Laron: On our piano sits this little hippopotamus, holding in its mouth various colored index cards. On each card, my wife has written an inspirational or humorous thought, and added little illustrations. One of the cards states: "I'm so far behind I think I'm first." This how we feel about our assignment tonight. We have been assigned to tell what we are doing and have done in our home to try to establish an Eternal Family. Probably, our ideas are already being practiced in your homes, or you have moved on to better ideas, so it's not that we think that what we are doing is first or new, it's just that we happen to have the assignment.

I'd like to introduce our family...We'd like to take you back to an evening when we were all together preparing for tonight.

Adin, remember our talks are to center around things we are doing to establish an Eternal Family. You're going to be talking about journals and the importance of keeping them. You might include that tapes are one way of keeping a journal. Let's hear what you are going to say.

Adin: About three years ago, each of us kids was given a blank tape. Every now and then we have recorded various experiences on them. We'd like to play a few examples of the different ways tapes can be used. Here's one that Ethan recorded about three years ago. Younger kids need someone to help them with the date, and sort of interview them, or give them ideas of what to talk about. (Play tape)

Many times older people haven't written down their life stories, and can also be interviewed on tapes. Here's an example of my grandfather, Loyn Blacker, talking to our great-uncle Will, who has since died. (play) When Grandpa and Grandma Blacker were on their missions in England, they would read stories on tapes, and send them to their grandkids. These have been great to have and will be here for later grandchildren and great-grandchildren to listen to. (play)

We have been told by our leaders that we should be keeping journals. My mom has kept a journal since before she was married. We've really enjoyed taking an evening and reading about things that happened to us years ago. Some are serious things, like when Ryan cut the cornea of his eye with a knife. Some are spiritual, some are just the day to day things we always do, and some are funny, like the time mom had the mumps just a few years ago. She said the only good thing about having a childhood disease at her age, was that it proved she wasn't as old as she looked! One night when she was lying in bed, she wrote down the conversations of the rest of us as we helped Dad cook dinner.

Our folks have tried to help us start the habit of keeping journals by starting journals for us when we were little. Each one of us have a book that we call our Experience Books. Before we go to bed at night, we would tell mom things that we had done during the day, and she would write it down in our own words. When we were too little to talk much, she would write the things we did. We didn't do this every night, and sometimes after a particularly hard day, she could hardly remember how many kids she had, let alone write things down.

Here are some of the things from our journals: On Feb.6, 1979, Ryan said, "Mama, babies are soft, and mamas are soft, but daddies are not soft. Our daddy is scratchy, but we still love him." When I was five year old, Mom wrote, "My, but you were a polite boy to let me come down the stairs first." I said, "I was afraid you'd step on me if I came first!"

When we got older, we start to write things for ourselves. Lately, we've tried taking one time a week, usually Sunday or Monday nights, and all writing in our journals at the same time. It's easier that way, and we can help each other remember things that happened. I hope all of us try harder to keep journals as we have been asked to do. If all of our ancestors had kept journals, we would know more about them.

Laron: That's good, Adin, speaking of ancestors, Jennifer, you[re going to talk about an experience of one of your ancestors. Have you thought about which one?

Amy: I want Jenny to tell about Great-great Grandpa Dudley Leavitt and his five wives and how he explored the country and tried to keep peace with the Indians with Jacob Hamblin.

That's a good story, Amy, but I'm going to tell another one. My great-great grandmother Harriet Brown was born in England in 1852 (show transparency) Her parents were members of the Church before she was born, and when she was sixteen, the family came to the United States and moved to Wyoming. She later got married and raised a family. When her children were grown, she and a good friend left their husbands at home to travel back to England to visit relatives there. On their way back to the United States, they sailed from Glasgow, Scotland on the ship, "City of Rome". There were 1,200 people on the ship, some of whom were LDS missionaries returning from their missions to Scotland, along with a group of church members immigrating to the US.

On the night of Aug, 31, 1898, as the ship neared New Foundland, in dense fog, it hit an iceberg 175 feet high, and 200 feet long. The ship ran right up onto the ice, and stuck there. People wee frightened and tried to get the lifeboats ready. Grandma and her friend looked at that cold, icy black water, and decided they would father die when the ship went down, than freeze to death in the dark in the lifeboats. They were frightened that they would never see their families again, when the returning missionaries called some of the people together to pray. One young missionary took charge and really impressed Grandma with the way he handled things. Just after they had prayed, the ship silently slid off the ice, and by pumping out the water that had leaked in, they were able to safely travel the 1,000 miles to New York. When they arrived, the captain said , "By the grace of God we were saved!" This picture is a copy of the copy of the actual drawing that appeared in the New York newspaper that Grandma bought the day they arrived in New York. (transparency) She told the story many times to her family, and told them about the missionary that took charge. She found out his name, and said, "Just you mind, someday he'll be a great man in the church." She never lived to see it, but her family remembered her words when David O. McKay was made President of the Church. (show transparency)

When I read stories like these, I feel a love for these people whom I've never met, who are part of my family. I'm grateful for family histories that have been compiled by others of the family, that help us know more about our ancestors. We need to be concerned about them. They did so much to prepare the way for us. We need to help them by finding out who they were and seeing that their genealogical and temple work is done. I like this poem by carol Lynn Pearson, called "To My Ancestor"

I wonder...
Did I peek thru the veil impatiently
While you slowly forged the bonds
That brought me to mortality?
And do you now stand
Where I stood yesterday,
Your cheek pressed against Heaven's curtain
And pray, pray fervently
For me to forge the bonds
That bring us to eternity?

Ruth: That is an interesting experience, Jennifer. Laron, it says here that you're going to talk about family activities and how we try to make our family eternal.

Laron: Well, I suppose I'll include things like kneeling together before breakfast and supper each day for family prayers, and each taking a turn. Then for the past five years, we have been reading the scriptures for half an hour before breakfast as often as we could. We would start reading at 6:30 around the dining room table. During this time, you, mom, would fix breakfast and listen as we read, and join in the discussions. You had accepted our ward's Relief Society to read daily a chapter from the scriptures, which you usually does in the evening. We take a lot of time discussing our reading with help from supplementary books suck as "Treasures From the Book of Mormon", and "A Companion to the D&C. We are currently reading the Book of Mormon, and we take turns, with each of us reading five verses. We have a stack of the blue or maroon paperback books close to the table. Those who are just learning to read, are helped to pronounce new words. This slows us down, but we feel it helps form a habit of daily scripture reading, and also helps improve their reading skills. The little ones who don't read, still like to bring their copy of the Book of Mormon and pretend to read. Three year old Megan's copy just happens to be a Spanish edition, but she reads Spanish just as well as she reads English.

On Monday nights, We have a lesson from the FHE manual, and assign children parts, prayers or musical numbers. We assign the household chores for the coming week, and talk about any problems that need to be taken care of.

In addition, we try to attend family reunions. Amy and I have just returned from a Waite Family Reunion in southern Utah, and we will attend a few other reunions this summer. We have completed our four generation sheets for our immediate family, but find that under the new program, we have some corrections to make, so are working with other family members to correct them.

We prefer to spend our spare time together as a family, and have many activities we're interested in doing together, such as canoeing, since we live near the river, reading many good books aloud together, playing various games from Monopoly to softball. We have a large garden and yard where we spend time working and playing together. Our children claim their siblings are their best friends, and enjoy doing things together.

Ruth: I'm going to talk about one of the things that must be done before a family can be together throughout eternity, and that's temple marriage, that provides for the children to be born in the covenant. Temples are the most sacred places of worship on the earth. From the days of Adam to the present, whenever the Lord has a people on the earth, there have been holy places to worship where sacred ordinances have been performed. Whenever possible, temples are built from the finest materials possible because nothing is too good for the Lord. However, in times of poverty or when there have been only a few believers, mountain tops and the wilderness places have been used for temple purposes. Temples are to continue on the earth until it receives it's Celestial glory, after which they will no longer be needed. In Rev., John recording his vision said of the Celestial Kingdom: "And I saw no temple therein; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it."

Marriage in a temple is the gate to the highest degree in the Celestial Kingdom. Adam and Eve were the first to enter into a Celestial marriage. As an order of the priesthood, marriage has the name of The New and Everlasting covenant of Marriage. Children born to such a marriage are said to be born in the covenant. BIC.

Laron and I were married in the Idaho Falls temple. During the ceremony, I watched and listened very carefully, because I wanted to remember this day all of my life. Over the years, as we have returned to this temple, I liked to go into that little room and think, "This is where Laron's and my family began.

From the time when I was just a little girl, I have wanted to have a large family. Each of our eight children have been looked forward to and welcomed, and over the years, as we have added new names to our family group sheets, it has been important to me to be able to write BIC behind each name. After each new baby came, I would go down to the hospital nursery and look through the window, and think, "My baby is different from all the other little babies there, It wasn't just that my baby was a little bit better-looking, or obviously much brighter, (as all mothers think) but my baby was BIC. Born in the covenant. That means that even if we were to lose one of our children through death, with righteous living, we would have that child with us in the next life, and isn't that a great blessing?

Laron: Yes, it is a great blessing. Amy, you'll be talking about our Books of Remembrance. Will you take yours to the meeting and show it?

Amy: When Adam was alive, he was told to keep a record of his descendants. In the Pearl of Great Price, it says that the book was made according to the pattern given by the finger of the Lord. Adam called his book a book of remembrance. Today, the Church asks us to keep our own books of remembrance.

This one is mine. In our family, we each have our own. We kids just have these paperback covers, but as we get older and richer, we'll get the hard covers like my parents and grandparents have. In my book, I've filled out part of my Personal Record. Here is my hospital birth certificate, and my state one. On the next page are my blessings and baptismal certificates. Next comes my family group sheet. I don't have much in my book yet. We work on them together as a family. We should keep one because our leaders have asked us to, and so we can know who our ancestors are.

Laron: That's fine, Amy. I can see we need to get busy and do more in our books. Ethan, let's hear how you're coming with your talk about having a picture of a temple in our home.

Ethan: A few years ago, Dad bought pictures of all the temples. Each of us got to choose which picture we wanted to hang in our rooms. We put them on cardboard and covered them with plastic so they wouldn't wear out so fast. This one is mine (hold up) It's the Nauvoo Temple, which was destroyed by the mob, but it is still my favorite. When Grandma Waite went back east she went to the place where the members of the Church cut the stones for the Nauvo0temple. She found this piece of stone which has chisel marks on it, and brought it home to us, so we have a piece meant for the Nauvoo temple. One reason for having pictures of temples in our homes is so that we will think of them a lot and want to get married there. Once a woman was complaining to a friend because all her boys had become sailors when she wanted them to be something else. Her friend showed her that in their home, wee several pictures of the sea. Her boys had grown up with these pictures and learned to love the ocean.

Laron: Summarize the presentation and hope we have fulfilled our assignment.