"Love Notes"

Feb. 15th, 1993 Journal Entry

Yesterday was our Meadows Ward Conference.  Bishop Judd gave an exceptional talk of turning to the Savior to help us. ....

 President O'Roarke,  (stake pres.) sensing the power and magnitude of what Bishop Judd had just taught, stood up to speak.  He said that he could add nothing to what Bishop Judd had just said.  So Pres. O'Roarke just bore his testimony and then asked all the youth and children in the ward to go home tonight and tell your parents that you love them.  He then pleaded with parents to go home and take each child in their arms and express their love to them.  It was quite touching and something I really wanted to do. I was hoping that what Pres. O'Roarke had asked us to do had affected Jared in the same way as it affected me.  It's so much easier to follow our leader's counsel and  advice if both parents are on the same wave length.

We came home from church and didn't really have a chance to discuss sacrament meeting with each other.  Jared had to hurry back to a meeting and when he got home, I had a meeting to go to.  Then we had dinner and the Jared hurried off to another meeting. He finally returned home about 8:00 pm.

I had already started to gather the kids together for scriptures and prayers.  Since they didn't have school on Monday (pres. day), I told them they could stay up late and watch Dick Tracy.  It started at 9:00.

The boys were getting restless so I asked Brandon to think of two reasons why he loved Daniel.  Derrick was to think of two reasons why he loved Brandon.  Travis was to do the same for Derrick and Daniel was to the same forTravis.  We then went around to each child and Jared and I expressed our love for them and why they were special to us.  Then each boy told the brother he was assigned to, why he loved them.  We then all told Noelle why we loved her.

After, Jared and I expressed our love for each other.  Jared really shared some sweet, emotional feelings with us about his love for me .  There was such a warm spirit in our home.  Jared looked at his watch and it was 8:55 and he knew the boys had wanted to watch Dick Tracy, so he said he'd just read his favorite scripture instead of having our regular scripture study out of Helaman.  Well Derrick and  Brandon asked if they could share their favorite scriptures also.  Jared told them that their movie started in five minutes and Derrick's response to that was: "What's more important, a movie or what we are doing"? Jared and I just looked at each other and smiled.  They each got up and shared their scriptures and then bore their testimonies to us. They were so sincere and guided by the Spirit.

Jared ended by sharing his personal testimony with our family.  What a wonderful evening!  We then knelt together for our family prayers and individual prayers.  Heavenly Father has really blessed our family as we have sought to be diligent in our scripture study and family prayers.

Oh...and thank goodness Jared and I were  both touched and inspired by what Pres. O'Roarke had asked us to do.  If not, I don't think our family would have every had that wonderful, spiritual experience that we had last night.