Cleave

I was reading through my notes from institute today, and I found the scratch paper that I used to prepare for visiting teaching last month.  The lesson was about our responsibility to the rising generation, and I remember thinking a lot about how the world is becoming so much more of a difficult place to raise a decent person than it has been in the past (or so I hear/assume).

But I couldn't help thinking that's why God has preserved this generation for this time.  They can handle it.  And I took it a step further.  That also why God preserved us for this time--we can handle raising children in the world today.  We can handle the responsibility to teach them right from wrong, to raise them in the gospel, and to help them maintain the inherent goodness that each of them is born with.  It will be hard, but if God trusts me enough to bring me to Earth now and to give me the children that will be mine someday, I trust myself to know how to be the mother that those children need.

On that scratch paper, I also found an acronym I made to remind us to raise our children inside the gospel to help them develop good traits and characteristics.  The hymn is number 307, "In Our Lovely Deseret," and you can click here to read it.  It give some good, basic guidelines as to what we should strive to teach our children.  The acronym I made was based on the line "They must listen and obey the gospel's sound."  When I read that line, I realized how critical it was.  We can't just teach our children the gospel.  We have to teach them how to hear it, and not only how to hear it, but also how to obey it, even when it is hard.

So my acronym was LOGS: Listen and Obey the Gospel Sound.  I made bookmarks for the girls I visit teach with this acronym and a tagline that read "Build the youth of Zion with LOGS."  It seemed a simple way to remember that if we raise our children with LOGS and Hymn #307  in mind, we'll do alright.

Choose to Cleave.
*Read my first post, "Preface," for more information about Cleaving