Family Home Evening Ideas Using Elder Hales' Talk on Provident Living

There are several ways you can plan a family home evening idea around Elder Hales' talk from this recent April General Conference. You can choose from the following ideas, or at least these can trigger impressions about what might work best for your family.

1. Depending on the ages of family members, you can talk about budgets and some aspects about your own family budget that family members can feel a part of. The church has excellent resources for teaching about budgets, such as the pamphlet, One For the Money or All is Safely Gathered In. You could also just show a basic budget worksheet and have family members write up their own budget.

2. You could also plan a "dream vacation" like Elder Scott's family planned and have family members help contribute by foregoing things they want now for something they can all enjoy later.

3. Elder Hales said that the three most loving words are "I love you" and the most caring words are, "We can't afford it." Introduce the idea for family night that whenever a family member says "We can't afford it," they are really letting you know how much they care. When a child asks for something that is not necessary, a family member can say, "I care about you too much."

4. Talk about addiction and ask family members to name forms of addiction. Then mention that Elder Hales added "unnecessary spending" (which is a result of coveting) as an addiction that needs to be overcome using the same process as any other addiction. The way to overcome is through mighty change, by applying the atonement of Jesus Christ.

5. For younger children you can talk about the difference between earthly treasures and heavenly treasures. Read Matthew 6:19-20. You can even create an earthly treasure box and a heavenly treasure box and have items written on pieces of paper that family members choose and then decide if it is an earthly treasure or a heavenly treasure. Put them in the correct treasure box. Here are some suggestions for heavenly treasures. Then you can create a heavenly treasure box to put handouts from church in and look through the box on Sundays to learn more about our heavenly treasures.

6. Younger children can read the story of the sermon on the mount.