Queen Easter

The other week we had Stake conference and one of the talks was about setting specific spiritual goals for our family. Now, our family has a mission statement that we have had for a long time and each week at family council we would set goals in one of four areas. The four areas are, 1) Love Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ 2) Love the scriptures 3) Love our family and 4) Develop our talents. So, each month we would set goals for area one the first week area two the second week, etc. etc. So this all sounds really good in principal but alas, we stunk at it. We discovered that a week isnt enough time to really put anything of value into place, so we decided, after stake conference, and much discussion, that we were going to pick one thing and work to implement it for longer and then add another thing and another. So, we have some things that we are good at...Family Home Evening, family scripture study, family prayer, family council...are you seeing a trend here?. We thought that we needed to improve on morning personal prayers and personal scripture study for all of us. So we reminded everyone to pray in the morning and we set aside 15 minutes after dinner when the whole family pulls out the scriptures and studies (Hannah and Carolyn read the real Book of Mormon but they read a Bible story book). It has been really fun for our family and a great addition to our routine. We are hoping it establishes a good habit that the kids will continue into their teenage years and beyond.

That brings me to my very funny story...we were all sitting down for scriptures and Katie was kind of bored with looking at the friend or some little Bible stories that we had so she was whining and Hannah says to her, *Katie, come here. I will read you the story of Queen Easter. I like Queen Easter.* Of course she was talking about Esther. After my little giggle about the Easter thing, I was just thrilled and thankful that we had started this in our family. What better woman is there to show my children our to be courageous than Queen Easter? What better example of faith than Ruth? Who better than Enos to talk about prayer? I love the sciptures and am so excited for my children to discover them FOR THEMSELVES. They have grown up hearing stories and being taught about the things in the scriptures and reading daily with their mom and dad but to have them discover for themselves the richness that our Heavenly Father has given us is beyond compare. I am so thankful for stake conference.