Counseling with you Spouse and Families

In class this week we were able to study the way the Prophet, his counselors, and the 12 apostles meet in counsel each week. This is the process they use.

• First, they gather together before the meeting starts and express their love for each other
• Next, they open the meeting in prayer to invite the Spirit to be with them
• Then, they discuss important matters and try to discern what the Lord would have them do. During this discussion, each member is given the opportunity to share what they think the Lord would want. They continue to discuss until they reach a consensus, or every agrees that this is what the Lord wants. If consensus is not reached, they address the topic another time.
• After that, they close with prayer. 
• Before they leave they have refreshments together and again bond together.

There are some other important aspects to this meeting.

• They meet in the Temple: a very sacred place
• They always meet at the same time: they have regular meetings that allow everyone to plan their schedules to be there
• They have an agenda: everyone will be able to prepare for what is going to be discussed

This form of counseling that the Prophets follow is an example of what should take place in our homes. We should have regular meetings where members will feel loved in expressing what they think the Lord would have the family or couple do. In our families we should seek to find what the Lord would have us do, for his plan is always better than anything we can come up with. Inviting the Spirit through prayer will help us discern what the Lord would have us do. Meeting in our homes (a sacred place), at the same time, with an agenda, will allow everyone to be present having prepared before hand. I know that if we follow the example of the prophets, our families will be blessed with direction from our Heavenly Father.

The Divine Role of Mothers

I love all of these quotes about Mothers and their divine role in our Heavenly Father's plan.

Elder Cook: 

"No woman should ever feel the need to apologize or feel that her contribution is less significant because she is devoting her primary efforts to raising and nurturing children. Nothing could be more significant in our Father in Heaven’s plan."

President Hinckley: 

"Encouraged them to leave their employment and give their individual time to their children."

"The greatest job that any mother will ever do will be in nurturing, teaching, lifting, encouraging, and rearing her children in righteousness and truth. None other can adequately take her place."

"As the years pass, you will become increasingly grateful for that which you did in molding the lives of your children in the direction of righteousness and goodness, integrity and faith. That is most likely to happen if you can spend adequate time with them."

President Benson: 

"Mothers…are, or should be, the very heart and soul of the family. No more sacred word exists in secular or holy writ than that of mother. There is no more noble work than that of a good and God-fearing mother."

"But a mother's role is also God-ordained. Mothers are to conceive, to nourish, to love, and to train."

"The Lord clearly defined the roles of mothers and fathers in providing for and rearing a righteous posterity. In the beginning, Adam--not Eve--was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's calling is in the home, not in the market place."

"Mothers in Zion, your God-given roles are so vital to your own exaltation and to the salvation and exaltation of your family. A child needs a mother more than all the things money can buy. Spending time with your children is the greatest gift of all."

President Kimball: 

"Become a career woman in the greatest career on earth--that of homemaker, wife, and mother. It was never intended by the Lord that married women should compete with men in employment. They have a far greater and more important service to render."

"Her place is in the home, to build the home into a haven of delight."

"No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother--cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one's precious husband and children. Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home, wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and, unembarrassed, help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously await. When you have fully complemented your husband in home life and borne the children, growing up full of faith, integrity, responsibility, and goodness, then you have achieved your accomplishment supreme, without peer, and you will be the envy [of all] through time and eternity."

President McKay: 

"Motherhood is the greatest potential influence either for good or ill in human life."

"This ability and willingness to properly rear children, the gift to love, and eagerness, yes, longing to express it in soul development, make motherhood the noblest office of calling in the world."

"She who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters, whose influence will be felt through generations to come… deserves the highest honor that man can give, and the choicest blessing of God."

True Love

“True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well-being of one's companion.” -President Gordon B. Hinckley

I know that when we put aside our wants and needs and instead focus on our spouse's happiness, our marriages will become celestial!