Service

It's amazing to me how willing children are to serve and help others. Today, I was running around the house and a few stores like a chicken without a head in an attempt to get things together before we leave town. Throughout the day Ally would come jumping up to me in excitement and ask, "Mom! What can I do to help you?" I thought about her enthusiasm and I really don't think that I have that same kind of genuine interest in helping people all the time. Children are such a good example of serving. In Alma 30:9 it states, "...if he believed in God it was his privilege to serve him..." When we serve one another we are serving God.

Praying for the prophet

Tonight for family prayer Viana said she didn't like praying because she never knows what to say. So we talked about things we could pray for, Jimmy's lung, Charina's cold, Orion's mission and Pres. Monson. So, in her prayer she said, "Please bless our prophet that he can sleep good tonight, and that he can get smarter, and that he will stay healthy." I can't be positive, but I think the reason she prayed for him to get smarter is because we are always telling her that Jesus is the smartest person and that he knows everything, and she knows the prophet is his mouthpiece, so naturally she would want a smarter prophet. And I am quite certain that with the faith of this little child, Pres. Monson will have a fine night of slumber.

Missionary Work

Today while sitting in sacrament meeting, Ally was flipping through our Sacrament ABC's book and telling LaDon about each letter. She came to the M page. On that page there is a picture of a companionship of elders and a brief description about missionaries and the role they play in the Gospel. Ally turned to LaDon and said, "It's the missionaries. They come to my house to eat dinner!" I quietly giggled then asked her, "Do you know what else they do?" "They eat dinner!" "Actually, they teach people about Jesus Christ."

So....Ally didn't really know what missionaries are exactly, but she did recognize that they come to our house to have dinner. So, I think she probably knows that missionaries are young men and women that we are to support temporally, in some ways. More importantly, we are to support them by finding people for them to teach. Hopefully, our family will get better at having friends for the missionaries to teach so that Ally and Daniel will be able to say, "They teach people the gospel" vs. "They eat dinner!" Either way, we like having the missionaries around.

Prayer

Every morning, we say a prayer at breakfast. And every morning I have to remind Ally and Daniel to fold their arms. Daniel, well, he really doesn't like praying except for saying "amen" right now. Ally, will fold her arms when asked. This morning as we sat down to breakfast, Ally said, "Look mom! I'm foldin' my arms. We gotta pray. It's your turn!"

Knowledge/Learning

Ally is in a Joy School group and this week it is my turn to teach. It's a 3 hour long school session with 5 3-year olds. Going into it I didn't think there was going to be any way that they would all sit still and pay attention to several 10 minutes discussions about keeping our world clean or learning a few new songs. However, as we sat down and I started teaching them, they all were quiet and attentive! Shock to me! Not only that, but they would raise their hands and give great comments and input. Just sitting with these little kids today made me realize how important it is to "seek after truth" and "thirst for knowledge." And as we gain knowledge we become more like Heavenly Father (Isaiah 46:9-10, Act 15:18, 2 Nephi 9:20). Little children really are the example we need to follow.

Belief

Tonight Viana came in and told me that our neighbor boy was having a halloween party and that they needed to wear costumes. I asked her when and she said, "Right now!" It seemed a little suspicious and I didn't know if it was true or not, but even after my further questioning she insisted that there was a party. So I walked over to the neighbors house to find out. There was no parental organized party. But the little boy had imagined up such a great idea and Viana absolutely believed him. I'm not trying to say we blindly need to believe everything we're told, but I think there is something beautiful about the way children are so trusting and believing. It doesn't take much to convince them of goodness.

Music and Sacrament

During the sacrament today Viana was quitely singing to herself songs from the hymn book. I looked at her and she said, "I am singing these songs so I can feel the spirit." With 4 kids it can be hard to remember the purpose of the sacrament and focusing can be hard. It is nice to have one of those kids setting an example and helping me out.

Agency

“Thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee” (Moses 3:17). As Brooke recently taught in FHE and as I taught in my gospel essential class, agency is an eternal principle. We are here on this earth because we wanted to have the freedom to choose that the plan of salvation provided for us. I was cutting CharlyAnn's fingernails today, and she did not like it one bit, nor have any of my other children. Was she previously doing something else with her hands? No. Did it hurt? No. Did it take away her agency? Yes. Isn't that interesting how simply in-born we are with our desire to keep that agency that we had in our premortal life.

Submission

I've been noticing little Ram lately. As we try to teach him things that are right and lead him in the way of goodness he eagerly tries to please us. Anytime he does make a bad choice and he gets in trouble he gets so intensely sad. More so than just, "I'm sad because I can't play since I'm in time-out," but a real sorrow and ache that he has disappointed us. And when we do put him in time-out he truly is "willing to submit to all things...even as a child doth submit to his father." (Mosiah 3:19) Yesterday at dinner he was spilling his milk everywhere and all Eric said was "Ram" with a stern instructive tone and Ram just broke down in tears of such sorrow and submission. If I am always trying to obey my Heavenly Father and then show true godly-sorrow when I make bad choices then I am on the right path.

Book of Mormon, Family Home Evening

Since we were traveling on Saturday, we missed both AM and PM sessions of General Conference. So, for family night we decided we would listen to a talk. We started with Elder Richard G. Scott's talk. He spoke about the scriptures and the love he has for them and the strengthening of testimony he gets from them. Daniel and Ally, of course, were kind of wiggly and didn't seem to pay much attention to what was being said. In fact, they both got up and wandered around at one point. I started having one of those, "why do we even try" moments. After Elder Scott finished, LaDon asked Ally, "Do you know what Elder Scott talked about?" and to my utter surprise and joy she quickly responded, "The Book of Mormon!" So....although FHE is a struggle sometimes, it really is important and our kids are learning.

Prophets

As a re-cap to General Conference we asked each family member to share something they learned at family prayer last night. Earlier in the day Viana had sat and listened to President Monson speak and she giggled and laughed at his story right along with the audience. So when it was her turn to answer she said, "I learned that our prophet is silly!" Admittedly I had been hoping for something like, 'God loves me' or 'I can have my prayers answered', but isn't this a much better answer? For Viana to feel like she has a personal connection with the prophet I hope will lead her to be more obedient to his teachings (when she does start to internalize them more). Because she understands his nature she will be able to learn from him sooner.

Millennium, Second Coming

The blog has suffered this week since CJ and I were together. It was fun to visit though!

Tonight as we were finishing up our family scripture study, I started to explain to the kids that the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon were told to tell people about Jesus Christ and what they had seen. I went on to tell them that we get to live in a special time where we are supposed to tell everybody about Jesus. Ally then said, "Jesus is going to come back!" I was a little surprised at that one, but she's right! He will come back to the earth! She then followed up her first statement with, "We get to live with him again." And, she was right again. We do get to live with him (assuming we choose to live a righteous life and all that that entails). I love the complete faith of my little 3-year old. She has no question that we will live with him again.