Paisley: Hey everybody, welcome back Paisley imperfect here and
today, we're going to talk some more about families, like most
families that I know I am part of a family group chat thread.
It's not really a chat app, it's a text thread, but whatever,
whatever you want to call it, call it a group chat. It's an
interesting thread chat. I'm probably gonna go back and
forth. It's just annoying, but it consists of both of my
parents, who have been divorced for over a decade, both my
sisters and their husbands, my brother and my husband and me,
my brother and one of my sisters are inactive and have been for a
very long time. We share big news. We share little things. My
husband and brother in law like to send funny videos and memes.
My mom likes to update us on little things that are going on
in her life in Montana. And my dad likes to send us pictures of
his dashboard in Arizona when he's hitting another record heat
day it's just, it's, it's an interest. We're, we're an
interesting group, just like anybody's family, right? On
Saturday, I happened to be at the beach. We had a ward beach
thing Saturday morning, so I was there, and my kids were playing
with their friends. My husband was digging in the sand, helping
him build a sandcastle. A lot of the people were out in the
water. I just I found myself alone, just kind of sitting
there, enjoying the beach. And my dad sent a text on this group
chat, and he said I listened to a very awesome conference talk
just now. As you can tell from the date It's an oldie but a
goodie. I remember hearing this talk originally, and it made a
difference in my life. You should listen to it. It will
make a difference in your life, too. And I was like, kind of
looked around. I'm by myself, so I'll pull it up. The first thing
I noticed, it was dated 1979 My dad called it an oldie, but a
goodie makes me an oldie. Fine, whatever. But then I also
remembered that that's the same year that President Kimball gave
that awesome talk that we've been talking about for months
now. And so I was intrigued and decided I was just going to read
it. It was called, oh, gosh, did I not even write down what it
was called. It was called, thus I have been taught, or something
like that. Oh, hold on, I have it right here. Therefore I was
taught by Theodore a Theodore Tuttle, therefore, I was taught.
Okay, so I'm gonna, I want to read one quote from it really
quick, and as you listen, let me know if this sounds familiar to
you, how would you pass the test parents, if your family was
isolated from the church and you had to supply all religious
training. Have you become so dependent on others that you do
little or nothing at home? Tell me how much of the gospel would
your children know if all they knew is what they had been
taught at home? Ponder that I repeat. How much of the gospel
would your children know if all they knew is what they had been
taught at home, remember the church exists and then in
italics, to help the home parents, the divine charge to
teach has never been changed. Do not abdicate your duty. Sound
familiar? 1979 I was not quite a year old when the talk was
given. My parents would have been 22 at that time. And then
so 1979 and then President Nelson, then focused on it again
in October of 2018 when I was 39 and had a two year old and was
pregnant with twins. So my parents got this information,
and now I'm getting this information too. It's not new,
it just had to be rebranded so that we could see it again. All
right, so here's another quote from this talk. Excuse me, the
Lord organized the family unit in the beginning. He intended
that the home be the center of learning, that the father and
mother be teachers. He has given counsel that applies whether the
family lives within or without the boundaries of an organized
unit of the church. He kind of starts this talk referring to
families who don't live within an. Organized ward or branch. He
talks specifically about military families. There's a
family out in India who did not live close enough to a ward or a
branch to be able to go and so he's talking about how for them,
it was already up to them. They were their children's sole
source of gospel education. And then he cites four different
scriptures as examples about the council that's been given to the
family. I'm not going to read them here, but I'll tell you
what they were, and then you can go read them, and I'll make sure
that they're linked in the description Doctrine and
Covenants. 6828 Doctrine and Covenants. 9336 and 40. Mosiah,
415, and Proverbs. 22 verse six. Then he continues. The Lord
fixed families to give parents more influence on children than
all other agencies combined. There is safety in this
arrangement. It provides parents the privilege, the awesome
privilege, of molding the family, I'm sorry, of molding
the life and character of a child, even though outside
agencies have influence. So as parents, it's our job. It is why
we are here to influence our children. Now, again, I say this
all the time. I'm not here to judge you, your parenting style,
your family, how you run things. I don't care if you have family
night on Monday night or Saturday night or I'm not here
to judge you and how you run your family. I'm here to share
something that you may have missed. I mean, like I said, I
wasn't even a year old when this talk was given, I for sure
missed it until now. So I'm here sharing something I'm learning
with you. Hopefully we're learning this together. I
apologize for the background noise. Of course, the gardener,
my neighbor's gardener, would come right now. Okay, but did I
really miss it because President Nelson gave it again. So sure I
missed it in 1979 but as a parent, did I really miss it so
39 years later, in October of 2018 President Nelson said it
this way. He said, As Latter Day Saints, we have become
accustomed to thinking of church as something that happens in our
meeting houses supported by what happens at home. We need an
adjustment to this pattern. It is time for a home centered
church supported by what takes place in our branch, Ward and
stake buildings. And then, I don't know if you remember, I
didn't remember, but he, President Nelson, introduced it,
and then he turned it over to elder cook to actually, kind of
fill in the blanks, like give the full overview of come follow
me. Give, give us the announcement that church was
going from three hours down to two, he turned it over to elder
cook to do all of that. So elder Cook said this, but there is so
much more to this adjustment than just shortening the Sunday
meeting house schedule. President Nelson has
acknowledged with gratitude how much is being accomplished as a
result of your faithfulness to previous invitations. He and the
entire leadership of the church. Desire to bring greater gospel
joy to parents, children, youth, singles, the elderly, new
converts and those people. The missionaries are teaching
through a home, centered church supported, balanced effort. So
President Nelson and elder Cook, they were a little bit less
direct, maybe a little less harsh than elder Tuttle, but
basically they said the same thing children should be
learning inside the home, and our efforts at church should be
supporting what they are learning at home. I'm going to
go back to elder Tuttle for a couple more quotes. Here's the
first one. He said, We have been counseled to become self reliant
and independent. Temporally, it is as important spiritually,
suppose conditions changed. Suppose you could not receive
all the services to which you have become accustomed. Suppose
that much more responsibility were placed on your shoulders to
care for the spiritual welfare of your family. Surely you
cannot study the Scriptures without knowing that perilous
times are coming. Will you be unaffected?
We've seen that in our own lives. Within the last five
years, we have seen suppose you could not receive all the
services. Which you have become accustomed remember when
everything shut down and we had to do sacrament meetings in our
homes? Remember when all of the services went away, except for
those that were deemed essential? We have seen that
happen in our lives. Okay? So just one more look at the
timeline. 1979, elder Tuttle gives the council. 2018
president, now president, President Nelson announces, come
follow me and refocuses us on home, centered. Church,
supported church. 2019 is when Come follow me begins. So they
announced it in October of 2018 and it started in January of
2019 and then in 2020 everything shuts down, everywhere, and
elder Tuttle's rhetorical question became a reality for
all of us. But now we are in 2024 living in a completely new
normal, and yet, this last quote that I'll share before I close
is some of the best parenting advice that I've seen. Elder
Tuttle tells us how to do all of these things. He asked all of
those hard questions. He got us all thinking like, oh, oh, my
goodness. What if it was just up to me? What if? What if we
couldn't worship anymore in our churches? What if it was just me
and my kids? What then? What? So here's what he said. He said,
prepare now. Take steps now to strengthen your family. And then
he tells us how spend time together, establish and maintain
family traditions that build happy memories, maintain a
discipline with fair rules and regulations, express
unconditional love to one another through word and act,
develop within each one self esteem and self respect by
loving and believing in Him and having him belong, provide
security that children need. These are the values of which
life is made, establish these and then we won't need to worry
about the frills that so often concern us. He boiled it down to
love, teach respect and safety, security. I hope that someday,
oh, it's so much, it's so much, but we can do it. Heavenly
Father wouldn't have given us that charge if we couldn't do
it, and remember that he does. He's not asking us to be perfect
today, because being perfect today or becoming perfect in the
next year, 10 years, 20 years, that's not the expectation. The
expectation is not that we become perfect. The expectation
is that we keep trying and that we have that daily repentance in
our heart, that we are just trying to get just a little bit
better every day, just a little bit better, and we don't have to
be a little bit better in everything every day. We can be
a little bit better at our prayers today and a little bit
better at Repentance tomorrow, and a little bit better at
scripture study on Wednesday, and a little bit better at being
on time, I don't know, a little bit better at whatever it is
we're working on right, a little bit better on at the Next thing
on Friday. Little tiny steps. That's the expectation. The
expectation is not that we are perfect today or tomorrow or the
next day or 20 years from now. I hope that someday my girls will
think of me the way that Nephi thought of his parents, that
they were born of goodly parents, that their mom did the
best she could and taught them everything that she knew. And I
hope that they know that I have a testimony of Jesus Christ. I
also want to be able to teach them how to recognize how to
recognize the adversary in all things. How to see him for what
he is, as a destroyer of peace, families love. He tries to make
it look like he's making he tries to make love look like
something it's not. He tries to make families look like
something they're not supposed to be, and he tries to make
peace look like something that will never actually produce
peace. And I hope to be able to teach my daughters that so that
they can stand up against it and know the difference. I. Yeah,
but all I can give them is my best, and hopefully a little bit
better every day. That's all I've got. And I truly believe
that my heavenly Father knows that. Thank you, my friends, for
being here with me. I really do appreciate your time. Keep
learning, keep growing, keep trying. We'll get there together
and be of good cheer until next time you.