Preach My Gospel FHE Lesson - How sweet is repentance!

I am working now to update the archive of our FHE lessons on Preach My Gospel. Visit the post here to access the ones that are done.

 

Tonight's lesson will be on Preach My Gospel Lesson 3, Heading 3  "Repentance."

 

This lesson uses the beautiful, powerful story from the Book of Mormon about the Lamanites who repented and buried their weapons. I love this story!

It also teaches about the bitter feelings of remorse and guilt we have when we sin, using chocolate (unsweetened and regular) to help your family compare those feelings to the sweet, peaceful feelings of being forgiven.

How everlastingly grateful I am for the Atonement of Jesus Christ! How overwhelmingly amazed I am that He would choose to feel those bitter, awful pangs of sin so that I can repent! I know He did this because He loves us. He is our Redeemer and our Savior.

Preparing this lesson was a joy and a reminder to me to repent more often. It is already paid for, and infinitely worth it!

Link to Lesson 3 Heading 3 pdf  ~ "Sweet Repentance"

Preach My Gospel FHE Lessons Archive

update 4/9/13: Because Scribd is making life difficult now, I have uploaded all of these to google docs as pdf's, and have changed the links accordingly. Hopefully google stuff will always be free. . . :)

I thought it would be helpful to gather all of these into one post, especially since I haven't managed to be regular about posting them!

-- Here's a link to my original post about why we started using these for FHE lessons and my feelings about using Preach My Gospel to teach my children. --

I will update this post with the new links whenever I post a new lesson. We have a bunch more done, just not uploaded and linked yet. Here's what we have so far. . . .

Note: We take turns preparing the lessons for Family Home Evening, so there is a wide variety in lesson style for these! If it's one I prepared it tends to be more elaborate. If it's one my 10-year-old son prepared, it tends to be very simple. :)



 Preach My Gospel
Lesson 1 - The Message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Heading 1 "God is Our Loving Heavenly Father"
Heading 2 "The Gospel Blesses Families"
Heading 3 "Heavenly Father Reveals His Gospel in Every Dispensation"
Heading 4 "The Savior's Earthly Ministry"
Heading 5 "The Great Apostasy"
Heading 6 "The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith"
Heading 7 "The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ"
Heading 8 "Pray to Know the Truth through the Holy Ghost"

Lesson 2 - The Plan of Salvation

Heading 1 "Pre-Earth Life: God's Purpose and Plan for Us"
Heading 2 "The Creation"
Heading 3 "Agency and the Fall of Adam and Eve"
Heading 4 "Our Life on Earth"
Heading 5 "The Atonement"
Heading 6 "The Spirit World"
Heading 7 "The Resurrection, Judgment, and Immortality"
Heading 8 "Kingdoms of Glory"

Lesson 3 - The Gospel of Jesus Christ


Heading 1 "Through Christ We Can Be Cleansed From Sin"
Heading 2 "Faith in Jesus Christ"
Heading 3 "Repentance"
Heading 4 "Baptism, Our First Covenant"
Heading 5 "The Gift of the Holy Ghost"
Heading 6 "Endure to the End"


Lesson 4 - The Commandments

Part 1 "Obedience"
Part 2 "Pray Often"
Part 3 "Study the Scriptures"
Part 4 "Keep the Sabbath Day Holy"

FHE Chart Ideas

I've been working on a few crafts for Christmas gifts that I can't post yet, but here is one I have done for our family. I realize my family is not this big yet, so for now we will just double up our pictures. I have little tiles that I will put our pictures on and hang from the knobs with ribbon. Then we will just rotate them each week. This idea can also be used for a chore chart! and it would make a great Christmas gift.
.

Thankful Tree

You might remember seeing this in a previous post...

Tonight it's going to become this...
This is our Thankful Tree. For a family home evening last year, the kids helped me cut out those leaves (I saved them) and we wrote what we were thankful for. This year I'm going to switch it up a bit. This will be our family home evening activity for tonight, but we are going to keep adding leaves to it each night. We will end it around the table during Thanksgiving dinner. This little tree of ours is going to end up having a ton of leaves and I will probably be searching high and low for more branches to add, but it will be festive and fun. I might make the leaves a little cuter this year and make them different shapes and add some pretty ribbon to it...we'll see what I can get accomplished in the next couple of hours before FHE and how many helping hands I have! :)

More FHE lessons from {Preach My Gospel}

Hello, sisters! I am so sorry about getting behind on posting these. It's a little trickier when I'm not the one preparing the lesson that week! (Not everyone writes down what they plan. . . :)

Here are two of the missing lessons. I'll post the other one ("The Great Apostasy") soon!

 

The Savior's Earthly Ministry and Atonement - Lesson 1, Heading 4 - Google Doc

The Savior's Earthly Ministry and Atonement - Lesson 1, Heading 4 - pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith - Lesson 1, Heading 6 - Google doc

The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith - Lesson 1, Heading 6 - pdf

Family Journal

A couple of years ago, I was reading in my Family Fun magazine about a tradition one family had. They would gather their kids together one night a month and ask a couple of questions and write them down in their Family Journal. Sometimes they were silly questions to make the kids laugh and sometimes they were serious ones to get them to think. Then they would curl up together and read some favorite books. I loved this idea and decided to start doing this with my family. We do ours every first Monday of the month for Family Home Evening. After we are done asking our questions and writing down every ones responses, we set individual goals for the month. We write these down in our family journal too, but I also type them up and hang them on our fridge as a reminder. After that, we pick out a scrapbook and reminisce about all the fun we've had together. This has been a great way for us to look through pictures, instead of forgetting about them. Then we have a treat. This is what you would find us doing tonight and this is what our treat is going to be.

Preach My Gospel, FHE lesson #3: MnM's and Prophets!

Heavenly Father Reveals His Gospel in Every Dispensation

Hello, dear sisters!

This lesson was one of the harder ones to prepare. How can you explain to little ones what big scary words like "DISPENSATIONS" and "APOSTASY" mean?

Well, treats always help, right? In our family, sugar talks! :)

In this lesson you'll get to teach about the prophets before the birth of Jesus Christ. How they are special messengers for Heavenly Father. How sometimes the people listen. Sometimes they don't, and that's when the gospel is taken from the earth again. You'll get to tell one of my most favorite scripture stories: the City of Enoch. And--perhaps best of all--you'll get to eat chocolate.

I'm excited with how it turned out! Hope you enjoy it!

Link to "Heavenly Father Reveals His Gospel in Every Dispensation" FHE lesson -- Google doc

Link to "Heavenly Father Reveals His Gospel in Every Dispensation" FHE lesson -- pdf

A Night to Remember

Growing up in a family of 10 kids, chaos was the norm. Getting everyone together for Family Home Evening, or family prayer or scripture study was anything but calm and loving. Needless to say, my parents were just trying to live through each day. Family Home Evening was done very randomly. However, I firmly believe in the "quality" and not "quantity" theory. I only remember one FHE lesson, and it made an indelible mark on my memory, FOREVER.

My dad is an old guy. And I can say that because I am his favorite daughter and according to my siblings, I have immunity when making disrespectful comments. But really, he is old enough to be a great-grandfather (although thankfully he isn't yet) and he kind of looks the part. My dad, who was a professor at BYU for over 30 years, always wears dress pants, a button down shirt (possibly a tie) and socks and shoes. ALWAYS. Even on Saturdays, when such dress is totally optional. In fact, I can count on one hand how many times I have seen my dad's feet. WEIRD? Yes. What I'm trying to say here, is I COULD NOT pick out my dad's feet, legs, or chest out of a line up. The only skin I have ever seen on my dad is his arms, head, and neck.

Why does this matter?

When I was a teenager, my dad had expressed concern to his six daughters (okay, it was more like nagging us) that we were dressing immodestly. He didn't feel comfortable seeing us in sleeveless shirts, short skirts, or shorts. Everything he said went in one ear and out the other.

Hey, it was summer. It was hot. We wanted to dress how we wanted to dress.

To help us understand how he felt when we dressed immodestly, he planned a very, very, very, creative Family Home Evening. One that my siblings and I have never forgotten.

My parents gathered all 10 of us in the family room. After the song and opening prayer, my dad disappeared for a few minutes. None of us noticed (because lets face it, we totally weren't paying attention) and we chewed the fat with each other.

Then we heard our dad enter the family room from the kitchen.

AAAHHHHHH! WHAT THE HECK?! He was sporting a huge grin wearing a swimming suit in all of his PASTY WHITE GLORY.

OH MY HECK! OUR DAD IS SO WHITE! IT'S EMBARRASSING! IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL!
EWE! WE DON'T WANT TO SEE YOUR CHEST, OR YOUR LEGS, OR YOUR FEET FOR THAT MATTER!

As we all took our turns laughing and screaming about his very embarrassing attire, he stopped and said, "How you feel right now is exactly how I feel every time you dress immodestly."

Believe me, it only took one Family Home Evening to drive that message home. Needless to say, my sisters and I didn't have a problem dressing modestly after that. NO ONE wanted a repeat of that FHE.

My dad has told me often throughout my life, "You'll never offend anyone by dressing modestly."

Yeah, point well taken.

Preach My Gospel, FHE lesson #2

The Gospel Blesses Families
Here's an excerpt directly from "Preach My Gospel", the second heading for lesson 1.

   "The restored gospel blesses and helps husbands and wives, parents and children as they strive to develop stronger relationships and spiritual strength in their families. These blessings are available now and in eternity. The gospel of Jesus Christ provides help with current concerns and challenges.

  "Because families are ordained of God, they are the most important social unit in time and in eternity. God has established families to bring happiness to His children, allow them to learn correct principles in a loving atmosphere, and prepare them for eternal life. The home is the best place to teach, learn, and apply principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

  "A home established on gospel principles will be a place of refuge and safety. It will be a place where the Spirit of the Lord can abide, blessing family members with peace, joy, and happiness. Through prophets in every age, including our own, God has revealed His plan of happiness for individuals and families.

Isn't it wonderful to have these truths to strengthen us as we face life in such a confusing society? I am so grateful Heavenly Father has sent prophets again to the earth to ground us in the ways of happiness! It is so comforting to hear their words and know that the importance of the family, as defined by God, is not subject to change with the whims of our crazy world. It is an eternal unit. My family is my greatest source of joy in this life, and my greatest hope for the next.

Lesson 1 Heading 2 The Gospel Blesses Families

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Preach My Gospel - FHE lesson

Hello, my newfound sisters! I'm so excited that Andrea invited me to be part of this. I've thought and thought about what my first post should be, and today I finally settled on it. (I try not to be too perfectionist, but you know. . . :) Hope it is uplifting and/or helpful to you.

What is Family Home Evening?

Our second son will be turning 8 in a few months, and we're going to start again what has become a tradition for our family. In the year before one of our children is baptized, we teach Family Home Evening lessons from Preach My Gospel, the same lessons that missionaries teach investigators, but adapted for our children and their needs / attention spans. We loved doing our FHEs this way when we were preparing our oldest son for baptism! Preach My Gospel is just amazing. It is the most accessible way of teaching and learning the gospel of Jesus Christ I have ever seen. I am so grateful for our modern-day prophets and apostles who prepared it for us!

We take months to do it, because each lesson is chock-full of principles to teach. We plan a FHE lesson for each principle--for example: lesson 1 is "The Restoration", and the first heading at the beginning of the lesson reads "God is Our Loving Heavenly Father." So that will be tonight's lesson. It's only 3 paragraphs long in the Preach My Gospel manual, but I've fleshed it out using old Sharing-Time ideas. Hope you like it!

I know that I am a daughter of a loving God. He weeps with me when I suffer and rejoices when I do what's right. He has sent me to earth to gain experience, to learn to be like Him. I want more than anything to return to Him, and be with Him and my family forever and ever! I thank Him with all my heart for sending His Son Jesus Christ to redeem me from this fallen state of mortality. I know that Jesus Christ is my true Friend. I love that tonight I will have the chance to teach these things to my sons!

 

Lesson 1 Heading 1 "God is Our Loving Heavenly Father"

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