Family Devotionals

7:15am is when our family gathers for family devotional.  Over the years the time has been altered to meet our varied schedules, and our devotionals have changed and evolved tremendously over the years as well.  Because I am an idea thief, and believe strongly that we parents need to stick together, support each other in our roles and share our techniques and ideas that WORK, I thought I would share what has been working for us.

As I mentioned, we've gone through several different "types" of devotionals.  From learning about and memorizing The Articles of Faith, reading scriptures together, using different manuals and books (such as the new nursery manual: Behold Your Little Ones) to our current "system."  Right now we are reading the Old Testament - the King James version, no picture version, the real thing, and it's going really well.  The older kids are enthralled. We read at night before we tuck everyone in, so in the morning we've been doing some fresh fun daily devotionals.  On Monday's we learn about a song and sing it from this book: 

It's been fun to read about what the composers were trying to do and how they came about writing the lyrics and music for these songs.  Plus the illustrations are beautiful and are inspiring and really invite a special spirit with the music.  Tuesdays we read a story from The Friend magazine.  Wednesdays we draw some cards from the game "Who said" and hear some scriptural quotes and try to guess who said it.  This requires everyone bringing their scriptures down and usually has us all laughing and having a good time quoting and guessing.  Thursdays somebody shares a favourite scripture with the rest of us, having the night before to prepare.  Fridays we have a feature film and watch one of the many wonderful clips that can be found on lds.org... again these get us thinking and talking well into breakfast.

I don't think it matters so much WHAT a devotional entails, but just that it happens.  I love our devotionals, because as crazy as our mornings may be, we have a few quiet peaceful moments together as a family, and a time to gather and pray together before we rush out into our separate days.  Having a "system" or a daily plan has worked well for me right now because it takes little to no planning and preparation.  I've done other devotionals where I was literally spending a half hour the night before getting ready for a five or so minute lesson.  Right now that's not an option for me, and so I'm grateful to have found this pace and this practical format that WORKS for us.