9 September 2016

The topic I was asked to speak on was the sacredness of marriage and family.  I'm not sure this will be what they had in mind.  Thank you!  Love you!  Mama

Our Ward bishopric shows us by example how important their marriages and families are to them. On at least three different occasions recently, one or another of them will be conducting our Sacrament meeting and say something like, "We want to excuse" Brother Johnson, or Brother Cardon, or Bishop Hunter, "he is spending time with his family." or "he and his wife are having a much needed weekend alone." I appreciate their example and I am grateful that they support each other in this way.

I have also often heard them make comments about how much they love "noisy sacrament meetings." And they mean it, sincerely! To them, the "sounds of family," as Brother Burke Hanks puts it, are wonderful. Sometimes families are noisy; sometimes families are contentious; sometimes families are stressful; sometimes families are funny; sometimes families can seem perfect...other times, not so much! President Henry B. Eyring stated: "Life in families will test us. That is one of God's purposes in giving us the gift of mortality- to strengthen us by passing through tests. That will be especially true in family life, where we will find great joy and great sorrow and challenges which may at times seem beyond our power to endure..." (Ensign Nov 2013 pg 71)

There are many family relationships which we read about in the scriptures...some might seem perfect...others sound as imperfect as some we know of in our own lives.  I'd like to read the names of some scriptural families and have you see what impressions they bring to your minds of what kind of family relationships they had:

Mary's husband, Joseph, and the boy,Jesus Christ

Ruth and Naomi

Lehi, Sariah and their sons Laman, Lemuel, Sam and Nephi

Jacob's son Joseph, and his eleven brothers

Alma and Alma the younger

Adam, Eve and their sons Abel and Cain

Joseph Smith and his older brother, Hyrum

David and Solomon

The 2000 stripling warriors and their mothers

Mary and Martha

It is interesting isn't it, the feelings we get just hearing their names. We know that they all had struggles and that many of them had loving relationships, but not necessarily peaceful or carefree lives. They were very much like each of us.

Family relationships are not perfect, but they are connections which we must protect, defend and hold sacred. From The Family: A Proclamation to the World, we read: "Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities."  (The Family: A Proclamation to the World, 1995) 

In each of our families we need these principles...some days more than others! Let's review each of these nine principles listed in the Proclamation.  Faith- In this past April Conference, President Monson said "May we choose to build up within ourselves a great and powerful faith which will be our most effective defense against the designs of the adversary...a real faith, the kind of faith which will sustain us and will bolster our desire to choose the right." (Ensign, May 2016 pg 86) Prayer- In a recent lesson from the teachings of President Howard W. Hunter, we read " Pray as families both night and morning. What great blessings come into the lives of children who hear their parents petition the Lord for their welfare." (Teachings of President Howard W. Hunter, pg 226) Repentance-President Boyd K. Packer made this statement, "...with sincere repentance the effects of our transgression can be erased through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. That promise applies in every case." (Ensign Nov 2013 pg 28) Forgiveness- Elder Timothy J. Dyches, of the Seventy told of Corrie ten Boom, a survivor of the concentration camps in WWII. Many years later she was speaking, sharing a message about Christ and the love and forgiveness he offers each of us, when a former Nazi guard approached her. He expressed his gratitude for her message. The man didn't recognize Corrie, but she remembered him from one of the camps. He held out his hand to shake hers, and she struggled within herself to forgive him. In a silent prayer she asked, "Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness." Shaking this mans hand was a powerful experience for her, and she learned "that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself." (Ensign Nov 2013 pg 39) Respect- In our families let us follow the advice of President Thomas S. Monson when he said, "Let us speak to others with love and respect, ever keeping our language clean and avoiding words or comments that would wound or offend." (October Conference 2015) Love- In the last General Women's conference, Sister Esplin stated, "When children learn how to love and serve others when they are young, they set a pattern of service for the rest of their lives." She also quoted one woman who had a heavy burden in caring for her invalid husband, she said: "Don't think of your task as a burden; think of it as an opportunity to learn what love really is." (Ensign May 2016 pgs 6-7) Compassion- We all seek to follow the example of the Good Samaritan, and the compassion he showed to a stranger; let us use this same compassion in our own homes, with our own families. As President Howard W. Hunter said, "Surely that home is strongest and most beautiful in which we find each person sensitive to the feelings of others, striving to serve others, striving to live at home the principles we demonstrate in more public settings." (Teachings of President Howard W. Hunter, pg 225) Work- Let our children learn to work by watching us...whether it be Temple work or yard work, homework or family history work. And lastly, Wholesome recreational activities- Also from that recent lesson on the teachings of President Howard W. Hunter, he told of how their family had set aside one night a week for family time; they did this years before the Church set aside Monday's as Family Home Evening. On this night they studied the gospel, told stories, played games, and went places together.

There is a song that was sung by Randy Travis a few years back, it's called "He Walked On Water." In it a man reminisces about when he was a little boy and the time he spent with his great-grandfather. They would laugh and play together, the great-grandfather would tell the little boy stories of when he was young. One of the line says "And he was ninety years old in sixty-three, And I loved him and he loved me, And (how) I cried the day he died, Cause I thought that he walked on water."  In another line he says: "And my Mama's Daddy was his oldest son..."  (He Walked On Water, by Allen Shamblin, 1990), I love that line, because it makes me think of the connections in my own family. If I put myself in that line and say "And my Mama's Daddy was his (second) son" this brings me to my great-grandfather Templin who was killed by lightening when my grandfather was only three years old. There are many other family members who I didn't have the chance to know in this life. One especially is Len's Grandpa Christensen, Fern's father. He passed away while Len was on his mission, and I didn't know their family then. But I have always felt that I missed out by not knowing him.

 

The second verse of one of my favorite Primary songs goes like this: You read me a book. You sing me a song. You whisper you love me too. I wish ev'ry child in the whole wide world had a grandmother just like you. (Children's Songbook, Nonie Nelson Sorensen, 1989) Don't we each hope that we are that kind of grandmother, grandfather, aunt or uncle? And don't we wish that every child in the whole wide world had someone like that in their lives? I feel so blessed that we are able to see our grandkids as often as we do and to be able to read books to them, sing songs to them and let them know how very much we love them. With the closest living in Boise, and the farthest away in Apple Valley, Minnesota, it is still not as often as I would like, but how fortunate I feel that we live in this day and time, with the ease of transportation and communication that we have. In the last few years I've been writing an (almost) weekly email to our kids and grandkids. I started doing this because I found that I might tell Aimee or Heidi about some important thing, three times, but Ben, or Sam, or Dixie might never hear about it at all. This way everyone stays in the loop. And if I print the emails and put them in a binder, I'm also writing our family history.

One day, just a few years ago, I was going through a box full of old pictures and I found one I had never seen before. It was of my two grandmothers; they are standing out in a yard, both wearing aprons, as if we were having a family get together. According to the date, this picture was taken when I was about 2 months old. A picture like this might not seem odd to you, but to me it was a sweet and exciting revelation. As I was growing up I so seldom got to see my grandmothers...and I don't remember ever seeing them together.  Grandmama, my mother's mother, lived in Tennessee during all the time I knew her, and my father's mother, Nana, lived in West Virginia. By the time I was old enough to remember, Nana was bed-fast, and almost completely deaf. I don't remember ever being able to have a real conversation with her. When I was just 4 years old, our family left Tennessee and moved to Idaho, so the only times I got to see my grandparents was when we would drive back there about every other year. It was a long trip by car; we would spend a few days in Tennessee and a few days in West Virginia. I'm so grateful that my parents went to all the effort to get us back there as often as they were able to. Obviously, I knew that my grandmothers knew each other, but this picture of them together, seeming like two good friends touched me so much!  So after I found that picture, I set a goal to get pictures taken of myself with each of the other grandmothers our 16 grandchildren have. There is Kathy in Montana, Sharon in Boise, Nan in Oregon; Karen, Pam and Marg are all three in the Denver area. Nan is the only one I haven't gotten a picture with yet. My hope is that years from now, when they see these pictures of their two grandmothers, our grandkids will know that we both loved them and that we were friends. 

I would like to bear my testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'd like to express my gratitude for the blessing of my family...our Dad's who are both missed so much, our mother's, who we are so happy to have living nearby, my grandparents, my two sisters, who are not just sisters...they are my friends, my three brothers and their families, my dear husband, our sweet children and their spouses...and those grandchildren! I am grateful for the blessings of the Temple in our lives. I am grateful for Family Home Evening, family prayer and scripture study, and that even though doing these things was almost always struggle and sometimes seemed useless, they have brought blessings years and years later when those same children are raising children of their own.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.