I Will Be The Strong Link

We had our family home evening lesson on being the strong link in the family chain. We asked all the kids to cut out links that were in the February friend. The older 3 at first chose to hide under blankets until we told them no brownies until they participated! That got them out quick.

Dad with all the kids as they were assembling the chain.

Darin being the only one cutting them out for the moment until brownies were mentioned again.

It was a fun family home evening night. Some of the kids do not have shirts on because it was raining here in Arizona, which does not happen often enough. The kids went out and jumped on the trampoline in the rain until they were freezing, came in took a quick shower and then put on part of their pajamas. Hence, the no shirt look.

Here is part of the story we told : When President Gordon B. Hinckley was a young man, he and his family lived on a farm during the summer. He had this experience there. "There was a dead tree I wished to pull. I fastened one end of a chain to the tractor and the other end to a tree. As the tractor began to move, the tree shook a little, and then the chain broke. I looked at that broken link and wondered how it could have given way. I went to the hardware store and bought a repair link. I put it together again, but it was an awkard and ugly conncection. The chain was never, never the same."

Think of yourself as part of a chain - a family chain. President Hinckley said we should never let ourselves be a weak link in our family chain.

We then took out our family mission statement and read it again to the kids. After it was read, there was some finger pointing and giggling, but they still all agreed to stick to the statement. They have been kinder to each other these past 2 weeks. We have now asked them to help with family chores without so much fighting. As we told them, you guys put this in the statement yourself so we need to live up to it! We shall see how this goes as I must say, I hate all the whining and grumbling that goes on when we ask them to do the dishes, vacuum, etc. Hopefully we will see a small change in attitude. That would be enough for now to make me smile:)