FHE Lesson: Gospel Principles--Our Heavenly Father

Lesson 1 of the Gospel Principles manual is called, "Our Heavenly Father". The original lesson can be found online, here.

We are going to be using this manual for our FHE lessons this year. With few exceptions, all of the lessons are short and they are easy to adapt to your individual needs.

I like the fact that each lesson is about a basic Gospel principle: Our Heavenly Family, Scriptures, Prayer, Prophets, Priesthood, etc.
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I planned to go through the lesson and ask the main questions. I asked the first one: "How do you know that we have a Heavenly Father?"

My children then directed the rest of the lesson from there. We ended up with a great question/answer discussion about Heavenly Father and about the creation. I was able to use several of the scriptures the lesson suggested to guide some of our discussion, even if I didn't use the entire lesson as I had planned to do. There were also several questions posed that we did not have answers to, but that experience is a fantastic opportunity to talk about faith and how we don't always have answers, but we trust Heavenly Father.

It turned into one of the best lessons we've had in a long time. It was also a special time to see what our children are learning and remembering and, more importantly, what spiritual things they are wondering about.

We closed by talking about the things we could do to come to know Heavenly Father better and we resolved to be better at family prayer and family scriptures.

General Conference Activity Ideas, April 2010

It's that time again. LDS General Conference is April 3rd and 4th this year. Here is my updated list of possible activities and activity pages for you to check out. All links have been verified.

Many links are from 2008 or earlier, but are still available. All links new, new to me, or updated for October are marked with an asterisk*. Any additions or updates after today are marked with a double asterisk**. If you have new sites to offer, please let me know. Many of these are lists or multiple pages and you can click through them to assemble a packet or set of activities perfect for your children.

**Preschool activity packet from Sharing Ideas is Fun to Do
**Conference Activities from lds.org
**Easter-related Conference activities at A Little Tipsy
*April 2010 Conference Packet from Sugardoodle (includes separate Junior and Senior primary packets as well as a Youth one)
*April 2010 Conference Packet from Magnify = Simplify
*Activity pages from The Friend
*Apostle cards from Sugardoodle
*LDS Word Search puzzles from LDS Resources
*Conference Baskets as gifts
*Assorted ideas from Mormon Share
*Assorted ideas from Chocolate on My Cranium
*10 Ideas for a meaningful conference for children from Mormon Times
Multiple General Conference Printables from Visiting Teaching
October 2009 Conference Packet from Sugardoodle
Additional overall conference activity list from Sugardoodle
Multiple Activity Pages from The Idea Door, including one for youth
General activity ideas from Suite101
Apostle Naming Game from Suite101--good for toddlers who might like matching-type games
Assorted activities at Mommy Chic
Activity packet from Deseret Book
Terrific overall conference activity list from Sugardoodle
April 2009 Conference Packet from Melanie Day at Sugardoodle (including Spanish)
April 2009 Conference Packet (I don't know the original source to whom I should give credit)
April 2009 Conference Packet from Tara on Sugardoodle
Making Conference Memorable
General Conference Baskets
Conference Bingo from The Friend
Lots of various links from About.com (lots of fun printable packets)
Activity pages from Pratt's FHE Idea Box
General Conference Coloring Book from Sugardoodle
Lots of LDS Coloring Pages
Coloring pages from The Friend magazine
Some general ideas for General Conference
YW Conference Worksheet (from 2008)
Ideas to prepare for General Conference
Staying awake during General Conference
Ideas for Conference Weekend at Hugs and Giggles

As always, thanks to those who actually do the work and put these packets and pages together. I have the easy job of simply compiling them.

Have fun! If this information has been helpful, please leave me a comment and let me know.

Tradition: General Conference is Special

One thing we have tried to do in our family is to make General Conference weekend special. We talk about conference in the weeks leading up to it. We treat these particular Saturdays and Sundays as different. It's not time off from church. We've tried to instill to our boys the importance of listening to our prophet and church leaders: if we believe that we have a prophet on this earth, and he speaks to us twice a year, why wouldn't we make it a priority to listen when he speaks? This is something that is important to our family.

We have a special breakfast tradition each morning. We don't answer the phone during conference. We have special activities. We spend the weekend as a family and we listen to the prophet. Even when the boys were toddlers and couldn't understand or sit still (and usually ended up in another room playing), we did this. If we can avoid it, we don't plan outside activities that will interfere with our watching conference. This fall, my husband and older son will begin the special tradition of attending the priesthood session together.

Obviously life happens. My husband must sometimes see patients on Saturday mornings. It's not his choice, but it happens. As our boys get older and get involved in sports or other activities, things could happen to interfere with our Saturday tradition, and force us to make decisions, but I hope not.

Lest anyone think that our General Conference weekends are one long spiritual event, you need to know that we have two active, young boys. As much as I would love them to sit through 8 hours of conference and have momentous spiritual experiences, they don't. I don't, for that matter. But, I take a lot of comfort from Elder Bednar's talk in October, 2009 and I hope for consistency. I hope that our boys will remember that we made watching General Conference a priority in our home, and from that experience, they will learn to love it and look forward to it like we do.

Tradition: Special General Conference Breakfast

Much like we have a special breakfast on Christmas morning, we do the same thing each morning before General Conference. For us, I make homemade muffins or sometimes monkey bread, which is something our family loves, but doesn't have on a regular basis. You could do cinnamon rolls or a special breakfast casserole. Just do whatever works for your family.

Our weekday breakfasts usually include frozen waffles or cereal, not muffins, and certainly not monkey bread, so doing this just sets off the day a little differently.

Some of my favorite muffin recipes can be found on my cooking blog, if you're interested.