We have been lousy at keeping up with family home evening since Chloe was born. Basically, I didn’t plan it, and I didn’t call everyone together, and so therefore there was no family home evening. (I hate feeling like if I don’t do something it NEVER gets done, because everything is planned and done by ME). SO when I was sitting in relief society today, and the lesson was on a talk from General Conference last April titled, ‘Sacred Homes, Sacred Temples’ a thought came to my mind, that I need to make my home like a temple, and I needed to TEACH my kids about the differences between our home, and our temple and we needed to talk about HOW we can make our home more like the temple. Thus the idea for this family home evening was born.
We started on our porch talking temples, and our house, and then we took a tour of the house. We went from room to room pointing our what we saw (there was LOTS), and then we came to the living room to watch a little bit of “Mountain of the Lord” I showed them the clip where they are showing the inside of the Salt Lake temple before it was dedicated. As we were looking at the inside of the temple, I would ask:
- Is there laundry on the floor, or on the chairs?
- Do you see toys all over the place?
- Is there trash on the floor?
- Do you jump off the furniture in the temple?
- It this room messy?
I’m sure I asked other questions too but you get the idea. I ended by telling the kids how nice it feels to be in the temple, everything is calm and peaceful, and I want to feel that way when I’m at home too.