Yesterday, my husband was using the current technological wizardry, to transfer what was recorded on tapes, to the computer, and from there onto CDs. These were family tapes recorded over the years.

I was busy using decidedly low-tech skills, cleaning the bathroom, when I heard my father's voice from a tape he and my mother had made for their grandchildren, while serving a mission in England, thirty years ago. In an attempt to keep in touch with the grandchildren, they would read stories and poems and tell of their experiences. Since my parents have passed away, these tapes are precious to us. Then came the nearly unbearably sweet sounds of some of our four daughters, singing the Christmas carol, "What Child is This?" As their lovely voices from the ghost of who-knows-which Christmas past filled our home, I knelt there beside the bathroom bowl, and wept for all those precious times that will never come back. I miss my little children, and I miss my parents.

Our children are nearly all grown, and those times when they lived under their father's roof and would sit with their feet under their mother's table, are forever gone. The chances we had to teach them the gospel, as we lived together, have passed, though our responsibilities as parents still remain. Do you know the sobering thought that by the time a child is nine years of age, he or she have spent half the time they will live with us?

All I ever wanted to be was to be a wife and a mother. I have served a mission and taught school, but I just wanted to be a good mom to our children, and a good wife to my husband. I jokingly say that I would be a great mother if I weren't so busy raising kids! I have now been a mother with children in our home for forty years! Our oldest son returned from his mission, when his brother whom he had never seen was three months old. We call these two our bookends. Now our then-three-month old baby is filling out his mission papers. He will be our ninth missionary. We have had a child serve in Mexico, one in Chile, two in Venezuela, one in Argentina, two in Russia and one in Bulgaria Two daughters met their future husbands as they reached the age to serve missions, and followed the Church's advice that because of that, marriage would be most appropriate. Those who have been married have been married in a temple. You could say that we have been around the block a few times, and have learned some very hard lessons that might be valuable to younger parents.

I almost hesitate to share our efforts and blessings for fear you may mistakenly believe that I am being boastful, or bragging. That is very, very far from the case. How can we take credit when we were never weren't smart enough to have made up the programs the Church has provided which will bring great blessings to any of us who are willing to follow the instructions. We never could have thought up the instructions.

We naturally look back with regret for all the things we should have done and didn't, but there were two things we tried hard to do. Even though we didn't do them perfectly, we worked hard at reading the scriptures together, and having kneeling family prayer twice a day.

Many mornings, regrettably not all, we would gather around the dining room table for our scripture reading. We had a stack of the blue or maroon paperback Books of Mormon, or a stack of the big Bibles the Primary used to provide for each child, under an end table. Even the youngest who could, would want a book, and would climb up to the table because he or she wanted to be like the "big kids". At one time, when books were short, one of our little boys had a Spanish Book of Mormon, which he cheerfully used, as he was only two or three years old, and couldn't read anyhow.

It was probably one of these mornings, when several pages of 3rd Nephi in my Book of Mormon became stuck together with grape jelly, and "I can't read a sealed book either, Professor Anthon!" One of our sons, who was upset with two of his siblings, wrote us a note, which he left on our pillow, saying "It is better that one person should perish than a whole family should dwindle in unbelief. That's why I am running away. It isn't because of you and Dad, but because of ...named two siblings." Though the spelling was difficult for a young boy to handle, we knew what he meant and where he got the words.

Aside from our kneeling in family prayers twice a day, the children would receive a father's blessing the first day of school, or when ill, or when leaving for college, or missions or during times of stress. One of our sons is an officer in the Marines, and is finishing up his second tour of duty in Iraq. He has had excellent military training, and has been provided with the latest in weaponry and protective gear, but he didn't leave either time without the added and most important protection of all, that of a blessing by the authority of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood, given by his father, as he laid his hands on our son's head. Each time, he was given a blessing of comfort and safety that we have all hung very tightly to.

Today we are so bombarded with information, both good and bad, that we can easily be distracted, and caught up even with good things, that we fail to take the time to have family study and prayers. We can take gardening, scrap booking, home decorating, and other good hobbies to the extent that the really vital things to save our families can be squeezed out. We cannot afford to be caught up in the "thick of thin things". Even good things.

The missionaries were eating at our house a couple of weeks ago, and said they were leaving our area in Heyburn. I asked, "What's the matter, don't you like my cooking?" One of them said that because of the shortage of missionaries since the "raising of the bar", there weren't enough to staff this mission. When the bar was raised by Pres. Hinkley, there wasn't supposed to be a shortage of missionaries, but we parents were obligated to prepare more of our sons and daughters better than ever before. The preparation of scripture study cannot be left to the auxiliaries and seminaries, but must be started and maintained in our homes.

Some Jehovah's Witnesses came to our door, and we had a pleasant visit for a few minutes. They encouraged me to read the Bible. I told them we did, and that we appreciated all scripture and had others beside the Bible. One lady said that her children called her old fashioned because she tried to live by the teachings in the Bible. I told her to tell them that nothing is more "old fashioned" than rebellion against God, and that it had started even before this world was created. Her children were even more old fashioned than they thought she was. There is literally "nothing new under the sun", and Satan has tried the same tricks since the beginning. People just used to have the decency to try and hide their sins, but now that everything is out in the open, we need to strengthen our families more than ever before with the knowledge and power that prayer and scripture study give us. We should pray for our families safety from spiritual attack with the same fervor our family prays for our son's and brother's safety from military attack in a different kind of war.

It is difficult to do the things we are asked to do, There seems to be never enough time, money or strength, but think of how hard an eternity of regret will be if we fail to follow the commandments that can give us eternal life with our families. Nothing can ever be harder than that. Using the words of the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, "For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these...it might have been."