brrr...

When Kennady talked to Grandma Char today, Grandma told her that it is still so hot in AZ that she is still using her air conditioner every day! Meanwhile, we are getting pretty c-c-cold up here! I love the heater.

Also, as promised...I am including some of the notes from my talk in Sacrament Meeting today. Of course, these are just the quotes and ideas I used. I also included personal stories and improvised a lot, but here is my outline for anyone who wants to read over my notes :)

In the October 2005 general conference, M. Russell Ballard gave a talk entitled, “What matters most is what lasts longest.” He said, “As your leaders, we call upon members of the Church everywhere to put family first and to identify specific ways to strengthen their individual families.” So, logically, our next question will be...How? How do we protect and preserve and strengthen our homes and families in a world that pulls so hard in opposite directions? Elder Ballard gave three simple suggestions:
1.Be consistent in holding daily family prayer and weekly family home evenings. These activities invite the Lord’s Spirit. His Spirit provides the help and power we, as parents, need. Take opportunities to bear testimony and to allow children to bear their growing testimonies.
2.Teach the gospel and basic values in your home. Teach them to be kind, responsible, respectful, modest, etc. There are so many good basic values that we can teach, but we can't forget that true gospel teaching must also be done in the home. Primary, sunday school and seminary should reinforce the things taught at home. The main responsibility for gospel teaching rests in the home. Elder Ballard encouraged us to prayerfully choose a gospel subject or a family value and then watch for opportunities to teach it. Of course, in order to teach our children these important principles, they must be home. Elder Ballard counseled, “Be wise and do not involve children or yourselves in so many activities out of the home that you are so busy that the Spirit of the Lord cannot be recognized or felt in giving you the promised guidance for yourself and your family.”
3.Create meaningful family bonds that give your children an identity stronger than what they can find with their peer group or at school or anyplace else. This can be done through family traditions for birthdays, for holidays, for dinnertime, and for Sundays. It can also be done through family policies and rules with natural and well-understood consequences. Read good books together. Work together.

In the Church, we have been taught of the importance of families and understand that the sanctity of families is part of our eternal existence. We know that before this life we lived with our Heavenly Father as part of His family, and we know that family relationships can endure beyond death. But, sometimes...we take our families for granted. Yet, going to back Elder Ballard's statement. It is so true: What matters most lasts the longest.

Robert D. Hales, gave a conference talk entitled “Strengthening Families: Our Sacred Duty,” In that talk, he said, “The key to strengthening our families is having the Spirit of the Lord come into our homes.”
He gave a lot of great ideas of how we can bring create an atmosphere in our homes where they Spirit of the Lord can be present. Where each child will feel safe and loved.

• Spend individual time with our children. Let them choose the activity and the subject of conversation. Block out distractions.
• Encourage our children’s private religious behavior, such as personal prayer, personal scripture study, and fasting for specific needs.
• Pray daily with our children. President Hinckley also reminded us of the importance of prayer in the home. He said, “Is prayer such a difficult thing? Would it be so hard to encourage fathers and mothers to get on their knees with their little children and address the throne of Deity to express gratitude for blessings, to pray for those in distress as well as for themselves, and then to ask it in the name of the Savior and Redeemer of the world? How mighty a thing is prayer. How tragic the loss for any family that fails to take advantage of this precious and simple practice.
• Read the scriptures together.
• Read the words of the living prophets in Church magazines.
• We can fill our homes with worthy music and we sing together from the hymnbook and the Children’s Songbook.
• Hold family home evening every week.
• Hold family councils to discuss family plans and concerns. Some of the most effective family councils are one on one with each family member. Help our children know their ideas are important. Listen to them and learn from them.
• Invite missionaries to teach less-active or nonmember friends in our homes.
• Use a quiet voice in the home.
• Eat together and have meaningful mealtime conversation..
• Work together as a family, even if it may be faster and easier to do the job ourselves. Talk with our sons and daughters as we work together.
• Help our children learn how to build good friendships and make their friends feel welcome in our homes. Get to know the parents of the friends of our children.
• Teach our children by example how to budget time and resources. Help them learn self-reliance and the importance of preparing for the future.
• Teach our children the history of our ancestors and of our own family history.
• Build family traditions.
Plan and carry out meaningful vacations together. Help them create happy memories, improve their talents, and build their feelings of self-worth.
• By word and example, teach moral values and a commitment to obeying the commandments.
• Teach our children the significance of baptism and confirmation, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, partaking of the sacrament, honoring the priesthood, and making and keeping temple covenants. They need to know the importance of living worthy of a temple recommend and preparing for a temple marriage.
• If you have not yet been sealed in the temple to your spouse or children, work as a family to receive temple blessings. Set temple goals as a family.
• Men, Be worthy of the priesthood and use it to bless the lives of your family.

Fathers and Mothers each have divinely appointed roles and purposes within the family.
President Harold B. Lee said: “If you husbands remember that the most important of the Lord’s work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own home, you can maintain close family ties. … If you will strengthen your family ties and be mindful of your children, be sure that home is made a strong place in which children can come for the anchor they need in this day of trouble and turmoil, then love will abound and your joy will be increased.”
Last year, Sister Beck gave an inpiring talk in conference, entitled, “Women Who Know.” She said, “The responsibility mothers have today has never required more vigilance. More than at any time in the history of the world, we need mothers who know. Children are being born into a world where they “wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).
Mothers Who Know Bear Children
Mothers Who Know Honor Sacred Ordinances and Covenants
Mothers Who Know Are Nurturers
This is their special assignment and role under the plan of happiness.5 To nurture means to cultivate, care for, and make grow. Therefore, mothers who know create a climate for spiritual and temporal growth in their homes. Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world. Working beside children in homemaking tasks creates opportunities to teach and model qualities children should emulate. Nurturing mothers are knowledgeable, but all the education women attain will avail them nothing if they do not have the skill to make a home that creates a climate for spiritual growth. Growth happens best in a “house of order,” and women should pattern their homes after the Lord’s house (see D&C 109). Nurturing requires organization, patience, love, and work. Helping growth occur through nurturing is truly a powerful and influential role bestowed on women.
Mothers Who Know Are Leaders
In partnership with their husbands, mothers plan for missions, temple marriages, and education. They plan for prayer, scripture study, and family home evening. Mothers who know build children into future leaders and are the primary examples of what leaders look like. They do not abandon their plan by succumbing to social pressure and worldly models of parenting. These wise mothers who know are selective about their own activities and involvement to conserve their limited strength in order to maximize their influence where it matters most.
Mothers Who Know Are Teachers
Mothers Who Know Do Less
Mothers who know do less. They permit less of what will not bear good fruit eternally. They allow less media in their homes, less distraction, less activity that draws their children away from their home. Mothers who know are willing to live on less and consume less of the world’s goods in order to spend more time with their children—more time eating together, more time working together, more time reading together, more time talking, laughing, singing, and exemplifying. These mothers choose carefully and do not try to choose it all.
Mothers Who Know Stand Strong and Immovable
They do not give up during difficult and discouraging times

President Hinckley taught:
“We must work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.
“If we fail in our homes, we fail in our lives. … Pray for guidance, for help, for direction, and then follow the whisperings of the Spirit to guide you in the most serious of all responsibilities, for the consequences of your leadership in your home will be eternal and everlasting.”