Family Home Evening Idea: Practicing Reverence

Well last week I wrote about wanting to be more prepared and intentional with our Family Home Evenings and last week we did it! Yea! It was all about being reverent. We have been having some troubles lately with reverence in sacrament meetings all together but I was specifically worried about behavior and irreverence during the actual sacrament. It was starting to really not look pretty. Our family prayers were reaching a similar state and thus my idea to hold an FHE on the topic.

We started out singing "Reverence is Love" from the Children's Song Book and then I asked my three year old what it meant to be reverent and he said, "to be quiet". We then talked about how we should be quiet and sit nicely but we also should think about Jesus and other good things.

We talked about how we should be very reverent while we pray and I asked him to show us how to be reverent during a prayer. He demonstrated perfectly. Because of recent happenings I was almost starting to believe that he didn't know how to anymore but he knelt down, folded his arms, bowed his head, and closed his eyes. We praised the perfect demonstration and talked about how we needed to try to do this whenever we are praying.

Then came a real practice. We talked about how we needed to be much better at being reverent during the Sacrament. I had gathered all of the things that I like to allow our children to look at during the actual sacrament (we try to wait on snacks, coloring, etc) like gospel art books, hymn book, children's books like "Noah's Ark" and "I'm Trying to be Like Jesus",small family picture books, etc. We all sat on the couch and pretended like it was the pew at church. I told them that we could only whisper and we were not allowed to get off the couch and play on the floor. We set a timer for 10 minutes and practiced what our behavior should be like during the sacrament. It went awesome for both our almost 4 year old and our 15 month old. We cheered their behavior on and I challenged our little boy to try to do the same on the coming Sunday which was today.

Let's just say I was a proud Momma and you bet I let me son know that! They both did awesome, better than I have seen in a long time. And to top it all off between Sunday School and Relief Society I had one of the primary leaders come up to me and say that my son was so cute and had done an awesome job in Sharing Time (he just barely became a Sunbeam and I have been worried about this) and get this, she said that he was so reverent. I mean really what better words could a Mom hear who just tried to teach that very principle. It was a good and reverent day at Church today and I hope that we can continue on our intentional, purposeful Family Home Evenings. I just had to grin this afternoon as I heard my honey and my little guy planning their lesson for tomorrow. We're off to a good start.