Home Evenings With Annette Lyon's Family

Author, Annette Lyon, Utah's 2007 Best of State Fiction Medalist, shares her family's experience holding Family Home Evenings, and shows how they merge commitments in ways that fulfill more than one requirement.

Annette has written many books, including her Temple series, House on the Hill, At the Journey's End, and the recent Spires of Stone, which features the Logan Temple.

"Between Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Duty to God, and Faith in God," Annette says, "our children have so many things they need to pass off that it sometimes gets overwhelming. We've found that using Family Home Evening as a chance to pass off some items for these programs works well."

She continues, "Service projects, scripture reading and discussions, musical and cultural experiences, teaching lessons, reading from the general conference reports, memorizing the Articles of Faith, and more are all requirements that can be easily adapted to Family Home Evenings with little preparation but big results.

We recently spent several weeks going through the "For the Strength of Youth" pamphlet during Family Home Evening, covering two or three topics each week. We'd read a section, the associated scripture, and then discuss what it means to us and why it's important to live by those values. It was a wonderful opportunity to recommit our family to the standards and to explain to the younger children why they are so important."