Lesson for August 9, 2015

Today our lesson was given by Megan Miller on Chapter 15 “The Sacred Callings of Fathers and Mothers.” She started with “A Father’s Calling is Eternal.” Our pattern for fatherhood is our Heavenly Father. We watched the video from Mormon Message, “Heavenly Father, Earthly Father.” The video tells one father’s perspective of what he works for to provide for his family and how they trust him to provide for them. Even though he’s not there all the time, everything they have comes because of his efforts. Comments from the sisters equated what an earthly father does with what Heavenly Father provided us, his children, with. Heavenly Father provides us with this earth and all that is on it, but he also provides us with opportunities and he provides us with unconditional love. Heavenly Father does not expect us to fail. He always wants us to succeed. So as we watch our children we need to expect us to succeed even though it takes a long time. Megan said that as a teacher she sees parents who do not expect their children to succeed and she feels like that is wrong. How can we support our husbands and the men in the ward? We need to be the women who do not hold back our men. They need to know that everything at home is taken care of. We need to give our husbands the opportunity to exercise their priesthood. Lisa Anderson said that as a single sister, she tries to work with her home teachers to make their jobs work. Megan said that right after her bishop was called when she was a teenager, her bishop’s wife had triplets in addition to their other three children. She said the whole ward rallied around and helped take care of the children. Lisa says that she sees co-workers who get tons of phone calls about mundane stuff from home that interferes with their work. Jill Judd said the positive things we say are like little raindrops that water and nourish. It is important to value them and tell the men in our lives how much we value them. President Benson said his home was a refuge for their family with mother and father who protected and nurtured them. What can we do to provide a refuge for children? We can God will never leave us alone. God has promised he will take care of us.