“This Home Evening Has Been Prerecorded”

“Let us oft speak kind words to each other …” The familiar tenor voice filled the living room as I gathered our three small children around the tape recorder. We were having family home evening “with Daddy,” even though he was in the U.S. Air Force thousands of miles away on assignment.

When he had left us at the Phoenix airport on a hot July morning, he had hugged us and admonished us to “take care of each other” while he was gone.

“Easy for you to say,” I thought. I was the one who had to handle three preschoolers on my own for a year. But I had not counted on his devotion to us or on the support he gave me in this task with his weekly taped part for our family home evening.

By letter and transoceanic phone call, we planned together which lessons we would use, and we alternated giving them. His lessons were filled with stories from the scriptures: David and Goliath, the disobedient children of Alma and King Mosiah, Daniel in the lions’ den. Sometimes he would invite the children to listen to the stories during the week and then retell them to him on tape.

He bore his testimony often. “Heavenly Father loves you and watches over you. That story came out of the Book of Mormon; it is a true story because the Book of Mormon is true.” He invited me to bear my testimony. In spite of the miles between us, we were still a team, rearing our children together.

He reinforced the training I was giving the children at home. His messages to them often included, “Obey Mother and your grandparents; they want you to be happy. Mama tells me you are not going to bed quietly. Try to be quiet when it’s bedtime so the baby can sleep.”

Sometimes, on my night for the lesson, he conducted on tape. “Gary, it’s time for prayer. Please turn off the tape recorder and say the prayer. Don’t forget to bless our family to keep close to each other while Daddy is away.” Other times he furnished the music a cappella. We sang along with “Give Said the Little Stream” and “I Am a Child of God.” Occasionally he treated us to a solo; “O Divine Redeemer” was our favorite.

Young children forget easily, and so we wondered if ours would remember their daddy when he came back. But even the baby, by then a year and a half old, remembered him and went to him immediately. The weekly contacts, together with the picture of him that stood on the piano, made him a major part of the children’s lives.

Nearly twenty years have passed since our year-long separation. Our son who was the baby then is now on a mission and can’t remember the long-distance family home evenings. The two older children remember “Daddy talking on the tape and singing songs,” but not much of the content of his messages. Still, the effort was not wasted. The tapes gave me support when I needed it, kept the children in touch with their father, and made them aware of him as our spiritual leader. They have not lost that awareness.

I recently came across some of the lessons recorded on their original three-inch reels and stored in their mailing cartons. I had scribbled “Humility Home Evening” or “Service Makes Us Happy” between the stamps and the APO address. I couldn’t resist playing them.

As I listened, the years fell away, and once again I pictured our young husband and father sitting on his bed in a faraway country, reaching out to us from the depths of his love and faith: “Dearest children, God is near you, Watching o’er you day and night.”—Sandra Skouson, Monticello, Utah