Patience

Every Sunday night we have our Family Home Evening. We sing songs as a family, and have a lesson and a treat. Then on Monday night we do a family activity together. Last Sunday I gave the FHE lesson on Patience. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf gave a talk in the past General Conference in the Priesthood Session called Continue in Patience.I used this talk to help teach the importance of patience.

Before I started the lesson I made everyone a bag of ice with the ingredient for homemade ice-cream. (Idea from Sugardoodle.net: a lesson on patience).

As we began the lesson I gave each of my kid a bag of ice to shake and while they shook their ice-cream I gave my lesson on patience. It was nice to have their little hands busy doing something and they were able to listen and pay attention better to the lesson.

What is patience?

"Patience—the ability to put our desires on hold for a time—is a precious and rare virtue. We want what we want, and we want it now. Therefore, the very idea of patience may seem unpleasant and, at times, bitter."

I told the story of President Uchtdorf learning to speak English and likened this to things my children have learned with patience...Ty's sight words, tying shoes, learning to ride a bike, Mara doing a hard puzzle, or being patient while they wait for things.

I told the story of Mara from the past week being patient as she waited for me to get ready so we could go pick up Ty from school. She was a good example of being patient because she not only waited but helped me get Caleb ready and helped me find my shoes and didn't complain because I was taking a long time.

Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can—working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!

I likened this to making homemade ice-cream. We can't just wait for it to turn into ice-cream, we have to shake it and work at it so it will turn hard and cold. If we just let it sit there and watch it, it would never turn out, just like we aren't asked to sit idly and wait for things to happen but being patient is working, doing, exercising faith.

President Uchtorf gave several examples from the scriptures of people who learned patience. I showed my kids these pictures and we talked about how the individuals were patient:

• The children of Israel waited 40 years in the wilderness before they could enter the promised land.
  
• Jacob waited 7 long years for Rachel.
  
• The Jews waited 70 years in Babylon before they could return to rebuild the temple.
  
• The Nephites waited for a sign of Christ’s birth, even knowing that if the sign did not come, they would perish.
  
• Joseph Smith’s trials in Liberty Jail caused even the prophet of God to wonder, “How long?”⁴

In each case, Heavenly Father had a purpose in requiring that His children wait.

Every one of us is called to wait in our own way. We wait for answers to prayers. We wait for things which at the time may appear so right and so good to us that we can’t possibly imagine why Heavenly Father would delay the answer.

I then talked about how we are learning patience as we wait for our home in Oregon to sell. Every prayer we say, we ask Heavenly Father to "Please bless our house to sell so we can buy a new one." I wanted my children to know that Heavenly Father does hear our prayers and he will answer them, but it is in the Lord's timing and there must be something we must learn from this experience before our house can sell.
We heard this week from the relocation company and they are willing to buy our home.....that is for $30,000 less than the asking price. Oh how our hearts sank when we heard this news. I know we are asking for a miracle! But I know that something good will come from this experience and soon this chapter of our lives will close and we will be able to move forward and buy a new home...but it will be through patience and faith that it will happen.

Here we are shakin' our bags of ice to make chocolate home made ice-cream.
And the end result: yummy!
(well sort-of! On one of the bags the salt leaked into the bag of ice-cream so it tasted rather salty! but the others were pretty good!)