I have a granddaughter who is getting married this Saturday in the Boise temple.  She cannot remember anything.  Her finance is in Rexburg working.  They are so fun when they are together or apart they are delightful to watch. 
 
Do you remember when you were there?  If you have forgotten just watch Hallmark they are all feel-good movies. 
 
She is constantly texting him or talking to him on the phone.  Everything is about her. 
 
When you are growing up what is life about?  It’s about you!  It’s about how you feel.  Then you meet someone who you think feels ‘all about you’.  You want someone who has you as number one.  When you are dating or engaged that is not a problem.  The problem is that you can do nothing else in life. 
 
You don’t become an adult and get married you get married and they become adults together.
 
We go into marriage with those feelings.  There is a high intensity. 
 
HOMEWORK:  Lynn Robbins “Agency and Love in Marriage”  or “Love is a Choice” (book)
 
“It is almost humorous to observe a young unmarried couple in love. After spending an entire day together, they are back together again on the phone that same night. It’s sheer torture for them to be separated. Even in their thoughts they can hardly focus on anything else. Love begins to disrupt their studies or work. Everything else in life becomes a nuisance and an interruption that keeps them apart until they can be together again. In their minds there was never, in the history of the world, a truer love than theirs. We call this level of premarriage intensity “infatuation.”
 
What happens then?  About 5 years in when your first inventory of what it’s like to be married.  You probably have a couple of kids, you are out of school.  About that time you look at marriage and say, “This is not what I thought this was going to be.”  We do a poor job as parents of teaching children the reality of what marriage is.  We teach them to be worthy and get married in the temple. 
 
It’s not the Cinderella Syndrome after you are married.  Most of us got married not expecting that.  Our feelings in our heart were, “My marriage will not be like my parents.”  Most are saying we are going to do this different. 
 
Most of you that have been married for at least 5 years are not wanting a divorce.  The relationship in the marriage has become stagnant.  It’s comfortable and you are there, but it doesn’t light any fires in you.  It’s just there. 
 
When you hit 10 years….that’s when we start getting some problems. 
 
Alma 32 (This is the Parable of Marriage)
 37 And behold, as the tree beginneth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.
 38 But if ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.
 39 Now, this is not because the seed was not good, neither is it because the fruit thereof would not be desirable; but it is because your ground is barren, and ye will not nourish the tree, therefore ye cannot have the fruit thereof.
 40 And thus, if ye will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the tree of life.
 41 But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.
 
Change the words

• Tree=Marriage
• Heat of the sun=family life, teenagers, busy-ness, car won’t work….real life
• Ground=heart
• Fruit=love

 
It takes no effort right then at the beginning. 
 
“IF” ye nourish it with much care.  That is the key.  You are doing something and if you do it with much care you have real intent.  You are focused on it.  It takes thought.  It takes effort.  It takes sacrifice. 
 
“IF ye neglect the marriage”…from day to day you aren’t thinking about your marriage.  You are thinking about your church calling, the house, kids, laundry, bills, dinner….but never in your mind does it become…what can I do for my spouse.  You are actively involved in logistics.  It has passed from your heart to your head.  It is because of busy-ness.
 
Nourishment is to ‘focus’ on building the relationship. 
 
“You pluck it up and cast it out”---That means you become emotionally disengaged in building the relationship.  It’s almost an emotional divorce.  There is no more connection.  You become roommates passing in the night.  There are many empty nesters that are getting divorced because they haven’t built the relationship along the way. 
 
The key is consistency.  You have to do this all the time.  Satan is 100% aware of marriage and hates it.  He is 100% anxiously engaged. 
 
David A Bednar “Marriage is Essential  To His Eternal Plan”
“The adversary’s attacks upon eternal marriage will continue to increase in intensity, frequency, and sophistication.”
 
“After they marry, this intensity tapers off. Living under the same roof, they each begin to discover a few peculiar idiosyncracies in the other that they had not seen before. Some of these are irritating. The infatuation begins to fade. Those who have confused infatuation for love begin to worry and wonder if they are falling out of love. “Where is that level of passion, the fire I had during courtship?” they may ask themselves. Their relationship is passing through a common stage and is at an important crossroad. If they believe they have fallen out of love, they may begin to drift apart.” (Lynn Robbins)
 
It’s the 80/20.  80% is good so you focus on that until after they are married.  Then after marriage you focus on the 20% to try to make them better.
 
 “People think marriages end with an affair or something equally explosive,” says John Gottman, author of Why Marriages Succeed or Fail.  “In fact, most end gradually, sliding down a slope of complaint, criticism, defensiveness and withdrawal until it’s difficult to scramble back up.  Yet there are usually early warnings that the relationship could be headed for trouble.”
 
Most marriages just ‘slide’ out of love.
 
People don’t fall out of love.  You don’t fall out of kindness.  You quit doing kind things.  If you think you are falling out of love it’s because you have quit doing loving things.  Being in love is your choice to do loving things.  It’s not about keeping a score card.
 
Are you going to make a commitment to be in love?  One person in a marriage can change the feel.
 
Jenkins Lloyd Jones
“There seems to be a superstition among many thousands of our young [men and women] who hold hands and smooch in the drive-ins that marriage is a cottage surrounded by perpetual hollyhocks to which a perpetually young and handsome husband comes home to a perpetually young and [beautiful] wife. When the hollyhocks wither and boredom and bills appear the divorce courts are jammed. …
 
“Anyone who imagines that bliss [in marriage] is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed.
 
“[The fact is] most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. …
 
“Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.
 
“The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride” (“Big Rock Candy Mountains,” Deseret News, 12 June 1973, A4).
 
Obedience—Life’s Great (Donald Stahli)
“When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.”
 
Too often we go immediately into comparison. 
 
HOMEWORK:  President Uchtdorf “In Praise of Those Who Save”

• Read this talk write all the “to do’s” you need to do to make your marriage good.
• I found 10 counsels to perk up your marriage

 
One of the biggest things Satan is using is Social Media and Phones…and being in the same room and texting other people.  There are problems with people looking up an old flame and having long conversations.  This is dangerous.  It’s destructive.  Don’t talk to people at work and talk about your spouse and confide in them.
 
We need to be 100% loyal to our spouse!  That is where criticism stops.  You aren’t comparing them.  There is a danger in reading romance novels.  When you are reading the novels it fills you with infatuation feelings.  You create unreal expectations in your head. 
 
Pornography is rampant in the church.  Don’t for a minute think this stops with teenagers.  It is a problem with men and women that become disenchanted with their marriage.  Pornography in any form is dangerous in marriage.  It takes those feelings and puts them somewhere else other than your marriage.  It’s available on so many levels. 
 
Another problem is we throw temper tantrums.  It’s actually the silent treatment.  We say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”  We think if we don’t talk about it then it will just go away.  We have to learn to not take offense when things are said.  We need to talk them through.  We need to learn to listen and not take offense.
 
“You were stuck in your own perspective.  You didn’t mean to be late, but your lateness affected your spouse and their feelings.”  Lynn Robbins (Love is a Choice—book)
 
As we discuss things it becomes a debate about who is the most right. 
 
He realizes that he should have said, ‘I understand you are angry.  I’m sorry you have been waiting for me for so long and this is not the first time.  It must seem I give meetings higher priority than you.  That must be frustrating.  It will not happen again.”
 
Anytime you seek first to understand them and then you can explain your side.
 
Question:  What would it be like to be married to me?  Am I causing my spouse offense?  Am I causing him grief?  Am I causing him unhappiness?
 
“Lord is it I?”  President Uchtdorf
 
 “What Lack I Yet?”  Larry Lawrence
These give you quite an inventory
 
Ways to reignite your marriage after you have accepted your responsibility to ‘nurture with much care’!

1. Remember when….What did you use to do when you had no money?  Do it again.  Create something you can do together…read a book together.  Pull out pictures and scrapbooks. 

1. Learn to not take offense….We take offense way to quickly.  They are just stating an opinion.  Just don’t do it!  Sometimes you just have to hold your tongue

STORY:  “I am reminded of a story about a couple who had been married for 60 years.  They had rarely argued during that time, and their days together passed in happiness and contentment.  They shared everything and had no secrets between them—except one.  The wife had a box that she kept at the top of a sideboard, and she told her husband when they were married that he should never look inside.
 
As the decades passed, the moment came that her husband took the box down and asked if he could finally know what it contained. The wife consented, and he opened it to discover two doilies and $25,000.  When he asked his wife what this meant, she responded, “When we were married, my mother told me that whenever I was angry with you or whenever you said or did something I didn’t like, I should knit a small doily and then talk things through with you.”  The husband was moved to tears by this sweet story.  He marveled that during 60 years of marriage he had only disturbed his wife enough for her to knit two doilies.  Feeling extremely good about himself, he took his wife’s hand and said, “That explains the doilies, but what about the $25,000?”  His wife smiled sweetly and said, “That’s the money I got from selling all the doilies I’ve knitted over the years.” (President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “What is Truth”, CES Broadcast, January 2013)

1. Live within your means….Women, this means you also don’t complain about what those means are.  Stop complaining.  Be grateful for what you have and that you have means.  Live within your means and have a savings.  Save something every month.  Find a way to save something and express gratitude regularly over what you have so he feels adequate in taking care of the family
2. Maintain complete fidelity…Don’t vent to everyone.  You don’t have the right to confess your husband’s sins.  We need a safe place and it better only be one sacred confident place.  Be careful about that. 

Is talking to someone as effective as writing it down?  It depends on the person.  They can write it down and get rid of it and throw it away.  Some people need to be able to think about it and have input. 

• Live the gospel…do not create spiritual goals for them.  You are there to support them and sustain them in their goals.  If you have a spouse that is not where you are spiritually and you are frustrated.  You pray that your heart will be changed and you will feel loved.  It gives them the courage to change.  Only love will build them.

 
Class member:  I listened to that last year.  I heard this.  In a few things that I thought our family was lacking I have been praying for a whole year for these things.  I don’t know if he has gone through things to open his eyes.  In the last 3 months he is finally get it.  It’s been wonderful for the Lord to help me and to help him at the same time.  I took this to heart.  I have watched the Lord work in our marriage and in our lives. 
 
The Holy Ghost will change them.  You won’t.
 
If you support your spouse 100% the Lord will make up the difference with your children. The Lord knows where you are and the Lord will make up the difference.  You have to nourish him.  They have an empty bucket.  They have nothing left to give.  You have to put it in for a long time before they can give it back out. 
 
This is an eternal marriage not a marriage for right now.  There will be times in all of your marriages where one of you will be stronger than the other. 
 
You choose to make yourself good and them happy. 

1. Look for the good in your spouse…..write it down so they can see it. 
2. Be quick to say I’m sorry even if you aren’t wrong.  You can be sorry about the rift you have put in the relationship.  
3. Spend time together
4. Learn your spouses love language
5. Meet and greet at the cross roads
6. Be kind….we are kinder to the people we meet or those that are in our ward. Tell your face!  J 
7. Take responsibility for your own emotional well being….your spouse is not responsible to make you happy.  You are responsible to make yourself happy. 
8. Avoid unreal expectations….this comes from comparison.  This comes from an unreal expectations in what you thought your marriage would be.  It matters what you do about where you are.  Mourn if you need to mourn.  Bury the person you thought you married.  All of you will find that they are not who you thought you married.  Fall in love with who they are and who you have.  

Class member:  My niece just got married.  He said love your spouse just a little bit more than anyone else…your moms, dads, friends, kids.
 
Love is a commitment to do loving things! 

1. Learn to listen.
   
2. Remember that you have an eternal marriage and they may not be resolved in this life.  You will see something different in the eternities.  Go to the temple often.

“When supper was cleared away, dad would support mother’s slight weight and help her to the bathroom, trailing the bubbling, transparent oxygen tube.  There he would tenderly undress her, and slipping out of his own clothes, hold her failing body against himself while he washed her in the shower and shampooed her hair.  After their shower, he would help her to the side of the rented hospital bed where he perched her for dressing in her nightgown.  I was deeply touched by his tender care of her, how totally absorbed he became in these simple tasks as he softly brushed the limp hair back from her forehead.  But then would come my favorite scene of all—the one most deeply etched in memory that was to forever epitomize this experience and this season for me.
 
On knees still from his own seventy years, dad knelt on the floor at mother’s feet.  Tipping the contents of a fragrant pink bottle into the palms of his hands and rubbing them together, he applied the soothing lotion ever so carefully to the delicate, dry skin of her legs and feet.  Bent there before her, the glow of his snow-white hair in the tiny Christmas lights almost gave him the appearance of a holy man.  A Holy Man….images of two distinct silhouettes converged into one in my mind.  Of one who knelt now in love and service in the stillness of this tiny room.  Another, much younger, much longer ago, who knelt in a similar way to wash the feet of ones He loved.  A Holy Man….They were two thousand years apart, but they were one.  The entire meaning of the sacred season told in a simple task.”  (Written by Sandi Errigo)
 
Our marriage becomes celestial when we are more concerned kneeling at the feet of our spouse in giving rather than getting what we want.  

​Class member:  We have put up a gratitude tree where we add leaves and when the missionaries were over they added to my trees.
 
Class member:  That’s all my husband talked about was change percentages this week.  He said ‘that’s the best thing ever’. 
 
Class member:  I am overwhelmed, just knowing that I need to do it.  I don’t want to fight everyone about that.  Sometime’s Mom has a great idea and everyone fights about it.  Challenge them to come up with the idea. 
 
You can say the prophet told us to take care of the refugees.  Have an idea in the back of your mind. 
 
Class member:  Last year to go along with the “beware of pride” we decided that we would get someone in our family to the temple each week if we could and did family history at home if we couldn’t.  Our family wanted to still do the temple service again this year.  It can’t help, but help you come out of pride a little bit.  They help each other work on family history too and finding names.  They looked through our budget and decided what we could do to help out with a family missionary that was out.  They looked at what they could cut out (eating out, entertainment, etc) to use that money to help care for the missionary.
 
Class member:  We talked about maybe we could invite some of the single invite them for dinner or to a band concert or something. 
 
These are fabulous opportunities. 
 
One Thanksgiving when most of my kids were coming home I took $10 for each grandchild.  I said you have from now until Christmas to do something amazing for someone else.  For the Christmas Eve program you can share what you did.  I would prefer you wouldn’t just hand it to someone on the street corner.  They came up with creative things.  One bought lunch for someone at school that needed it.  Someone else had done a “Pay it Forward”.  That was a fun experience.
 
One thing my kids remember the most we always picked a family in a different ward.  The kids were to get 3 things for one of the people in that family.  They had to get something to eat, something to wear, and something that was fun.  They had to earn their budget.  I was more generous paying for jobs that time of the year.  On a FHE we would all go shopping.  We came home and had a huge wrapping party.  On Christmas Eve we would do the ditch and run.  It was really snowing hard.  We ended up with 2 trampolines that year.  We decided we were going to give one of them to this family.  The oldest kids weren’t out of high school.  We were trying to put up a trampoline in the middle of the road ‘quietly’.  We had to carry it down the road to this house.  They carried the trampoline to the front door.  To watch that family open the door and see what was there it was amazing!  They talk about it and talk about it.  They are all doing it in their families. 
 
We’ve almost been caught a couple of times.  It still is magical.  We’ve done missionaries that will write and sent our missionaries big boxes that they could hand out to children. 
 
Class member:  My sister-in-law is on his mission in Guatemala.  He was in such a scary location.  His Mom just felt the need to help the best they could.  They ended up taking their 5 kids to Mexico last year from Christmas.  They told them that going was Christmas.  They helped build an orphanage. 
 
Up front it looks like another job on the job list.  You have to have faith first and do it before you see how it changes the lives of your children and you.  If you want to do something really hard to the Twelve Days of Christmas. 
 
Continue to think about it and maybe you can make part of your Thanksgiving discussions. 
 
Class member:  We finally finished our family mission statement.  We wrote it in a poem form.  I have 3 boys right now. 
 
Class member:  I read over all the notes…the Service Continuum.  How do you help the kids to get from the “I won’t” to the “I have to” to the “I want”?
 
Teach it in a FHE.  Give them an empty chart.  You only have to move from one step to another.  Help them to say “I want to” or “I will”.  Verbalize when you are walking up to the next step.  A lot of times our kids are on the “I won’t” then they look at perfection and they feel defeated and so do you.  We need to help them move up a little at a time and help them fill value.  Give them opportunities to serve.  Do family service projects.  It needs to be hard, but they can have fun together.  Service is physical!  They have to do it on all levels.  For the family for each other. 
 
Class member:  My family did service projects each year, but I didn’t get it until I was an adult.  I remember how hard it was as an 8 year old child to give away candy. 
 
All of my kids were at a science fair.  We were coming home and dressed nice.  We drove past an elderly man in the ward and he had leaves everywhere in his yard.  We didn’t have a lot of leaves.  His yard was a blanket of leaves.  They said, “Can we stop and rake leaves”.  We pulled over.  They raked the yard and they were filthy when we got home.  They had fun in the leaves.
 
You have to be creative and make it fun.  Consistent little ones can be more powerful.  It’s learning to live in gratitude which attitude produces service.  You can do service and it’s a ‘job’.  If you have service based on gratitude it is filled with joy. 
 
We should get involved in community service projects.
 
Class member:  A lot of the schools have leadership projects.  You can always go with them.  If you are looking for ideas. 
 
The bottom line is that you have to look for them.  You have to want to teach service intentionally. 
 
Class member:  There is a website www.justserve.org
 
Mom, you are the one that has to do it and you have to find these opportunities to serve. 
 
Class member:  Malary was getting ready to go on her mission and she asked Nate who works at the MTC what she can do to get ready to go on her mission.  He said the best thing you can do is to go down once a week and serve at the soup kitchen.  You need to be comfortable with reaching out to those not in your bubble.  We need to get our children out of their comfort zones for people who need service and not in the ‘church’ circle. 
 
My challenge is…don’t just let service be just at this time of the year.
 
Class member:  There is someone in our ward who takes the little kids to all the widow’s homes and give them a rose on Valentine’s Day.  

​Class member:  We have put up a gratitude tree where we add leaves and when the missionaries were over they added to my trees.
 
Class member:  That’s all my husband talked about was change percentages this week.  He said ‘that’s the best thing ever’. 
 
Class member:  I am overwhelmed, just knowing that I need to do it.  I don’t want to fight everyone about that.  Sometime’s Mom has a great idea and everyone fights about it.  Challenge them to come up with the idea. 
 
You can say the prophet told us to take care of the refugees.  Have an idea in the back of your mind. 
 
Class member:  Last year to go along with the “beware of pride” we decided that we would get someone in our family to the temple each week if we could and did family history at home if we couldn’t.  Our family wanted to still do the temple service again this year.  It can’t help, but help you come out of pride a little bit.  They help each other work on family history too and finding names.  They looked through our budget and decided what we could do to help out with a family missionary that was out.  They looked at what they could cut out (eating out, entertainment, etc) to use that money to help care for the missionary.
 
Class member:  We talked about maybe we could invite some of the single invite them for dinner or to a band concert or something. 
 
These are fabulous opportunities. 
 
One Thanksgiving when most of my kids were coming home I took $10 for each grandchild.  I said you have from now until Christmas to do something amazing for someone else.  For the Christmas Eve program you can share what you did.  I would prefer you wouldn’t just hand it to someone on the street corner.  They came up with creative things.  One bought lunch for someone at school that needed it.  Someone else had done a “Pay it Forward”.  That was a fun experience.
 
One thing my kids remember the most we always picked a family in a different ward.  The kids were to get 3 things for one of the people in that family.  They had to get something to eat, something to wear, and something that was fun.  They had to earn their budget.  I was more generous paying for jobs that time of the year.  On a FHE we would all go shopping.  We came home and had a huge wrapping party.  On Christmas Eve we would do the ditch and run.  It was really snowing hard.  We ended up with 2 trampolines that year.  We decided we were going to give one of them to this family.  The oldest kids weren’t out of high school.  We were trying to put up a trampoline in the middle of the road ‘quietly’.  We had to carry it down the road to this house.  They carried the trampoline to the front door.  To watch that family open the door and see what was there it was amazing!  They talk about it and talk about it.  They are all doing it in their families. 
 
We’ve almost been caught a couple of times.  It still is magical.  We’ve done missionaries that will write and sent our missionaries big boxes that they could hand out to children. 
 
Class member:  My sister-in-law is on his mission in Guatemala.  He was in such a scary location.  His Mom just felt the need to help the best they could.  They ended up taking their 5 kids to Mexico last year from Christmas.  They told them that going was Christmas.  They helped build an orphanage. 
 
Up front it looks like another job on the job list.  You have to have faith first and do it before you see how it changes the lives of your children and you.  If you want to do something really hard to the Twelve Days of Christmas. 
 
Continue to think about it and maybe you can make part of your Thanksgiving discussions. 
 
Class member:  We finally finished our family mission statement.  We wrote it in a poem form.  I have 3 boys right now. 
 
Class member:  I read over all the notes…the Service Continuum.  How do you help the kids to get from the “I won’t” to the “I have to” to the “I want”?
 
Teach it in a FHE.  Give them an empty chart.  You only have to move from one step to another.  Help them to say “I want to” or “I will”.  Verbalize when you are walking up to the next step.  A lot of times our kids are on the “I won’t” then they look at perfection and they feel defeated and so do you.  We need to help them move up a little at a time and help them fill value.  Give them opportunities to serve.  Do family service projects.  It needs to be hard, but they can have fun together.  Service is physical!  They have to do it on all levels.  For the family for each other. 
 
Class member:  My family did service projects each year, but I didn’t get it until I was an adult.  I remember how hard it was as an 8 year old child to give away candy. 
 
All of my kids were at a science fair.  We were coming home and dressed nice.  We drove past an elderly man in the ward and he had leaves everywhere in his yard.  We didn’t have a lot of leaves.  His yard was a blanket of leaves.  They said, “Can we stop and rake leaves”.  We pulled over.  They raked the yard and they were filthy when we got home.  They had fun in the leaves.
 
You have to be creative and make it fun.  Consistent little ones can be more powerful.  It’s learning to live in gratitude which attitude produces service.  You can do service and it’s a ‘job’.  If you have service based on gratitude it is filled with joy. 
 
We should get involved in community service projects.
 
Class member:  A lot of the schools have leadership projects.  You can always go with them.  If you are looking for ideas. 
 
The bottom line is that you have to look for them.  You have to want to teach service intentionally. 
 
Class member:  There is a website www.justserve.org
 
Mom, you are the one that has to do it and you have to find these opportunities to serve. 
 
Class member:  Malary was getting ready to go on her mission and she asked Nate who works at the MTC what she can do to get ready to go on her mission.  He said the best thing you can do is to go down once a week and serve at the soup kitchen.  You need to be comfortable with reaching out to those not in your bubble.  We need to get our children out of their comfort zones for people who need service and not in the ‘church’ circle. 
 
My challenge is…don’t just let service be just at this time of the year.
 
Class member:  There is someone in our ward who takes the little kids to all the widow’s homes and give them a rose on Valentine’s Day.  

​I have a granddaughter who is getting married this Saturday in the Boise temple.  She cannot remember anything.  Her finance is in Rexburg working.  They are so fun when they are together or apart they are delightful to watch. 
 
Do you remember when you were there?  If you have forgotten just watch Hallmark they are all feel-good movies. 
 
She is constantly texting him or talking to him on the phone.  Everything is about her. 
 
When you are growing up what is life about?  It’s about you!  It’s about how you feel.  Then you meet someone who you think feels ‘all about you’.  You want someone who has you as number one.  When you are dating or engaged that is not a problem.  The problem is that you can do nothing else in life. 
 
You don’t become an adult and get married you get married and they become adults together.
 
We go into marriage with those feelings.  There is a high intensity. 
 
HOMEWORK:  Lynn Robbins “Agency and Love in Marriage”  or “Love is a Choice” (book)
 
“It is almost humorous to observe a young unmarried couple in love. After spending an entire day together, they are back together again on the phone that same night. It’s sheer torture for them to be separated. Even in their thoughts they can hardly focus on anything else. Love begins to disrupt their studies or work. Everything else in life becomes a nuisance and an interruption that keeps them apart until they can be together again. In their minds there was never, in the history of the world, a truer love than theirs. We call this level of premarriage intensity “infatuation.”
 
What happens then?  About 5 years in when your first inventory of what it’s like to be married.  You probably have a couple of kids, you are out of school.  About that time you look at marriage and say, “This is not what I thought this was going to be.”  We do a poor job as parents of teaching children the reality of what marriage is.  We teach them to be worthy and get married in the temple. 
 
It’s not the Cinderella Syndrome after you are married.  Most of us got married not expecting that.  Our feelings in our heart were, “My marriage will not be like my parents.”  Most are saying we are going to do this different. 
 
Most of you that have been married for at least 5 years are not wanting a divorce.  The relationship in the marriage has become stagnant.  It’s comfortable and you are there, but it doesn’t light any fires in you.  It’s just there. 
 
When you hit 10 years….that’s when we start getting some problems. 
 
Alma 32 (This is the Parable of Marriage)
 37 And behold, as the tree beginneth to grow, ye will say: Let us nourish it with great care, that it may get root, that it may grow up, and bring forth fruit unto us. And now behold, if ye nourish it with much care it will get root, and grow up, and bring forth fruit.
 38 But if ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up and cast it out.
 39 Now, this is not because the seed was not good, neither is it because the fruit thereof would not be desirable; but it is because your ground is barren, and ye will not nourish the tree, therefore ye cannot have the fruit thereof.
 40 And thus, if ye will not nourish the word, looking forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, ye can never pluck of the fruit of the tree of life.
 41 But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.
 
Change the words

• Tree=Marriage
• Heat of the sun=family life, teenagers, busy-ness, car won’t work….real life
• Ground=heart
• Fruit=love

 
It takes no effort right then at the beginning. 
 
“IF” ye nourish it with much care.  That is the key.  You are doing something and if you do it with much care you have real intent.  You are focused on it.  It takes thought.  It takes effort.  It takes sacrifice. 
 
“IF ye neglect the marriage”…from day to day you aren’t thinking about your marriage.  You are thinking about your church calling, the house, kids, laundry, bills, dinner….but never in your mind does it become…what can I do for my spouse.  You are actively involved in logistics.  It has passed from your heart to your head.  It is because of busy-ness.
 
Nourishment is to ‘focus’ on building the relationship. 
 
“You pluck it up and cast it out”---That means you become emotionally disengaged in building the relationship.  It’s almost an emotional divorce.  There is no more connection.  You become roommates passing in the night.  There are many empty nesters that are getting divorced because they haven’t built the relationship along the way. 
 
The key is consistency.  You have to do this all the time.  Satan is 100% aware of marriage and hates it.  He is 100% anxiously engaged. 
 
David A Bednar “Marriage is Essential  To His Eternal Plan”
“The adversary’s attacks upon eternal marriage will continue to increase in intensity, frequency, and sophistication.”
 
“After they marry, this intensity tapers off. Living under the same roof, they each begin to discover a few peculiar idiosyncracies in the other that they had not seen before. Some of these are irritating. The infatuation begins to fade. Those who have confused infatuation for love begin to worry and wonder if they are falling out of love. “Where is that level of passion, the fire I had during courtship?” they may ask themselves. Their relationship is passing through a common stage and is at an important crossroad. If they believe they have fallen out of love, they may begin to drift apart.” (Lynn Robbins)
 
It’s the 80/20.  80% is good so you focus on that until after they are married.  Then after marriage you focus on the 20% to try to make them better.
 
 “People think marriages end with an affair or something equally explosive,” says John Gottman, author of Why Marriages Succeed or Fail.  “In fact, most end gradually, sliding down a slope of complaint, criticism, defensiveness and withdrawal until it’s difficult to scramble back up.  Yet there are usually early warnings that the relationship could be headed for trouble.”
 
Most marriages just ‘slide’ out of love.
 
People don’t fall out of love.  You don’t fall out of kindness.  You quit doing kind things.  If you think you are falling out of love it’s because you have quit doing loving things.  Being in love is your choice to do loving things.  It’s not about keeping a score card.
 
Are you going to make a commitment to be in love?  One person in a marriage can change the feel.
 
Jenkins Lloyd Jones
“There seems to be a superstition among many thousands of our young [men and women] who hold hands and smooch in the drive-ins that marriage is a cottage surrounded by perpetual hollyhocks to which a perpetually young and handsome husband comes home to a perpetually young and [beautiful] wife. When the hollyhocks wither and boredom and bills appear the divorce courts are jammed. …
 
“Anyone who imagines that bliss [in marriage] is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed.
 
“[The fact is] most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. …
 
“Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.
 
“The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride” (“Big Rock Candy Mountains,” Deseret News, 12 June 1973, A4).
 
Obedience—Life’s Great (Donald Stahli)
“When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.”
 
Too often we go immediately into comparison. 
 
HOMEWORK:  President Uchtdorf “In Praise of Those Who Save”

• Read this talk write all the “to do’s” you need to do to make your marriage good.
• I found 10 counsels to perk up your marriage

 
One of the biggest things Satan is using is Social Media and Phones…and being in the same room and texting other people.  There are problems with people looking up an old flame and having long conversations.  This is dangerous.  It’s destructive.  Don’t talk to people at work and talk about your spouse and confide in them.
 
We need to be 100% loyal to our spouse!  That is where criticism stops.  You aren’t comparing them.  There is a danger in reading romance novels.  When you are reading the novels it fills you with infatuation feelings.  You create unreal expectations in your head. 
 
Pornography is rampant in the church.  Don’t for a minute think this stops with teenagers.  It is a problem with men and women that become disenchanted with their marriage.  Pornography in any form is dangerous in marriage.  It takes those feelings and puts them somewhere else other than your marriage.  It’s available on so many levels. 
 
Another problem is we throw temper tantrums.  It’s actually the silent treatment.  We say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”  We think if we don’t talk about it then it will just go away.  We have to learn to not take offense when things are said.  We need to talk them through.  We need to learn to listen and not take offense.
 
“You were stuck in your own perspective.  You didn’t mean to be late, but your lateness affected your spouse and their feelings.”  Lynn Robbins (Love is a Choice—book)
 
As we discuss things it becomes a debate about who is the most right. 
 
He realizes that he should have said, ‘I understand you are angry.  I’m sorry you have been waiting for me for so long and this is not the first time.  It must seem I give meetings higher priority than you.  That must be frustrating.  It will not happen again.”
 
Anytime you seek first to understand them and then you can explain your side.
 
Question:  What would it be like to be married to me?  Am I causing my spouse offense?  Am I causing him grief?  Am I causing him unhappiness?
 
“Lord is it I?”  President Uchtdorf
 
 “What Lack I Yet?”  Larry Lawrence
These give you quite an inventory
 
Ways to reignite your marriage after you have accepted your responsibility to ‘nurture with much care’!
 

1. Remember when….What did you use to do when you had no money?  Do it again.  Create something you can do together…read a book together.  Pull out pictures and scrapbooks. 

 

1. Learn to not take offense….We take offense way to quickly.  They are just stating an opinion.  Just don’t do it!  Sometimes you just have to hold your tongue

STORY:  “I am reminded of a story about a couple who had been married for 60 years.  They had rarely argued during that time, and their days together passed in happiness and contentment.  They shared everything and had no secrets between them—except one.  The wife had a box that she kept at the top of a sideboard, and she told her husband when they were married that he should never look inside.
 
As the decades passed, the moment came that her husband took the box down and asked if he could finally know what it contained. The wife consented, and he opened it to discover two doilies and $25,000.  When he asked his wife what this meant, she responded, “When we were married, my mother told me that whenever I was angry with you or whenever you said or did something I didn’t like, I should knit a small doily and then talk things through with you.”  The husband was moved to tears by this sweet story.  He marveled that during 60 years of marriage he had only disturbed his wife enough for her to knit two doilies.  Feeling extremely good about himself, he took his wife’s hand and said, “That explains the doilies, but what about the $25,000?”  His wife smiled sweetly and said, “That’s the money I got from selling all the doilies I’ve knitted over the years.” (President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “What is Truth”, CES Broadcast, January 2013)
 

1. Live within your means….Women, this means you also don’t complain about what those means are.  Stop complaining.  Be grateful for what you have and that you have means.  Live within your means and have a savings.  Save something every month.  Find a way to save something and express gratitude regularly over what you have so he feels adequate in taking care of the family

 

1. Maintain complete fidelity…Don’t vent to everyone.  You don’t have the right to confess your husband’s sins.  We need a safe place and it better only be one sacred confident place.  Be careful about that.

 
Is talking to someone as effective as writing it down?  It depends on the person.  They can write it down and get rid of it and throw it away.  Some people need to be able to think about it and have input. 
 

1. Live the gospel…do not create spiritual goals for them.  You are there to support them and sustain them in their goals.  If you have a spouse that is not where you are spiritually and you are frustrated.  You pray that your heart will be changed and you will feel loved.  It gives them the courage to change.  Only love will build them.

 
Class member:  I listened to that last year.  I heard this.  In a few things that I thought our family was lacking I have been praying for a whole year for these things.  I don’t know if he has gone through things to open his eyes.  In the last 3 months he is finally get it.  It’s been wonderful for the Lord to help me and to help him at the same time.  I took this to heart.  I have watched the Lord work in our marriage and in our lives. 
 
The Holy Ghost will change them.  You won’t.
 
If you support your spouse 100% the Lord will make up the difference with your children. The Lord knows where you are and the Lord will make up the difference.  You have to nourish him.  They have an empty bucket.  They have nothing left to give.  You have to put it in for a long time before they can give it back out. 
 
This is an eternal marriage not a marriage for right now.  There will be times in all of your marriages where one of you will be stronger than the other. 
 
You choose to make yourself good and them happy. 
 

1. Look for the good in your spouse…..write it down so they can see it. 

 

1. Be quick to say I’m sorry even if you aren’t wrong.  You can be sorry about the rift you have put in the relationship. 

 

1. Spend time together

 

1. Learn your spouses love language
2. Meet and greet at the cross roads

 

1. Be kind….we are kinder to the people we meet or those that are in our ward. Tell your face!  J

 

1. Take responsibility for your own emotional well being….your spouse is not responsible to make you happy.  You are responsible to make yourself happy. 

 

1. Avoid unreal expectations….this comes from comparison.  This comes from an unreal expectations in what you thought your marriage would be.  It matters what you do about where you are.  Mourn if you need to mourn.  Bury the person you thought you married.  All of you will find that they are not who you thought you married.  Fall in love with who they are and who you have. 

 
Class member:  My niece just got married.  He said love your spouse just a little bit more than anyone else…your moms, dads, friends, kids.
 
Love is a commitment to do loving things! 
 

1. Learn to listen.

 

1. Remember that you have an eternal marriage and they may not be resolved in this life.  You will see something different in the eternities.  Go to the temple often.

 
 
“When supper was cleared away, dad would support mother’s slight weight and help her to the bathroom, trailing the bubbling, transparent oxygen tube.  There he would tenderly undress her, and slipping out of his own clothes, hold her failing body against himself while he washed her in the shower and shampooed her hair.  After their shower, he would help her to the side of the rented hospital bed where he perched her for dressing in her nightgown.  I was deeply touched by his tender care of her, how totally absorbed he became in these simple tasks as he softly brushed the limp hair back from her forehead.  But then would come my favorite scene of all—the one most deeply etched in memory that was to forever epitomize this experience and this season for me.
 
On knees still from his own seventy years, dad knelt on the floor at mother’s feet.  Tipping the contents of a fragrant pink bottle into the palms of his hands and rubbing them together, he applied the soothing lotion ever so carefully to the delicate, dry skin of her legs and feet.  Bent there before her, the glow of his snow-white hair in the tiny Christmas lights almost gave him the appearance of a holy man.  A Holy Man….images of two distinct silhouettes converged into one in my mind.  Of one who knelt now in love and service in the stillness of this tiny room.  Another, much younger, much longer ago, who knelt in a similar way to wash the feet of ones He loved.  A Holy Man….They were two thousand years apart, but they were one.  The entire meaning of the sacred season told in a simple task.”  (Written by Sandi Errigo)
 
Our marriage becomes celestial when we are more concerned kneeling at the feet of our spouse in giving rather than getting what we want. 
 

​We are living in a self entitled ‘selfie’ world.  Our children are all worried about self.  Being in that environment at school, church, and with peers we live in a ‘selfie’ environment.  In order to teach our children to be Christ-like.  Christ came to serve not to be served (in Matthew). 
 
You feel the Spirit prompt you and give you an answer.  A few times in my life when I have really been seeking to know something I have had amazing answers.  This ‘service’ was that moment when new light comes in. 
 
I really wanted to know if I had a spiritual report card what would be my grade.  I wanted to know if I was getting there.  I needed a measuring stick.  I wanted to know ‘what do I need to do if I wanted to take that next step up?’  I wanted a report card even if I didn’t like what it said.  I wanted to know how to change.  I was seeking how I could be more Christ-like.  The answer came in what I’m going to share with you today.  I hope as you ponder it, it will become profound to you.  I hope that you can see how to move forward and to judge myself. 
 
I think the key to becoming like Christ is in ‘service’.  It’s how we serve other people. 
 
 
“There is nothing left for us to gain on our own if we receive and possess all that the Father has.  He is the sole source of all authentic gifts, acquisitions, powers, and satisfactions.  As we obtain all that it is possible to obtain through the Father’s promised blessings, the only option for more joy is to bless others with caring service.  Once we have the gift of charity, once we have received all ordinances, and once we have claim on all blessings and all things from the Father, our only possible work and glory is to serve and bless others.  To serve is our ultimate and eternal destiny.”
(Elder V. Dallas Merrell, Ensign, December 1996)
 
Once we have charity, and ordinance, and claim to the blessings….I think we are all in that.  We have gone through the ordinance do we really understand it so that it is ‘through’ us.  We are in the process of learning to have charity. 
 
Service is the process of becoming holy. 
 
You take a dinner over to someone that just had surgery.  It didn’t make you feel holy it made you feel stressed.  I feel like it’s just another thing on my to-do list.  The key for service is the condition of your heart when you do the service.  It’s not the act of service.  Your self grading is on the condition of the heart when you do the service. 
 
Look at this Service Continuum and see where you are on it. 
 
A continuum is a none ending line.  It’s continuous.  When we talk about the Service Continuum because of what it represents.  On this continuum we will NEVER get there in this life.  Our goal it to get closer.  Our process is to see where we are and where our children are and to help them move forward. 
 
When we are in the influence of Satan he doesn’t care if you think too much of yourself or you think too little of yourself.  He wants you to always be thinking of yourself.  The Service Continuum is a way to see how sucked into Satan’s plan you are into thinking about yourself.  We aren’t in depression or pride thinking about ourselves.  This helps you see maybe where you are.

​In every part of your life you may be in a different place in the continuum.  You can be in one place in your church calling in YW, but lousy as a visiting teacher, good as a friend, but lousy as a mother.  You can be in a different spot in every section of your life. 
 
This is NOT an event is a process.  You cannot go from being lousy to being really good.  You just need to change percentages and go up the next step and then the next step.   As you seek to do that you will be empowered to make those next steps.  Just because you aren’t perfect doesn’t mean that you aren’t making process.
 
I Won’t
Will you take dinner to someone?  Nope!
Will you be the nursery leader? Nope! 
I won’t is…don’t ask me to.  Why would you ask me to donate to Humanitarian I’m barely making it here. 
 
All you see is you and your needs and why it’s an imposition.  This person lives by praise.  Self value comes from what someone else gives to you, but they feel entitled to receive that.  This is really pride and it’s I won’t. 
 
What is your first response?
 
These people are quick to take offense and blame other people.  They live in self pity mode.  I want you to see that.  Most of you aren’t like that.  You are seeking to become and be better.  You probably know people who are there. 
 
I Have to/I Need to…
I need to be better at visiting teaching. 
I have to do temple work.
This is Laman & Lemuel.  They DID do it, but they complained the entire way.  Everything is a burden. 
We look at joy as being “conditional”.  When my kids are in school I’ll be happy.  
“I need to do that….” 
These people are not always dependable.  Guilt!  These people may not show up.  They feel overwhelmed with life and procrastinate a lot.  Some of you go there occasionally, but don’t live there. 
I have to do it, no one else will.
 
 
These next 2 levels are more of a mental thing.  You have to change the words you say in your mind. 
 
I Will (I’ll try)…
The cop out is ‘I’ll try’.  It’s your way of saying ‘no I won’t’. 
I will accept that calling because I’m not supposed to turn down a calling.  This person really does desire to be good.  Life is heavy.  They carry a lot of guilt. 
Your kids will keep score…I will do that, but I want to be sure everyone else is doing their part too.  I don’t want to do any more than anyone else. 
I will be a good wife.  I gave him a treat last time so it’s your turn to do it for me.  It’s a score keeping.
 
I Want To…
I want to have a calling.  I don’t care what it is.  I want to be a mother.  I want to have these children.  I want to be a wife.  I want to make other people’s lives better. 
 
(From a Conference talk)  What is the difference between the Humanitarian Services the world has and the church’s Humanitarian Services?  Humanitarian Services in the world ‘want’ to help.  They are living right there wanting to help and do and be.  The difference is the next level.  The next level is that you want all of that because of gratitude for what the Lord gave to you.
 
Most of us live on the “I want” level
 
May I…I Am Thankful…
We do this because we appreciate the Atonement and serve out of love for the Savior.  We serve because we love Him.  I don’t think you can get in that last category without consciously studying the Savior and his life.
 
We need to teach our children to serve like this.  How do we get there by serving because we are thankful for. 
 
We provide service opportunities for our children, but they have to learn gratitude.  They won’t jump levels if they are doing it out of obedience to you.  It won’t change their heart.  Gratitude is what softens the heart for them or you.
 
GRATITUDE
 
Gratitude is more than teaching your children to say ‘thank you’.  Gratitude is the way you look at life.  The goal is that the Gratitude is focused on the Savior.  So you see all life and life experiences through the window of the Savior.
 
“It has been said that the sin of ingratitude is more serious than the sin of revenge.  With revenge, we return evil for evil, but with ingratitude we return evil for good.”  (W. Eugene Hansen)
 
Think about that in relationship to Heavenly Father. When we are not grateful for these gifts…we return even for good.  The reason Heavenly Father commanded us in all things to be grateful is not because he wants glory.  The reason is because gratitude heals the heart.
 
D&C 59
 
In that experience the Lord commanded them they should have gratitude, sing, and give thanks in praise.  When they were in the pit of despair the Lord says be grateful.  Be grateful because gratitude heals the heart. 
 
Vs. 15  inasmuch as ye do these things with thanksgiving, with cheerful hearts and countenances, not with much laughter, for this is sin, but with a glad heart and a cheerful countenance--
 
When we express gratitude it opens up the door.
 
The Roman Orator Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”  (Marcus Tullius Cicero, Pro Plancio, 54 b.c.)
 
President Faust ( Ensign, December 1996) said, “A grateful heart is the beginning of greatness.  It is the expression of humility and the foundation for the development of:

• Prayer
• Faith
• Courage
• Contentment
• Happiness
• Love
• Sense of well being

If we teach our children gratitude when they get to the MTC will they be resilient.  When they open the door it makes them grateful and able to use the Atonement to bear the burdens we have. 
 
How do you develop gratitude?
 
“O Remember Remember” President Eyring
“Tender Mercies”  Elder Bednar
 
Keep a daily journal of how you see the hand of the Lord in your life daily. 
 
Substituting the word “gratitude” for the word “faith”,  James 2:17-18 would read:
 
“Even so “gratitude,” if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.  Yea, a man may say, Thou hast “gratitude” and I have works: shew me thy “gratitude” without thy works, and I will shew thee my “gratitude” by my works.”
 
Saying ‘thank you’ is gratitude without works.  This is only manners. 
 
Write down 3 things you are thankful for…
1.
2.
3.
 
Thanksgiving is made of 2 words….”thanks” and “giving”.  The question is…because of what you have that you are thankful for what will you do.  To give thanks is to do something
 
Feb 2004 “Small Experiences” by Steven A West
A fourth experience happened in 1957 in Portland, Oregon, where I served as a young missionary in the Northwestern States Mission. Several of us were walking from the mission home to the mission office a few blocks away. As we walked, a car stopped abruptly, and a man jumped out and ran toward us asking, “Are you preaching the gospel of Brigham?” We started to reply, “We are missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” when he handed us $9.00 and a box of saltwater taffy. Before we could give him back the money, he ran back to his car and drove away. We thought the experience was very unusual.
 
Some months later in a multizone conference, a missionary told about an experience he and his companion had while waiting at a bus stop. A man stopped his car, jumped out, and gave them $7.00 and a box of peanut brittle, then drove off. Another missionary related a similar experience while tracting in a suburb of Portland, this time with $14.00 and a box of chocolate mints. The pattern continued as one missionary after another told similar stories, each involving various amounts of money and different types of candy; in all instances, the man left before much discussion could ensue.
 
Finally, a missionary stood and told how he and his companion happened to know this man. As the elders were preparing to enter a bus station, a man, seeing they were missionaries for the Church, asked where they were going and if they needed a ride. Those being simpler and safer days, the missionaries accepted the offer and rode with him south through Oregon. During the course of that ride, their newfound friend gave them some money and candy, then told them this story:
 
In 1932 he had been young and unemployed because of the Depression. While crossing the United States as a vagrant looking for work, he ventured to a town in the northern part of the Great Plains. Since it was Christmas Eve and he had no place to stay, he decided to crawl under a bridge to spend the night out of the snow. He found there were two people already there—two young men in coats and ties and white shirts with some packages on their laps. They were LDS missionaries who had just been to the post office to pick up Christmas packages sent to them by their families. Being too excited to wait until they arrived home, they had decided to get out of the snow and see what their families had sent.
 
The missionaries invited the vagrant to join them under the bridge as they opened their packages. One of the missionaries received cookies and hand-knit gloves. The other received brownies, homemade candy, and a hand-knit scarf. As they sat under the bridge, they shared their treats with this man and then sang Christmas carols together. When the elders were ready to leave, they asked the man if he had a place to sleep. He told them he was used to staying outdoors and would be all right. They then said, “If you are going to stay here, you should take our cookies and brownies to eat as well as the scarf and gloves to keep you warm.” He protested, but they persisted, so he happily accepted the cookies, brownies, scarf, and gloves. The missionaries then left to go to their lodgings.
 
The man told the two missionaries he was giving a ride to in 1957 that he had never forgotten that experience and had resolved to never pass LDS missionaries without giving them whatever cash he had in his pocket. And inasmuch as he was at that time a wholesale candy salesman, he could also share samples of his wares. He told the missionaries he had been doing this for years and years. When they asked if he was a member of the Church, he said he was not because his wife objected to it. But he added that if she ever consented, he would be most interested in joining. For 25 years, he had been sharing with our missionaries. Who knows how long thereafter he continued to do the same.
 
That is giving with out remember and receiving without forgetting.  That is gratitude.  Because he was thankful for what those 2 elder’s had done he gave whatever was in his pocket and a box of candy in his pocket.  He DID something!  That’s living in gratitude.
 
FINAL:
This is connected with service and gratitude and lesson on work.  Ponder these 3 lessons.  Do a Christmas Service Project. 

1. It has to involve your whole family.  The family will plan it and execute it and review how they feel at the end.
2. This project should hurt.  If you have $100 in the bank it doesn’t hurt.  There is no sacrifice.  It doesn’t teach us to be grateful for the Savior when he gave all that he had.  This project needs to be focused on the love of the Savior and how can we serve him by giving to someone else.

 
Example…if you pick a family to give Christmas to then your children need to work and earn the money and save it.  If it means they have to go without ‘something’ at Christmas it’s worth it.  They aren’t suffering.  They are learning a valuable gift.  I want this to take time.  Think about it.  Talk about it.  Plan for it.  I want you to live for the next 48 days until Christmas.  You will have to discuss it as a family. 
 
Example…it doesn’t have to cost money, but it has to cost heart.  You may choose to adopt a Grandma in a nursing home.  It’s the opportunity to overcome that fear.  Go sing for her, make a gift for her, play the piano for her.
 
Example…serve several times in the soup kitchen.
 
Example…do a project for the homeless shelter.
 
If it’s not hard you won’t learn what there is to learn.  I want it to be hard.  Unless it is you won’t enjoy the sweetness of the blessing that will come after it is over. 
 
These become very sacred personal experiences.  You need to plan it and record it.  You need to write about the process of it.  You will have flack along the way.  Kids don’t like to do hard things.  In the end the joy will be exquisite.
 
Class member:  When you asked us to write something every day that is the most helpful thing that has happened the last few days.  It changes your heart and helps you.  I was in the temple by myself.  Lots of people come in with spouses.  It’s very likely my husband may not be with me soon.  I looked at all the little suitcases at the top and the Spirit said to be grateful for what you have.  I understand more and more why that’s important.  That is what I need and what my family needs right now is a grateful heart.
 
It will change your life.  I testify to you.  The greatest gift is the Savior and his Atonement.  When we begin to understand and appreciate it and we live in gratitude we will learn about all our Father in Heaven gave to us through His Son. 
 
I testify that if you accept this challenge it will be the sweetest experience you will have.  It will be the greatest gift you can give your children and Him.  Sacrifice beyond comfort to someone else.  

How did you like last week?  What was your take away?
 
Class member:  It gave me a different way to look at it.  My husband and I were able to discuss that. 
 
Class member:  The lazy factor….our 12 year old girl has that.  I told her that there would be no electronics and to find something else to do.  An hour later she came downstairs and she brought a microscope down that she had gotten for Christmas.  She hadn’t been interested in it.  But, she finally got it to work and she did that all afternoon and the next day.  It was just a redirect day.
 
It was using leisure time productively.  They lose motivation for everything.  Their electronics are what they talk about and do. 
 
Class member:  My husband is in nursing and just graduating and got home and we were talking about the difference between the baby boomers and the millennials.  He was telling me that the millennials are just getting obese because of the sitting down all the time and fast food snacks.
 
We have reached this thing where we want to be friends with our kids.  We want them to like us.  We don’t want them to be mad at us.  That’s like saying pay your tithing and all the rest of your money you can play with.  We don’t get to do it why should our kids.  We have got to toughen up and parent with a purpose. 
 
Class member:  I missed having you teach.  I missed your stories.  I feel like we relate more to you as a woman and a mother.  It was hard for me to listen.  Your stories catch me from a mother’s perspective. 
 
I think it’s good for you to hear from other people too. 
 
I am focused on telling you the process.  He tells you generic and over all.  I like to hear ‘how’ to make things happen.  If I’m not supposed to be critical how do I teach the process. 
 
1.  You have to take yourself out of the picture as the critic, but you have to hold them accountable to the job.
2.  You need to have a family meeting and introduce it there.  Let them have input and let them help come up with consequences.  They knew what was going to happen.
 
3.  I would have in the bathroom in the cupboard door somewhere 2 lists.  One list is the list you do on the weekday---the quick clean.  This is daily after school.  Then the other list is a deep clean.  Then the list is a longer one.  Let’s check this with the list.  You are giving them the responsibility, but you are making them responsible to the list. 
 
I would ask them if they were ready for me to go check the bathroom.  Don’t buy into their problem.  If your children are unhappy with you, then you are doing great. 
 
When my girls would do conditioning at the beginning of sports they would come home in pain.  They were growing and stretching and becoming better. 
 
Class member: I have a son that is over scheduled and is dealing with a heavy load at school.  How do I help him overcome his anxiety to do it?
 
You need to help him learn tools to deal with anxiety.  Obviously extra work during those days is too much.  On school days when he’s overwhelmed that’s not the time to put more on him.  On Saturday he needs to have some hard jobs.  He probably needs lots of encouragement and tools to be better and knowing that he doesn’t have to be perfect. 
 
We have the problem when talking with our kids about giving them the answer and them just agreeing.  Ask, “What kept you awake?”  I was thinking about the test, my nose was stuffed up, I was cold.  When he says that you have the opportunity to help him find the tools he needs.
 
Class member:  One of the phrases was the easiest go to was, “Tell me about….” Then you are reflecting like a mirror and letting them see the situation. 
 
Ask questions and get them involved.  The more they talk the more they create their own answers.  Don’t tell them how they feel.  Sometimes when you ask the question they feel like there is an answer you are looking for.  Use the statement…”Tell me about….”  If you use ‘what’ or ‘why’ those are sometimes an attack question. 
 
How have you changed over the semester?
 
Class member:  I feel guilty a lot.  I know the things you have taught, and I see how much I’m lacking. 
 
Class member:  You did tell us that it was overwhelming and that there was so much for us to do.  You have to work on 1 or 2 things a little tiny bit. 
 
If you yell, 100% of the time now and after this class you only yell 95% of the time you have changed percentages and you are doing better.  You are fabulous!     The purpose of the class is to give you a different vision.  It’s more than correcting what they do wrong, providing a house, and feeding them.  I want you to see parenting as the responsibility to teach them how to make it to the Celestial Kingdom.  You aren’t going to get that perfect in 10 weeks.  You won’t get it perfect by the time they leave your home, but you will be a while lot better if you are changing percentages along the way. 
 
Class member:  I believe the power of prayer so much.  This class has elevated my prayers.  There is power in that even if there is not power in me. 
 
I just want to invite the Holy Ghost so he can teach you. 
 
Class member:  When you come back again you realize what you are doing right after this.
 
Class member:  I testify of the ‘change percentages’.  I used to be a yeller all the time and now I can’t even remember the last time I’ve yelled at her.  It does take awhile and it is ok. 
 
It took me 6 years from the time I learned these principles and felt like they were mine and I was doing them consistently.
 
Class member:  It made me a more purposeful parent and spouse.  Even when I’m in the minute I reflect and go back and find the answer.  I don’t have to feel overwhelmed because there are more tools out there.  I can keep seeing it differently and start doing it more purposefully.  I feel good about my effort rather than my failure. 
 
This class isn’t about parenting.  I’m not sure why you entitle it that.  This is about life skills and me.  Parenting has to change with you. 
 
Class member:  I came back the 2nd week not intentionally doing the homework, but when I came back and realized that the Spirit had taught me. I left the temple feeling rejuvenated.  There were a lot of things I didn’t realize I was changing, but the Spirit had taught me and I have been making changes.
 
Class member:  It opened me up.  I came here seeking help for a child.  I decided I needed to just sit and listen and open up.  It made me realize that Parenting should be fun.  We can sit and have fun.  We are teaching, but parenting is fun and they are going to be gone so soon.  Will they think…my Mom is a fun Mom?  Parenting isn’t always about accomplishing.  There isn’t only one right way to do it.  I don’t attack life so much I have some fun with my kids.
 
When I feel like it has helped someone then I want to come again.  As you share, lives are being changed, then I want to keep going.  That is what it’s all about.  It’s about your family.  That’s what counts.  That’s what we take with us.  As long as I feel like there are those who are finding new truths, way, faith, love for being a parent, then I will still be here.  

​Did you notice the things you said this week?
 
Class member:  Someone made the comment of ‘that’s the coolest thing ever!’  I just laughed.
 
Class member:  Words of affirmation is the bottom of my totem pole. Is this something that is applicable to me?
 
President Kimball says…I need to know if I hit the mark.  I don’t need the praise to fill my bucket.  You need to know that you hit the mark.  If it’s your love language you need it more to feel validated.  ALL of us need feedback in a way that we can say “That worked!  I was on target!”  As adults it’s critical for your self esteem, but needs to come from the inside out. 
 
Class member:  I learned that I have a lot of improving to do in this area.  I think I’m addicted to praise.  I think I was raised on praise.  I noticed over the past week he will come and he will say, “Mom, your so cute!”  I totally feed off it.  I taught him that he’s not articulating specifics.
 
This was a hard one for me to break old habits and create new ones.  First of all you have to be aware of it.  You have to be aware of what is coming in to you and if you can accept it. 
 
Someone came up to me after my talk on Sunday a brother came up and said, “That was the best talk I heard.  You speak just like a General Authority.”  It just didn’t go in. 
 
Class member:  Sunday I watched our bishop get up and say, “We just have the best Relief Society president.”  She was just sitting there shaking her head.  It didn’t buoy her up.  I tried to be more aware of this with my kids. 
 
It becomes a habit.  You can become addicted to it.  You start judging your value by that outside input. 
 
Most parents don’t get a real payday until after your children are married and have their first baby.  That’s when they finally appreciate how great you are.

​“Thrust in Your Sickle” D&C 31:5 
Teaching Children to Learn and Love the Eternal Principle of Work
 
If you could use one principle that you teach through the semester to give them wings to fly this would be it.  This means working past the morning job list.  This means working past comfort.  When life gets tough or hard they want to back out and quit. 
 
I am child #8 of the 10.  Jenni & I have been married for 13 years.  We have one child he is 9 yrs old.  Our original goal was 7 kids.  Sometimes you don’t always get what you want.  That’s part of the lesson. 
 
This feeds any other principle of the gospel.  Either magnifies them to be powerful or diminishes them.  It is learning how to work hard. 
 
Open your mind and your heart to how you can teach this principle in your home.  More specifically how you can exemplify this example in your home.  I think sometimes the problem is that we ourselves don’t like to work.  Sometimes it’s important to learn the principle so you can teach your children.
 
Powerpoint will be available online….
 
 “An important element of doing the best we can as parents is to provide loving but firm discipline. If we do not discipline our children, society may do it in a way that is not to our liking or our children’s. Part of disciplining children is to teach them to work.”
                - James E Faust, Dear Are the Sheep That Have Wandered,                                           April 2003 General Conference
 
Discipline is the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.
 
Class member:  If you can work hard you can learn anything else.  Disciplining is not just punishing.  It’s training. 
 
Sister Tanner:  I think it’s the process of overcoming the natural man. 
 
You get in return what effort you put into it.  If we are trying to teach them a code of conduct we would be fools to not teach them to work hard and feel pain and muscle through it.  If we are teaching them that life is easy then we aren’t teaching them a code of conduct. 
 
 “One of the greatest values … is the virtue of honest work. Knowledge without labor is profitless. Knowledge with labor is genius.”
                                - President Gordon B. Hinckley
 
 “How I admire men, women, and children who know how to work! How the Lord loves the laborer! …Those who are unafraid to roll up their sleeves and lose themselves in the pursuit of worthwhile goals are a blessing to their families, communities, nations, and to the Church.
 The Lord doesn’t expect us to work harder than we are able. He doesn’t (nor should we) compare our efforts to those of others. Our Heavenly Father asks only that we do the best we can—that we work according to our full capacity, however great or small that may be.
 Work is an antidote for anxiety, an ointment for sorrow, and a doorway to possibility. Whatever our circumstances in life, my dear brethren, let us do the best we can and cultivate a reputation for excellence in all that we do. Let us set our minds and bodies to the glorious opportunity for work that each new day presents.”                   
- President Uchtdorf, Two Principles for Any Economy,                                 October 2009 General Conference
 
Class member:  Seeing work as an opportunity as an opportunity is a huge change for me.  Am I showing my children that it is an opportunity instead of a have-to-do list. 
 
We all are in that boat.  We think the drudgery.  We need to make the attitude adjustment ahead of me. 
 
Class member:  President Uchtdorf’s words are amazing.  I think I’m failing though.  I kind of get the why even bother and even try.  It’s more work to teach the children to work than it is to do it yourself.   We shouldn’t compare our efforts to their full capacity. 
 
The task you want them to do is so much more efficient if you do it themselves. 
 
Class member:  I raised an only child for 9 ½ years.  I have 2 other now, but I trained him to work hard.  We all do painful things, but muscle through it.  He doesn’t see the joy in work even though he works hard.  I learned my attitude needs to be better in getting through it.  I assumed he would feel them once he got there.  I need to be better at pointing out that there is joy and satisfaction.
 
There are things we can do as parents that can tie the end result to our efforts.  Look at what good that does.  Look how satisfying that is.  Because of that look at the results that come from the work.  Make sure you do push your children individually.
 
Class member:  My son decided he wanted to do violin.  We talked about it being something he would do all year.  I told him that he was going to push him through.  I know that it’s hard, but you can push through it.  I calmly told him he was allowed to cry, but he had to keep practicing.   By the end of his ½ hour he was doing a song.  His demeanor changed. 
 
Normally in those moments when those tears start coming we start to back into the corner and call ourselves a bad parent.  We talk ourselves into that corner.  Hopefully afterwards you talked to him about what he did.  You muscled your way through it and made it to the end of that one practice and you can see the results. 
 
I have a son who is a bit of a perfectionist.  If he doesn’t do it perfectly he starts to get frustrated and down on himself.  That causes the tears.  I tell him… “Jake stop!  Take a deep breath.  Listen I know this is huge.”  I treat him too much like an adult.  In your own way with your own child you have to talk them through these moments that are hard.  We talk about if we need to breathe or take a rest, but then muscle through it.  I try to bring it down off this ‘the world is ending’ thing. 
 
H. David Burton—Many have forgotten the value of work.  Some falsely believe that one no longer needs to work. David O. McKay “Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that power to work is a blessing, that love of work is success.”
 
Think about your banter about ‘when we retire life will be bliss’.  Are we sending that message that we get to vacation or are we teaching them that work is a gift. 

Moses 3:2   And on the seventh day I, God, ended my work, and all things which I had made; and I rested on the seventh dayfrom all my work, and all things which I had made were finished, and I, God, saw that they were good;
 

• God (The God’s work) 
• As they created the earth it was hard, messy, work.  It wasn’t a quick process.  They “commanded elements until they obeyed”.  Do we command our children until they obey.  That was work.  He was working. 
• Class member:  We did all this hard work and then looked at it and said ‘This is good’.
• Look at the end and say this is good.

 
Moses 3:15  And I, the Lord God, commanded the man, saying: Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat,
 

• Adam had purpose.  He had work to do. 
• Heavenly Father gave them a job.  You are needed.  Find joy and satisfaction in that process. 
• Sometimes we say that work is a function of the fall…the thistles and briars and weeds.  Adam was given a mandate to dress and keep the garden even before the fall. 
• Class member:  There is a difference between work and struggle.  He had to have opposition and struggle. 
• Adam was outside God’s presence and it made it difficult in a different way.  I believe that the hardness of work existed before the creation.  That’s what makes it change us.  That’s why we love that process.  The work IS success not the money. 
• If we believe David O. McKay who said work IS success and we believe that Adam and Eve had a satisfaction of success. 
• Class member:  I visualize the fall is climbing up the stairs as an escalator going down.  The fall happened and the escalator started moving down.
• I do think that in the fall we came into mortality….death and pain came.  It was more challenging to produce those same results.  New challenges were introduced.  There was more development in different ways.  We could learn all kinds of things when we are in the presence of God. 
• Class member:  I think the weeds thing is interesting.  I have always seen the fall as the introduction of weeds.  There was work that was fruitless…pulling weeds.  I think our work would be more productive. 
• In terms of tangible results.

 
 
Moses 4:23-25--And unto Adam, I, the Lord God, said: Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the fruit of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying—Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed shall be the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.  Thorns also, and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.  By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou shalt return unto the ground—for thou shalt surely die—for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou wast, and unto dust shalt thou return.

• “For thy sake”---Adam & Eve had to make a choice.  We need to remember that it is for ‘thy sake’.
• Class member:  When we give our children work as a discipline there is a whole thought process that comes from someone else.  You come to the end result that ‘I’m going to be working forever so I may as well learn to like it.’ 
• I hope that is what we are taking from this discussion.  I’m not punishing you with chores.  It’s not ‘punishment’. 
• I think that your consequences have to be a direct result of what they disobeyed.  It should not be, “You hit your sister go weed the garden.”  We have now used work as this punishment and our kids will react this way.  You have to be sure that you aren’t using work as a tool of punishment.  You shouldn’t ‘inflict’ work on other people.  You are teaching the wrong foundation. 
• Sister Tanner:  Sometimes what we consider work is appropriate.  If their job was to fold laundry and they did a sloppy job they may need ‘practice’ so they get another basket of laundry to fold.  You get more work because you need to learn to do it correctly not because you are a bad person. 
• Your room should be clean because you live in this family.  This is part of your daily chores and expectations. 
• Class member:  Work itself should be the success. What about rewarding work? 
• It is ok to reward and celebrate and create this feedback “Yay we did it!” It’s still because we tie it back to ‘we all worked hard together’.

 
Moses 5:1--And it came to pass that after I, the Lord God, had driven them out, that Adam began to till the earth, and to have dominion over all the beasts of the field, and to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, as I the Lord had commanded him. And Eve, also, his wife, did labor with him.
 

• They worked together.  Be together in purpose and also physically be together working together.

 
 
D&C 88:124--Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may beinvigorated.
 

• Idle—inactive or in use, without purpose or affect, pointless, spend time doing nothing.

 

• Sister Tanner: Be careful in understanding idle and leisure time are not the same thing.  They should not be pointlessly doing nothing.  Just because they finished homework and the job list they shouldn’t be doing gaming all the time.  They still need to have hobbies or work that is fun to do and learn how to do.  Things that are not mindless.  There are times when they need some let down time.  We need to be sure it’s not ‘idle’, but still doing something of value.

 
 
D&C 75:28--And again, verily I say unto you, that every man who is obliged to provide for his own family, let him provide, and he shall in nowise lose his crown; and let him labor in the church.
 

• The idler…he who does not labor will not give himself in the church.  We all have a place to serve and bless and lift and serve others.  It doesn’t matter what your assignment is.  It has everything to do with how you labor in the vineyard.

 
Mosiah 10:3-5 And it came to pass that we did inherit the land of our fathers for many years, yea, for the space of twenty and two years.  And I did cause that the men should till the ground, and raise all manner of grain and all manner of fruit of every kind.  And I did cause that the women should spin, and toil, and work, and work all manner of fine linen, yea, and cloth of every kind, that we might clothe our nakedness; and thus we did prosper in the land—thus we did have continual peace in the land for the space of twenty and two years.

• This speaks of everyone has a purpose.  Everyone has their own individual jobs.  They prospered in the land.  They had continual peace.  Wouldn’t that be great to have continual peace in your household? 
• Doing construction and working on the subdivision….I think we would have had a lot more bickering if we hadn’t been working hard.  We derived satisfaction from.
• Class member:  We have different sections in our yard.  I would go help them.  We had a different section for each day of the week.  It wasn’t torcher because we did it together. 

 
You need to allow yourself to work harder and then teach your children to work hard.
 
Advertisement---Exposure to TV ads (Power Point Slide)
 
The message we just talked about is being opposed.  Your children are seeing TONS of ads all the time.  There is a huge marketing push for children.
 
“Children younger than 8 years of age are cognitively and psychologically defenseless against advertising.”  (Look at the age of accountability)
 
The youth are the customers of the future.  If I can ingrain that early on then I can perpetuate sales in the future. 
 
Ad Exposure to Children---What messages are children receiving through advertising?  What ‘gospel’ is being preached?  How does this relate to the principle of work?
 
The real message in advertising….

1. Promotes and “I want” mentality
2. Impulses should not be denied
3. Pain should not be tolerated
4. Cure for pain is a product
5. If it is hard or difficult you should not have to do it.
6. Mix of entitlement and dissatisfaction

 
How do we win?  We do work and we teach work.
 
Children ages 3-5yrs (slide)
 
Sister Tanner:  I wouldn’t crumple the washcloths with them.  I would say…lay out the washcloth on the table and say let’s match the corners.  Teach them the beginnings of doing it right. 
 
You won’t get excellence out of a 3 year old, but they will continue to grow and progress.  Don’t lecture them because they aren’t doing it right.  They need to participate.  Quality doesn’t matter as much.  Visuals count!!!
 
Do different things.  Switch it up.  That creates a new interest level.  Don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t work forever. 
 
Sister Tanner:  When you go to a school store and look at their charts you can change those to chore charts if you want to.
 
You teach this principle early on!!!  It is so much harder to teach a 16 year old that has never had to work and it’s really hard. 
 
Children ages 6-11yrs (slide)
 
They identify themselves with what they are doing.  They are seeing how they fit into the greater scheme of things.  That is my ‘contribution’ to the family.  This is long lists of jobs.  This is a good time to push them beyond comfort.  Their ability has increased!  You need to start stepping away from them and allow them to work independently. 
 
Sister Tanner:  Working independently is SO important.  They are not just ‘gophers’…go get this and go get that.  You need to follow through and make sure the job got done.  You have to know if it is done to completion. Children will lie to you.  They don’t do it intentionally.
 
Give clear instructions at the beginning and then follow through.  If it’s work for work’s sake then the work is done and finished correctly or it’s not done.  It’s not you ratting on someone.  Look at the expectations in the beginning.  Have we met those expectations?  No…it looks like there is more to be done. 
 
Example:  There were 2 yards of dirt in the back of the truck.  He needs to work until it is done.  He buries the dog in the process.  You have to close the loop in the process.  This was regular Saturday work. 
 
Example:  Jake’s dog is a female.  We decided to breed her and she had 10 puppies.  He is 9.  Money is motivating him.  We are going to sell all of these puppies.  We decided that in his efforts for 2 ½ months he had specific things for him to do.  We decided to pay him $200.  We sold each of them for $650 each.  He had to clean up all the pee and poop. He was fine with that for the first couple of weeks.  He kept getting distracted.  We have $200 for you.  I will inspect your work and deduct $1 for each pile I find in the yard.  You have all afternoon.  He was glued to that job.  We had to adjust it a couple of different times to keep him working on the job.  In the end…we sold our last dog and we all sat down and we had money and we talked about the last 2 ½ months.  We talked about all the work we did.  Jake was like “I did a lot!”  Then Jenni had this cash and counted it all out on his hands.  We paid tithing and then we split the rest 50/50.  50% went to a mission and the other 50% he is getting to spend.  It was a rewarding experience for him.
 
Teaching children to work:  TIPS (slide)

• Be careful with “Your best is good enough for me”.  Make sure you know your children and that you are not being manipulated.  Push them!
• Class member:  How do you do that without making them feel like they never satisfy you?  Do you praise them when they do? 
• They will be discouraged and they will cry.  At the end you make sure it ends well!  Sometimes you will have these experiences.  We think it will be bliss and joy all the way through without sorrow.  That is what the TV and internet say.  They will experience pain and it will be hard.  Let’s breathe for a second.  We have to do this right.  I know it’s a ton of dirt!  Look how much you have already moved.  I can get you a popsicle and we can take a 2 minute break and talk about it.  Don’t do it for them.  You will have these discouraging moments and they are failing.  Know that you are teaching them well.  It’s not all the ease until failure number one.  It’s after they have passed failure 1, 2, & 3.  You did it!  You finished the whole thing. Don’t give up.
• Be consistent
• Be clear on your expectations.  What are the consequences of not getting the work done. 
• Tie the reward to the work or don’t.
• They have daily chores and jobs….give them ADDITIONAL work outside of homework, music, and sports.  That was an expectation.  She gave me jobs just because I’m part of the family and human just like she is. 
• We have a culture of work in our family.  Sometimes you have to think through what that looks like. 

 
Class member:  What do you say to them when they say, “That’s not on my job list?” 
 
You know your child better than I do.  You can take a couple of minutes and say, “I know there is a lot to do.  Part of it is that we are part of this family and we work together.”  It’s ok to be vulnerable to our kids that are 11 years old.  We have to work together to get everything accomplished.  Sometimes there is a negotiation.  Sometimes that is ok.  We as a family have to get this work done.  You are part of our family.  WE NEED YOU!  We need you to be a contributor to this family.  It’s going to take your time and creativity to do this. 
 
They won’t appreciate it until they move out.  You have a long haul ahead of you.  You need to do a better job of tying in at the end of the day.  If you spend week after week talking about how it helps the family and it helps you.  Look at how all of our pieces fit together in this puzzle. 
 
Teaching Children Finances: (slide)
Needs---Tithing, food, clothing, shelter
Less---Mission, savings, college
Wants---Toys, games, recreation, party
 
Pay tithing/fast offerings, then 50% goes to mission/college/savings and 50% is for them to use. 
 
Nobody gives you anything for free.  Don’t give them anything for free.
 
Allowances?  Is this free money or hard money earned?  Are they a major contributor to the family?  It must be tied to performance and what you are doing.  Don’t just pay them to be alive and keep your room clean. 
 
If we didn’t keep our room clean our mother would bag up everything on the floor and either take it to DI or she would keep it and we would have to buy back a bag of stuff. 
 
I made a promise that we would cover a lot of ground.  I hope that in that process you have taken note on how the Spirit has prompted you to teach your children and how to change your attitude about work and money.  If you sit down with these principles in mind the Spirit will teach you.  The world teaches a counter sermon to them every day.  Teach them the sermon of work and in doing it they will be powerful in so many other principles of the gospel.
 
8 Tips to Teaching Children To Work (Handout)—Page 70 Syllabus