2-Day FHE

The following quote changed my outlook on FHE and inspired me to make a change to the way we did it:  

“Regular participation in family home evening will develop increased personal worth, family unity, love for our fellowmen, and trust in our Father in heaven. It is our promise that great blessings will come to all who conscientiously plan and hold weekly family home evenings.”

We went from a sporadic, unplanned FHE to a 2-day FHE system. And we LOVE it!

2 day FHE? You are probably thinking right now, “we barely have time for one FHE, let alone 2”. Well, let me explain why this system of FHE has worked perfectly for our semi-newlywed stage without kids. (But even if you are not in this category, I think it would work for any life stage really.) And just as some background, let me say that after many other failed-attempts to get into a regular FHE schedule, this has been working great since the beginning of the year. So we’ll continue on doing it this way until we need to change again.

How we do it:  On Sunday evenings, we do the song and lesson portion of our FHE. Even though it is only the 2 of us, my husband will pluck out the notes on the keyboard and I’ll sing the song. We get some good laughs out of this since neither of us are very musically-talented.  If he’s really good at multi-tasking, he’ll sing too. After the opening song and prayer, one of us will do the lesson. We switch off every-other week doing the lesson. Lessons come from Preach My Gospel, conference talks, Mormon Doctrine, and other church-related material. Since we don’t have kids, we usually get into some great discussions that sometimes last hours. Then, we sing the same closing song every week “Families Can Be Together Forever.” But this time, my husband switches the keyboard into the organ and again, it just makes us laugh. If we are lucky, we’ll have a good treat afterwards.

We leave the activity for Monday nights. Partly why we like this 2-day FHE so much is because when we were growing up, either the lesson or the activity would get shortened because of lack of time. This way, however, we get enough time for both. Our activities are different each week. Some of our favorite activities include: going on a run/walk, watching a movie, making a fancy dessert, trip planning, shopping, or doing something holiday related like carve pumpkins, color eggs, rake leaves, etc. Sometimes we have a few hours for an activity and sometimes we have only 20 minutes. We’ll plan the activity accordingly. Since we don't have kids, we'll occassionally do the activity with friends.

We’ve learned that consistency is the most important. We’ve also learned to be flexible. Even if we have a busy Sunday evening with family events or firesides, we’ll still try to squeeze in a lesson or do it on Monday.

We have definitely felt the blessings that comes from having FHE.

pumpkin patch fhe activity October 2010