Memorial Day Family Home Morning

On significant holidays, we try to teach the kids about why we are celebrating on that day. It's nice that MOST non religious holidays are observed on Monday making for an easy FHE lesson. Today was no exception. I decided to teach the kids about war starting from the beginning. Plus, to make sure we could have Fernando join us, it technically was FHM (family home morning). I kind of wish that I would have thought about this idea before the day I was giving it because I think I could have made it a little more coherent and condensed. So, I am throwing the "lesson" out there for anyone to help mold it into a better creation for next veteran like holiday.

Opening song was I Lived in Heaven which gives a good brief overview of the war in Heaven. The kids have been learning it in Primary this year so we didn't need to take the time to teach it. We then flushed the song ideas out so the kids understood what happened (as best as we know and could explain). Fernando read a scripture about Michael and the Dragon which made the kids excited. Too bad Mia was like "look, I'm a dragon" then made all these dragon noises. Normally, who cares and cute for being a dragon. Still cute, but we had to explain who the dragon was and why he didn't belong in heaven.

We then talked about how the war still continues today. Heavenly Father's children who had faith in Jesus Christ chose to come down to earth to learn and grow. Here on earth we would still have the chance to choose to follow Heavenly Father's plan or not. To help in this battle, Heavenly Father has warned us to put on our armor. We explained what armor was (again, previous discussions about the Armor of God made this one a review) and why it was important to wear.

Visual support came in the form of Narnia battle scene (pre gruesomeness that is. I thought the kids might be a little scared but they wanted more. We didn't show any more and promised that they could watch it if we read the book first. I figured that would take us a couple years to finish.) We also watched the CES video presentation of the Whole Armor of God. This is a short little segment that overlays a group of Renassance looking soldiers with a group of high school students. The soldiers see some water and begin to take off their armor unaware of some enemies following them through the forest. The high school kids are asked to a bad party. I think it was a little over their heads but it was good reinforcements. The next movie was Band of Brothers that retells the stories from recorded interviews with Easy Company veterans who fought in WWII. Even with our editing DVD player (really worth the $45 plus $7 membership fees) we could only show about 1 minute. To lighten the mood we popped in My Dog Skip to show how excited people were to enlist in the Army to fight.

Closing song: We taught the chorus of We are All Enlisted while we marched around.

Yeah, it was a lot to swallow. Good thing our little warriors had so time to play after all that heavy war talk. With a chance to swim with some friends at their pool, and a little late night (6:30-8pm) Sea World trip, it was a great Memorial Day.