Family Home Evening

In my faith we have Family Home Evening every Monday night. FHE (as it is condensed to) is a night where the family gathers together and sings songs, play games, have a short spiritual lesson and then of course...dessert! I grew up in a family of 7 kids and my parents were really good with keeping up with it, pretty much every Monday night. Now that I have little ones of my own I have a new found respect for the weekly night ritual.


Regardless of how difficult it is to get my kids to sit still, stop jumping on the couch, stop fighting with one another, stop jumping on me while I'm trying to give the lesson, FHE is something that I have a strong testimony of. One Monday night when I was younger and living in Mobile, Alabama we started FHE with a thunderstorm looming above. In the middle of our lesson our power went out. We got the flashlights and turned on the radio to listen to the weather report. They were saying there was a tornado in the area where we lived. We watched outside as the lighting flashed so bright and long it was like someone turned a huge light on above us for a few seconds then turned it back off again. We opened the windows in case there was a tornado our windows wouldn't shatter against the pressure. We finished as much of our FHE as we could and said our prayers. Going to bed was not easy to do for me and I was still a bit shaken from the whole experience.


The next morning when we woke, we walked outside our front door which faces the fences of houses that sit on a street perpendicular to ours. There was a straight path of destruction which went to the other side of the neighborhood. Then when we looked into our backyard, the fence that seperated us from our neighbors was completely demolished. There was a tornado, and it was in my backyard. Apparently it jumped over our house and then continued straight destroying all the fences in it's path. There were some damages done on some of the other houses, but our house was untouched.


That was and always will be my testament that FHE is ordained of God and that because we were doing the right thing we were blessed for it. So even though I just want to pull my hair out after FHE with my little "tornadoes" (they have even brought me to tears on more than one occasion) I will never give up on holding FHE. Who knows, maybe I'll be blest with reverent perfect children who remain enthralled at every gospel principle I discuss......maybe not, but I can still hope!