Nurturing Families Together

Prayerfully study this material and seek to know what to share. How will understanding “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” increase your faith in God and bless those you watch over through visiting teaching? For more information, go to reliefsociety.lds.org.

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A “husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children.”¹ “The home is to be God’s laboratory of love and service,” said President Russell M. Nelson, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

“Our Heavenly Father wants husbands and wives to be faithful to each other and to esteem and treat their children as an heritage from the Lord.”²

In the Book of Mormon, Jacob said that the love that husbands had for their wives, the love that wives had for their husbands, and the love that both had for their children was among the reasons the Lamanites were at one point more righteous than the Nephites (see Jacob 3:7).

One of the best ways to invite love and harmony into our homes is by speaking kindly to our family members. Speaking kindly brings the Holy Ghost. Sister Linda K. Burton, Relief Society general president, asked us to consider: “How often do we intentionally ‘speak kind words to each other’?”³

Additional Scriptures

Romans 12:10; Mosiah 4:15; Doctrine and Covenants 25:5

Living Stories

Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shared a childhood experience that impressed upon him the importance of a loving family. When he and his brothers were boys, their mother had radical cancer surgery that made it very painful for her to use her right arm. With a family of boys, there was a lot of ironing, but as his mother ironed, she often stopped and went into the bedroom to cry until the pain subsided.

When Elder Christofferson’s father realized what was happening, he secretly went without lunches for almost a year to save enough money to buy a machine that made ironing easier. Out of his love for his wife, he set an example of nurturing within families for his boys. Of this tender interaction, Elder Christofferson said, “I was not aware of my father’s sacrifice and act of love for my mother at the time, but now that I know, I say to myself, ‘There is a man.’”⁴