A House of God

   So, the girls and I have not been seeing quite eye to eye on a few things around the house lately, mainly chores.  They don’t seem to like doing them.  Truthfully I don’t like doing them either so we all put them off as long as possible and then, when it gets time to clean, they don’t understand why all of a sudden mom wants them to finally do their chores? That’s when we start having problems.  After lots of  timeouts, tears, and temper-tantrums I am finally ready to come out of my room and talk to them (just kidding J).

   I decided today that during our devotional we were going to talk about a few scriptures that dealt with cleaning. D&C 132:8 - “Behold, mine is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and not a house of confusion.” and D&C 88:119 - “Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;”  We talked a lot about what those scriptures meant, what we had in our home and what we didn’t.  We also talked about all the things that we wanted in our home.  Then, we talked about Lehi’s vision.  Brian has a beautiful print of a painting of Lehi’s vision, so I had the girls bring it upstairs and we read it out of the scriptures and then talked about all the parts.  It was a really good devotional.  My favorite part was when Allison asked “Mom, how can you get lost in the mist if you are holding on to the Iron Rod?” I just looked at her and told her, “Sweetie, that’s the whole point! If you always hold on to the rod – you will never get lost!” She just smiled.

  In primary in our ward, they have introduced the ‘reverence jar’. It is a big glass jar that when the kids are being reverent, a member of the presidency will put cotton balls into.  If they are being irreverent, they will take cotton balls out.  When the jar gets filled – the kids get to have a popsicle party at the next primary activity.  (Awesome idea Dede!!) So I decided that we were going to copy the idea at our house – but it is going to be our ‘CTR Jar’ instead of a reverence jar and when it gets filled with cotton balls we will all go to a movie or do something fun as a family!  The girls and I bought the supplies yesterday and as part of our devotional activity, I wanted to make something cute to put on it.  I couldn’t find any cute sayings – so I decided that we should write a poem.  I really wanted the kids to write it, so I showed them how. 

• First – we made a list of the things we wanted to have in our poem. Here is our brainstorm list :  family, service, House of Order/God, Iron Rod, CTR, chores, home, everyday
• Second – Allison came up with the first line – Every day I’ll Choose The Right, but then she couldn’t come up with a rhyme for right – so we went to www.rhymezone.com and I typed in the word right.  It gave us all the words that rhyme with right, so I gave her the options and her and Chloe came up with a concept for the second line.  They had a little trouble with the cadence (they are only 6 & 7) but it was about serving their family with all their might.
• Third – we talked about how we wanted the poem to finish (I helped them with this part and kind of gave them the last line)
• Fourth – They found a rhyme on their own and wrote the third line and now we have a finished product on our CTR Jar!!!  We also submitted their poem to The Friend!!

   I am so proud of my girls!  AND their poem is pretty terrific if you ask me!  So – here is Allison & Chloe’s poem, and a picture of our CTR Jar!!

A HOUSE OF GOD (by Allison & Chloe Furse)

Each day I’m going to Choose The Right,

And serve my family with all my might!

I’ll hold on tightly to the Iron Rod,

To make our home a House of God!