Challenge

So here's my thought of the day.  My brother-in-law Donovan leaves for his mission to Tacoma Washington Wed June 2nd.  Well I starting think' about all the things that he has to give up in order to go serve the Lord. 

Examples: 
  Cell phone, Internet, & pretty much any other connections to family & friends.  I know that he's aloud to e-mail, but common, how many times have we just surfed the Internet out of pure boredom.
  Dating, girlfriends, dancing, pretty much friends in general.
 

So my point that I'm trying to get at is 2 years of purely serving the Lord.  There are many a Sunday's that I have a hard time being at church for 3 hrs & paying attention the entire time.  Or even thinking about the Atonement for 15 during the passing of the sacrament.  I know I am not the only one.  Unless I'm reading hymns, or scripture my mind wonders.  My worldly issues come into mind. 

I've also noticed that my family has hit a comfort zone.  What I mean is, we go to church, bless our meals, have family prayer before bed time.  We go through kicks of having family scripture every night to not at all.  Personal scripture study has gone down for all of us.  Morning prayer are almost non existent, not just mine but my girls as well.  Of course I can't speak for my husband, but as a mother I notice when my girls are or are not doing things. 

So as I was doing dishes tonight I had a thought, a pretty good one if I do say so myself.  Why don't we make a 2 year challenge for ourselves?  Personal challenges that we help each other with.  So I went out to the garage & talked to Miah about is.  He seemed to be on board so we had a family home evening & talked about our plan.

Each person needs to come up with 1 personal challenge & 1 spiritual challenge.  For example my personal challenge is going to be my diet.  Food has some serious control over me, I think a daily food & exercise journal will help.  My spiritual challenge is going to be making sure we have family home evening's weekly, family scripture daily, personal morning prayer, daily journal writing, & scripture study.

As I was talking about family home evening Miah added that each week someone different is going to be giving the lesson.  Because we had already talked about individual lessons the kids were on board with that.

When Tameka graduated from Primary this month & she had her Bishop's interview he gave her an assignment on the Atonement since she didn't know what it was.  So as a family instead of doing nightly scriptures for a few nights we studied the Atonement.  Then she went in to get her temple recommend a few days later & she didn't know what chastity was so we gave that assignment to her.  She's giving us that lesson this Sunday.  Tavia gave us a lesson on tithing last week.  Then the Sunday after chastity Tavia is giving a talk on fast offerings because she thinks it's the same thing as tithing.

So tonight we just had the girls sit with a notepad & jot down some ideas of what kinds of things they can do to challenge themselves.

One thing that I've been worried about is how to hold myself accountable for my actions, or in other words my eating habits.  I know a food journal will help but I think a public blog will be too.  So occasionally I'm going to chart my progress & the progress of my family.  You know as well as I do if the family fails at this it's mom's fault.  My family's success is my responsibility.

First thing I need to do to help with own personal success is a game plan, you wouldn't walk into a cave blind so I'm not going into a challenge blind either.

Planning ideas:
  Family home evening lesson topics.
  Food journal.
  Blog success' & failures.
  Meal planning, healthy shopping list.
  We use to put our scriptures in a basket on the kitchen table to help us remember I want to start that again.
  Reminder for morning prayer ????  Not so sure how to help myself there yet.  Any suggestions??
  Once I get into journal writing & scriptures I'm pretty good at it but once something breaks my cycle I'm done.

Once we defeat one challenge were going to move on to another then another, then another.  I think you get it : )