One Lesson That Changed Our Family Home Evenings

Francis O. and Ada U. Nmeribe, Abuja, Nigeria

We have three young children, ages five, three, and one. Initially our family home evenings were disasters. The children would disruptively keep the attention on themselves. My wife and I felt almost defeated.

Then one Monday night, my wife taught about Samuel the Lamanite using flannel-board pictures as visuals. We all took turns posting the pictures on the board to correspond with the characters in the account as they were mentioned. The children enjoyed the activity so much that we had our first peaceful and Spirit-filled family home evening in many months.

This lesson revolutionized our family home evenings. We began preparing more interactive lessons, and the children volunteered to do all sorts of things to make family home evening work. We also began devoting more time to planning our family home evenings. We made sure that no two home evenings had the same agenda. The variety of activities helped to keep our children’s interest.

It has taken deliberate efforts on our part to institute and sustain these elements in our family home evenings. But our children now anticipate family home evening and participate in more constructive ways.