Come Follow Me Stake Conference Talk

I gave a testimony of Come Follow Me in the evening session of our Stake Conference in March 2022. Preparing and giving this talk had a huge impact on me and on our family. Here is that talk:

I’ve been asked to give a testimony on how studying the teachings of Jesus Christ in Come Follow Me has blessed my family’s life. We have five children with the oldest being 11 and our youngest is nearly 3. As you can imagine it’s really loud at our house. Just to give you a taste of what it is like I remember one particular Come Follow Me where my 11-year-old Cheyenne came up to me afterwards and said, "Thanks Mom I learned a lot." I was really surprised because during the lesson our 5-year-old had been screaming at the top of his lungs and my 2-year-old was rolling around on the floor and I couldn't imagine she could hear anything let alone learn something!

I don’t know about you but we are not perfect with Come Follow Me at our house. Sometimes we forget, or sometimes we get out of the habit. When President Bryan called me two weeks ago I told our kids, “Ok guys we are going to try a lot harder at Come Follow Me and see what we can learn.” This has often been our pattern when we fall off the wagon. Whenever life gets hard or our kids are fighting too much my husband and I turn to each other and say “We’ve got to do better at Come Follow Me.” Then we explain to the kids that we are going to repent and do better because we know this will again bring peace to our home.

A scripture that has guided me in my life is Moroni 6:8 “But as oft as they repented and sought forgiveness, with real intent, they were forgiven.” You can start over as many times as you want! I feel like the promises we were given for Come Follow Me are too great to give up on. President Nelson has promised:

“It has the potential to unleash the power of families and transform their home into a sanctuary of faith. I promise that as you diligently work to remodel your home into a center of gospel learning, over time your Sabbath days will truly be a delight. Your children will be excited to learn and to live the Savior’s teachings, and the influence of the adversary in your life and in your home will decrease. Changes in your family will be dramatic and sustaining.”

Do you remember when President Nelson promised us this almost four years ago? It was an exciting time and there was a lot of energy and excitement as we all charged full steam ahead to claim these marvelous blessings we were promised. I went back and reread an email I had written to my family after it was announced. "I'm really excited about the new home curriculum.  I feel like it's an answer to prayer and this will really help our family. I cried thinking about all the implications it could have for our family." 

Fast forward to last week we were trying to be more diligent in our Come Follow Me and one night at the end of a particularly trying day I turn to my husband crying and said, “It’s not working. Life isn’t easier and things are still hard.” He gave me a hug and in his wise way he said, “I think you’re looking for the wrong thing.” That night thanks to his advice I decided to trust the Lord and in his promises. If I have learned anything from Come Follow Me it’s that the Lord can be trusted and he holds true to his promises. You think of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob or Joseph and you can see through their stories that when God promises something, He comes through. I decided to believe that those blessings are there, and I just have to trust that they will come.

The next day the honesty lesson landed right on a night when our kids needed a talk on honesty. Without Come Follow Me we probably would have forgotten to address it or let it slide. The next night there was a lesson on God meeting us where we are and it matched exactly what was going on in our home. Another day I had gotten mad at one of my kids and then I opened the app to see what the lesson was on and guess what it was about? Being kind to your family. This has happened so often that every time we needed a lesson it was right there waiting for us. The Lord cares about us and he is trying to help us. My husband and I pray every night to be better parents and He is answering our prayers through Come Follow Me. President Nelson has promised that Heavenly Father desperately wants to bless us, and I was starting to see that when we use the tools He’s laid out for us, He really can.

I’ve come to see that Come Follow Me is not a curriculum, it's a way for each day for Heavenly Father to intervene in your story. It's a way for Him to show you his love for you. It's a way to let Jesus be a part of your day, to be a part of your family. In John we read that the Word was with God, and the Word was God. When we do Come Follow Me, it’s more than just scripture stories, we are having Jesus Christ in our homes as a part of our families and a part of our lives. Jesus Christ, as it says in 2 Nephi “doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world, for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him.” When you see Come Follow Me as an extension of his love for us, it becomes less about creative lesson plans or covering everything, and instead about making place each day for your Father in Heaven to bless you.

It reminded me of a talk Elder Uchtdorf once gave called Living Below Your Privileges. If you’ll remember in the talk he tells about a man who goes on a cruise and stays in his cabin the whole time and eats beans out of a can, because he doesn’t realize that the food and the activities were all included. Similarly I realized that when we were not fully participating in Come Follow Me we were living below our privileges. There are things the Lord can and will bless us with, but it takes just a small effort from us in order to receive them.

I have found that what matters most in my preparation to teach my children is not lesson preparation but my own personal Come Follow Me study. Elder Andersen once gave an analogy involving the often-heard safety measures in airplanes: adjust your own oxygen mask before assisting others. He said, “Now is the time to adjust your own spiritual oxygen mask so that you are prepared to help others who are seeking the truth.” Brothers and sisters, those who are seeking the truth are our own children.

I encourage you to have faith in the promises for Come Follow Me. Trust that the Lord is true to His word. Don’t listen to these promises skeptically and think “Well that hasn’t happened at my house” instead live and act believing that these things will happen. And as it says in the hymn “it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”

I had some revelation that I should offer you a challenge. I challenge you to consistently do Come Follow Me with your family everyday for two weeks, believing that you will receive these blessings and see if the influence of the adversary is not lessened in your home because Jesus is in your home more. I testify that the Lord can work through very small means to bring about great changes. It’s not about how good of a gospel teacher you are or how well behaved your kids are because it’s not your meager offerings that bring about the change, it’s Jesus Christ. This is the same Jesus who took the meager offering of oil and flour of the widow of Zarephath and she never ran out, and this is the same Jesus who took five loaves and two fishes and fed a multitude. He can take your efforts and transform your lives too. I can testify to this because He has transformed mine.