Nurturing Families Together
Prayerfully study this material and
seek to know what to share. How will understanding “The Family: A Proclamation
to the World” increase your faith in God and bless those you watch over through
visiting teaching?
A “husband and wife have a solemn
responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children.”1
“The home is to be God’s laboratory of love and service,” said President Russell M. Nelson, President of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles.
“Our Heavenly Father wants husbands and
wives to be faithful to each other and to esteem and treat their children as an
heritage from the Lord.”2
In the Book of
Mormon,
Jacob said that the love that husbands had for their wives, the love that wives
had for their husbands, and the love that both had for their children was among
the reasons the Lamanites were at one point more righteous than the Nephites
(see Jacob 3:7).
One of the best ways to invite love and
harmony into our homes is by speaking kindly to our family
members. Speaking kindly brings the Holy Ghost.
Sister Linda K. Burton, Relief Society general president, asked us to
consider: “How often do we intentionally ‘speak kind words to each other’?”3
Additional
Scriptures
Living
Stories
Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
shared a childhood experience that impressed upon him the importance of a
loving family. When he and his brothers were boys, their mother had radical
cancer surgery that made it very painful for her to use her right arm. With a
family of boys, there was a lot of ironing, but as his mother ironed, she often
stopped and went into the bedroom to cry until the pain subsided.
When Elder Christofferson’s father
realized what was happening, he secretly went without lunches for almost a year
to save enough money to buy a machine that made ironing easier. Out of his love
for his wife, he set an example of nurturing within families for his boys. Of
this tender interaction, Elder Christofferson said, “I was not aware of my
father’s sacrifice and act of love for my mother at the time, but now that I
know, I say to myself, ‘There is a man.’”4
Consider
This
How does loving and caring for one
another invite the Spirit into our home.
Note
“The
Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Liahona, Nov. 2010, 129.
Russell M.
Nelson, “Salvation and Exaltation,” Liahona, May 2008, 8.
Linda K.
Burton, “We’ll Ascend Together,” Liahona, May 2015, 31.
D. Todd
Christofferson, “Let Us Be Men,” Liahona, Nov. 2006, 46.
