The Best Night of the Week

Over at Women in the Scriptures, Heather has been running  a series about what Family Home Evening looks like in different families. She has had guest posts from several different ladies, and I have really enjoyed reading them. As a conclusion to her series, she has invited her readers to write about family home evening in their home, and link up on her blog.

Family Home Evening for us is a time for us to be together, sing (we are a very musical family) and talk about the gospel. Our oldest just started Primary this year, so we’ve been trying to rehash some of the things he is learning there.

Structure. Our Family Home Evening is on Monday nights, usually after dinner. Our Papai welcomes everybody to Family Home Evening “Bem vindo ao Noite de Familiar.” This is when you’ll notice that there is something different about our Family Home Evening. We have FHE in Portuguese. Papai speaks Portuguese in our home, and our kids speak Portuguese, and we attend a Portuguese speaking ward. We even sing the Primary songs in Portuguese. If I teach the lesson, I usually teach in English, since my Portuguese isn’t great – but sometimes I’ll try to say phrases or words in Portuguese.

Papai welcomes us to family home evening, then we sing an opening song (usually from the Primary song book, and usually the song that we are learning that month in Primary – I happen to be the Primary pianist, so I always know what’s going on in Primary). Then we have an opening prayer. Then either Papai or myself give the lesson. So far Papai and I have just switched off giving (really simple) lessons. They are either from the Nursery Manual, or the Sharing Time Outline. A lot of times we will try to do the same lesson that was taught the day before in Primary, just to solidify the doctrine and concepts for our oldest. Other times, we’ll just talk about something that we think is important. Before General Conference, we talked about how the Prophets speak for Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Then we played the Prophet Matching Game (see picture above) and now our oldest knows a lot of the apostles and prophets when he sees them. I think knowing their names made General Conference a lot more meaningful for him, because he already knew them.

After the lesson, we sometimes have an activity, usually it is coloring something, or sometimes it will be playing a game, or playing with toys. Then we have scriptures and family prayer, and then it is off to bed for our little ones.

Tonight for FHE we are actually making a Family Home Evening chart (since our oldest is 4 and we hope to be adding to our family soon through adopting teens, we figured it is about time we have one). So basically our whole FHE is going to change, but not the important things.

 

Our youngest is just two, and she doesn’t sit still for really anything. Our oldest is four and he is actually very respectful and even adds to the conversation. Some days are better than others, but we try to always have Family Home Evening, even if it’s only two minutes long!

What does Family Home Evening look like in YOUR home? Go over to Heather’s blog and link up!