experiences with the scriptures and we always have an open forum at the end for anyone to ask questions or bare testimony. I love those weeks! It makes me so happy to know that many of my children are teaching their children the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

I hope and pray that we can all remember why we are here. That families are precious and time with our children is so short. We only have those few moments that they will listen and learn from us and then the opportunity is lost. Let’s take the time to put away our cell phones and our tablets. Turn off the TV and the internet. Let’s teach (and learn) with our children.

 
I testify that Jesus is the Christ. That He suffered for us… He died for us. We must learn of Him and we must teach our children all we know so that someday they will teach their children and this amazing cycle will continue for generations until we can all return to our Father in Heaven and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. For this I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen