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The day after BYU finals ended, our entire family sat down for a family counsel. We try to have one every Sunday afternoon, but this extra meeting was called to get us jump started on a good summer.
One of the things we discussed was the desire to have good habits through the summer. Rather then let it be a time of sleeping in, general laziness, amid a frantic vacation or two and some summer camps, we'd like it to be a time of fun and continued positive progress.
One of the most important things for us will be to keep up good habits of family night, family prayer, and family scriptures study.
Music
Hymns
- Be Thou Humble (#130)
- I Need Thee Every Hour (#98)
Primary Songs
- I Feel My Savior's Love (#74)
- Search, Ponder, and Pray (#109)
Scripture
Lesson
Watch this video clip together.
Discussion
- What kinds of patterns or habits can help our bodies? (healthy food, enough sleep, exercise, etc.)
- What kinds of patterns or habits can help our spirits? (scripture reading, prayer, obedience, church and temple attendance, service, etc.)
- How can we help each other have better spiritual habits?
D. Todd Christofferson
We ought not to think we can go weeks and months without spiritual sustenance and not suffer and not have a deadening influence in our spiritual life. Acknowledging the reality of our need for a daily spiritual ministration of manna helps us increase in our courage to do the right thing and to serve others…more than we would have if we ignored God.
What spiritual habits have made the most difference in your family?
Alison Moore Smith is a 60-year-old entrepreneur, who graduated from BYU in 1987. She has been (very happily) married to Samuel M. Smith for 39 years. They are parents of six incredible children and grandparents to two astounding grandsons.
My kids have worked extremely hard both in high school and college to be successful. When summertime came, they were completely spent, exhausted mentally. To recover their mental strength, they didn’t do much other than sleep and relax, lay around, hang with friends, etc. I found nothing wrong with that. So I’m not sure why you equate that with a spiritual issue. They still went to church, read scriptures, etc. but that takes only a fraction of a day’s time. Some of them chose to work to get some extra spending money. Others just wanted to chill and restore their energy in preparation for the upcoming fall semester challenge.
Maybe someday they will make the school system like a normal working schedule rather than months off in the summer. Until then, it seems to me that sleeping in and being lazy during the summer are the rewards of hard work during the school term.
“we’d like it to be a time of fun and continued positive progress”
thanks for sharing this! I love the FHE ideas. I have had the same concern for our summers. Occasionally rest/recharge is great, but a steady diet of this doesn’t help us to progress. I want to feel like, at the end of the summer, we are better people than we were at the beginning.
Loved this! It’s always great to get new FHE ideas.
We can totally feel the difference when we miss a week of church or temple attendance! One thing that’s become a tradition in our house is (almost) daily scripture study with our little boys. We watch a Book of Mormon Stories video on our iPad, then read a scripture verse from the video, then discuss a principle we learned. Then we sing the “Scripture Power” song, our oldest says a prayer and they go to bed. It’s amazing the insights our 5 year old comes up with, and we’ve had some really amazing conversations that way. It’s really blessed our family!
Keep up the awesome bloggery! =)
Brittany