Duty to God with Dad

By Paul VanDenBerghe

Church Magazines

After learning about the new Duty to God booklet in a special fireside last year, Aleks Miller—deacons quorum president of the North Shore Ward, Vancouver British Columbia Stake—was eager to get started. He and his father set up a schedule to meet each Sunday to work on a section of the booklet together.

“My dad and I, every week, sit down and look through a section of the book,” says Aleks. “We start with a prayer and then we study a section. We read the scriptures, answer the questions in the section, and then write down how we can implement what we’ve learned into our lives.”

Aleks often shares with his mother what he and his father are working on. “I talked with my mom about the sacrament and the meaning of the prayers and wrote down some ideas about how I as a deacon could help make the sacrament more meaningful for her,” he says.

After only a few weeks of these Duty-to-God-with-Dad meetings, Aleks noticed it was making a difference in his life. “It makes me feel really good,” he says. Sitting down with his father is not always the first thing Aleks wants to do on a Sunday afternoon, “but when we start learning and reading together I’m a lot happier and I feel better about doing it,” he says.

Aleks has set new goals and is gaining a greater understanding of the gospel as he studies and learns with his father. “One of the sections in Duty to God suggested we study a few topics in For the Strength of Youth and then write down a goal for each one so that we can do better,” explains Aleks. “I chose honesty. So one of my goals was to let my parents know when I do something wrong instead of just keeping it to myself.”

Another topic Aleks chose was education. “My goal was to go an entire month in school with no messing around in class and finishing all my work so I wouldn’t have any homework,” he says. “It’s going pretty well, and now I have a lot of extra time.”

Now Aleks is encouraging all the deacons in his quorum to work on fulfilling their Duty to God. And he offers the same advice to anyone else who is thinking about opening the booklet and getting down to work: “Just do it,” he says. “If you can’t seem to get started on your own, do like I do, and ask your dad to do it with you.”

Aleks Miller and his father, Chris, work together on Duty to God every Sunday.