Come Follow Me

Last October at General Conference, the prophet President Russell M. Nelson opened the conference with these words,

"The long-standing objective of the Church is to assist all members to increase their faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and in His Atonement, to assist them in making and keeping their covenants with God, and to strengthen and seal their families. In this complex world today, this is not easy. The adversary is increasing his attacks on faith and upon us and our families at an exponential rate. To survive spiritually, we need counterstrategies and proactive plans. Accordingly, we now want to put in place organizational adjustments that will further fortify our members and their families.

For many years, Church leaders have been working on an integrated curriculum to strengthen families and individuals through a home-centered and Church-supported plan to learn doctrine, strengthen faith, and foster greater personal worship. Our efforts over these recent years to hallow the Sabbath—to make it a delight and a personal sign to God of our love for Him—will be augmented by the adjustments we will now introduce.

This morning we will announce a new balance and connection between gospel instruction in the home and in the Church. We are each responsible for our individual spiritual growth. And scriptures make it clear that parents have the primary responsibility to teach the doctrine to their children.² It is the responsibility of the Church to assist each member in the divinely defined goal of increasing his or her gospel knowledge."

As such, we were each given a book called "Come Follow Me" with outlined lessons to study with our families each week.  It's most certainly an inspired plan.  I can't help but notice the words I bolded and underlined about the church's objective to assist and strengthen and our RESPONSIBILITY to teach the doctrine to our children.  This is a shift for us as we have done some teaching at home but relied upon the primary teachers and Sunday school teachers to really teach them the doctrine I suppose.

So one of our first lessons was on being responsible for our own learning and we talked about the story of the 10 virgins and made our own oil lamps out of clay.  It was a fun time for all.  We even filled them with oil and a string to light to see how long they would stay burning.

I love the gospel, I love the church of Jesus Christ and the direction it gives us.  I appreciate so much the joy and peace we feel when we are trying to follow the Prophet and the Savior Jesus Christ.  So thankful for this new inspired program and I pray our family can be obedient to the council and avoid the fiery darts of the adversary.