Diverse Family Home Evening

Monday nights are nights of gathering.  Tonight we hosted guests from Donetsk and Petrovski in Ukraine, from Armenia, Nigeria, Texas and Utah.  It was a wonderful and a diverse gathering.  We sang children's songs using our English song book and two Russian song books each with a different translation of the lyrics, so it felt as if we were singing a round ... all the same, but all different.  Everyone who came is working at gaining a new language, some more successfully than others.  Some of our guests were most comfortable speaking in Russian, but could listen in English while we could listen in Russian and only minimally speak in that language.  It was good.

Our plans for Family Home Evening began when a young man, newly baptized, suggested that he would be free tonight if we were holding home evening.  Then Elder Hatch got a call from two missionaries asking if they could bring a young couple they have been teaching to our family home evening.  Before he had a chance to inform me that we would have guests, I had already received a similar call from another young man who is preparing to submit mission papers.

Our discussion focused on eternal families. Elder Hatch shared the great joy that is a part of every day for us because we are able to be here in this "far-from-our-home" place together as best friends.  He explained the amazing feeling of completeness that each of the young men in our home might some day experience when they no longer have to go through life as wandering halves because they have found that special young woman who will make them whole.  He told the young husband who is investigating our beliefs that through a series of miracles, a sacred temple has been built on the soil of Ukraine in which that ordinance can be performed which will allow him to have his pretty young wife forever.

Elder Hatch continued by inviting this young husband and his wife to work with us gathering information about family members who have died without some of the blessings of Christ's gospel that we enjoy;  then, once personal baptism has been performed, they can join the trip we are planning to the temple in Kiev for the purpose of offering these same blessings to those we love who are no longer living here on earth. 

Their response was a resounding yes!, "When will it be?"  and "How soon after baptism might we go?"

How beautiful is God's plan for us!  How wonderful when the Spirit testifies to the heart that it really is so!