7 A final word

It's Sunday night, and all the kids have just left, the five that live here in the area, together with their spouses and children. Twice a month they come for Sunday dinner, and we visit and laugh and eat from what everyone has contributed.

It's good to be together. We love to have our family here. The house gets pretty crowded when everyone can make it, twelve adults and nine children under the age of 13, the children contributing a full measure of the energy and commotion and noise that typically prevail. Today was a pleasant spring day, and we were able to spread out on folding tables and chairs set up in the back yard until the shadows lengthened and the evening got too cool.

Other families have other patterns, other rhythms that work for them.

"The family is ordained of God," latter-day prophets teach. "Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities" ("The Family: A Proclamation to the World" [1995]).

Respect, love, compassion—these are a part of the glue that holds us together. Faith, prayer, covenants, and ordinances—centered in the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ—these make families eternal.