Family MTC

As I've been doing my final push at organizing the house before school starts and purging paper and clutter, I happened upon and read an Oct 2013 Friend article about an idea of having a "Family MTC". I thought it would be a great idea for us, as I've been searching for something we could do to make our Sunday more Christ centered and worshipful. Today we had our first session and I loved it.

It lasted an hour and went by quickly for all of us. We didn't have 4 different sessions like that article said they did. We just did journal writing today. After we read the article and started, I had several kids asking "why are we doing this?!" and "I'm not going on a mission yet!" and then we were able to review the quote we had just barely read by Elder Perry " and they each wrote it down on page one of their Family MTC journal about when we should start to prepare... "Start now to prepare yourself for the glorious service which is ahead of you as a missionary of the Lord Jesus Christ." I helped Abi and Lily, and with my and Melodie's artistic doodling, the boys caught a little bit of the vision that this could be a little fun.

They each wrote down what year they will be old enough to serve a mission. In journal, I wrote down all of the dates.

Corey doesn't think Lily will actually make it on a mission, he thinks the world will have ended by then ;) I'm trying to picture it... 2028... but I can't think that far. Doesn't that just seem like a very very long time away? But I bet it will be here before we know it and we'll either be surprised by how things are so much the same or by how things are so very different. I guess we'll have to wait and see! So, I put everything in a box and we'll get it out again next Sunday for session 2.

In this box we've got a little "missionary journal" for each kid (Composition notebook), a Preach My Gospel manual, my old MTC and scripture mastery cards and scripture timeline things, just a lot of fun churchy stuff. I also am including two books/journals where I took notes during my mission - notes from classes and conferences during my mission.

And, last but not least, for this Sunday, I have to show you how absolutely adorable Natalie looked today:

She was so goofy after church it took some true photographer skills to get her to hold still long enough to snap a picture to capture her beautifulness. Her brothers helped me out by making loud silly sounds to make her beam.

She, Sophia, and I took a walk around the neighborhood before dinner. Natalie toddled along beside me holding my finger and we slowly walked along looking at flowers and ants. Doesn't get much better than that.