A member of the Primary General Board and a BYU instructor taught a Women's Conference congregation how "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" can be brought to life in homes and families Friday, May 2.
Anne Hawkins, a member of the Primary General Board of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Kathryn Sargent, who received her masters degree from BYU in Marriage and Family Counseling, stood before 250 women in the BYU Conference Center and discussed how success and happiness in marriage and families can be achieved through living Christ-like principles.
"If we can learn and build the principles right now in our lives, it will help us build our future families," Amanda Andrews, 22, a BYU student studying elementary education said.
Hawkins and Sargent each took turns outlining the following nine principles from the proclamation: faith, prayer, love, respect, compassion, work, wholesome recreation, repentance and forgiveness.
Hawkins gave several suggestions for successfully teaching faith and prayer within the home:
* Teach by example
* Testify of the truthfulness of the gospel
* Teach children of faith and prayer during Family Home Evening and scripture study
* Make teaching more of a discussion
* Apply principles to children's personal lives
* Ask questions before reading scriptures
* Teach in less formal settings
* Let your family teach you
"It is through our simple small acts of striving to live in our day-to-day lives and the practice of personal gospel behaviors that faith will be 'caught as well as taught'," Hawkins said.
Sargent said love is a feeling and also a behavior that each individual has control over.
As family members serve and sacrifice for each other, actively receive love, observe others serving and sacrificing and ask God for the gift of love, love in the family will increase, she said.
"After all we can do, love is a gift our Heavenly Father gives us," Sargent said.
She said as parents treat their children as children of God and their spouses as equal partners, the level of respect within the home will increase.
"Respect comes from understanding who our family members really are - seeing beyond the ordinary everyday interactions to appreciate that our parents, children, siblings, and spouses are all children of God and potential gods and goddesses," Sargent said.
She said compassion is a principle that moves family members to action and creates hands-on, personal involvement within the family.
When individuals feel sorrow for another's pain, they must not simply feel, they must act, Sargent said.
Hawkins discussed the principles of work and wholesome recreation, providing four suggestions for teaching children the value of honest labor and hard work.
Parents should set an example for children by cheerfully helping with household chores, giving children tasks to match abilities, taking time to teach children how to succeed in responsibilities and expressing appreciation for their children's help, she said.
"In the process of teaching our children to work, we can help them learn to perceive the needs of others," Hawkins said.
She also suggested improving family recreation by making a family plan, doing age appropriate activities, monitoring the use of headphones, radios, CD players, TV and Internet, eating dinner together as a family, having a family motto and developing and keeping good family traditions.
"You have to plan for fun, because fun doesn't just happen," said Hawkins.
Sargent said to improve the level of repentance in the home, family members should practice empathy, examine their own motives, be the first to confess and apologize, tell their story, include their feelings and search for solutions.
Remembering the atonement, praying and being empathetic are three suggestions Sargent gave to increase forgiveness.
"What a blessing it is to consider that the lord has given us a mission statement on families," Hawkins said. "The family proclamation is inspired for our time when the Lord knew what we would be going through."
Copyright Brigham Young University 8 May 2003
