9 games you’ll want to bring on your next family vacation

This week I made time to peruse one of my old church journals. Like many of you, I capture impressions and highlights during meetings and often refer back to them when my spiritual tank runs low. I love turning the pages and bumping into notes from a sacrament meeting or fireside and feeling the rush of familiarity.

Visiting teaching. In years past, these two words spoken in any Relief Society gathering a evoked a myriad of conflicting emotions. Joy. Guilt. Gratitude. Annoyance. Peace. Guilt. Excitement. Frustration. Love. Guilt. Some loved the watchcare program set forth nearly two hundred years ago. Others, not so much. And most, whether you love it or not, have carried some guilt associated with it. Because that’s what we women do. When we don’t live up to the expectations of ourselves or others, we feel guilty. But now no more. No more guilt, and as of April 1st, 2018, no more visiting teaching.

“I have daughters, so I’m not worried.” I’ve heard this rationale over and over again as I’ve talked to parents about protecting children from pornography. I only wish it were true that 50% of our children were completely immune to pornography’s pull. But in fact, studies show that up to one-third of porn viewers are female, so girls may be more vulnerable than we once thought.

Let me share one example of a divine signature that has special significance for me personally. This was a tender mercy in the fullest sense of the word tender. My father, typical of many other men from his generation, did not express emotion openly very often. In all my growing-up years, I can never remember him telling me or any of my brothers and sisters that he loved us. We knew that he did, because he was a good father. He read stories to us almost every night. He taught us to work and how to be responsible.

There is another kind of reunion with departed family members. It sometimes occurs even before we enter into the spirit world.

This is a part of a new LDS Living series where we will be highlighting the Church gospel topics essays, which provide insights into often challenging gospel topics and help Church members “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

When Alex Boyé received a copy of the Book of Mormon from his ward mission leader along with a challenge to give the book away during the week, he never imagined fulfilling this duty could create national headlines.

This is the second article in a two-part series about Ron Leishman: his conversion, his faith, and his career. For more about how Ron's family converted to the gospel,click here.

The following is a part of Lucy Mack Smith's general conference address on the temple grounds in Nauvoo, Illinois, on October 8, 1845, a year after the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. This speech is the first account of a woman speaking at general conference and is part of the unprecedented Church history book At the Pulpit, which you can access for free on lds.orgor on your gospel library app. At the Pulpit spans 185 years of Church history and includes more than 50 groundbreaking discourses from LDS women.