Teach our Children

Today Callie and I were reading in " Preach My Gospel" and one of the "Consider This" questions was "What is my responsibility in helping others become converted?" Callie and I agreed that the people we were primarily responsible for were our children. We could teach them a lot of things that would help them to choose the right but I am sure that that is not the extent of our responsibility. My responsibility as a parent is to teach my children how to have a relationship with the Savior and the to feel the promptings of the Holy Ghost.

A couple examples will illustrate this principle. First from the most recent General Conference. There was a talk given by Elder Larry Y. Wilson in the April 2012 General Conference entitled "Only Upon the Principle of Righteousness". He describes an experience he and his wife had with one of their daughters. She was a rather talented soccer player and was on a team that made it to the championships and some of the games would be played on Sundays. He his wife did not want their daughter to play on Sundays but felt that it would be best if they counseled with her and then allowed her to make her own decision. They were surprised to find that based on perceived pressure from coaches and teammates she would play in the games that were held on Sunday. While they were very disappointed and wanted to force her to make the correct choice, they stood by their decision to allow her to make her own decision. On the day of the game Elder Wilson's wife took their daughter to the game and stayed to pick her up. As their daughter came off the field and talked with her mom she said "Oh, Mom, that felt awful.  I never want to feel like that again. I'm never playing another game on the Sabbath day." This experience shows the power of allowing children to make choices and letting them learn from them. They could have forced her to do it the right way, but allowed her to make her own decision and she was able to see the difference in her own life of having the spirit and not having the spirit. She now has a conviction of the need to keep the Sabbath Day holy. More importantly is that she now had an experience for herself with the importance of a gospel principle, she probably also felt a desire to repent for not keeping the Sabbath day holy and was able to feel the peace in her life after she had done so. This gave her an invaluable experience with the Savior and the Holy Ghost that cannot be provided by a parent making the decisions for her.

I too had a similar experience. My first few years of college I would regularly study on Sunday. I knew it was not the best choice but I felt that I had no other option especially when time was limited due to work load or my own procrastination. After performing poorly in my first semester after transferring to the University of Arizona I decided to test the principle of keeping the Sabbath day holy. I would not study or do any school work on Sunday. I had 6 days to do all of my school work but on the Sabbath day I would not. It was a difficult semester with the heaviest load that I had taken up to that point, through the semester I struggled to keep up with the load but I never felt tempted to study on Sunday. As the end of the semester approached I was doing well, and considerably better than the previous semester. I was expecting to get mostly A's and B's but there was one class which was an upper division math course that I was struggling with that I thought I might end up with a C in and I had resigned myself to that fact. After finals I was blown away to find that I had not only done better than I was expecting but I had earned straight A's in all of my classes, including the difficult math class. I had tested the words of the prophets on the matter of Sabbath Day observance and as a result I received an priceless experience testifying of the blessings of Sabbath Observance. From that semester through the following I never again cracked a school book and was greatly blessed in my studies as a result.

Now these two experiences are simple, yet they illustrate an important principle of the gospel. No person can be saved in the Kingdom of God without their own testimony of Jesus Christ and without living the gospel principles based on their own knowledge of the plan of Salvation. As parents it is our primary role to teach the gospel to our children and provide opportunities for them to experience the love of the Savior on a first hand basis. Even if that means, as in the experience of Elder Wilson's daughter, that the way that they come to know the Savior is through the principle of Repentance. In every way we need to provide opportunities our children to come to know the Savior personally.