Familia

Hello!

I spent my weekend defending and learning about families.  Families are number one on the advisary´s hit list.  He does just about anything to take families and marriages apart.
The Lord and his church puts allot of effort in instructing us giving us ways to strengthen our families to help us be united.  Sometimes I feel like I´m working in a desolate bombed-out battle field when it comes to families.  It´s very common for girls to get pregnant at 13-15 years old here, people live together but don´t get married, and if they do get married the marriages usually don't last more than two or three years.  Single mothers are all too common.

I was talking to a lady last Saturday, she is´t a member but her children are. She was asking us if her children were learning good values in the church; she was talking about men and how they don´t wash their dishes, make the women cook and treat their wives like animals and that she didn't want her son to be like her ex-husband.  I assured her that the Church of Jesus Christ is basically designed to help youth learn respect and good habits and that families and marriages are meant to be successful-
She cut me off right there and told me that marriages are not successful.
I rebutted by pulling out a photo for my family that I like to carry in my scriptures.  In the photo we see our beautiful family all united and my parents who have been together for YEARS.

She was quiet after that, and I promised her that families and marriages are meant to be eternal.


After that I got to thinking:  What is the secret to successful marriage?
Well, in the seventh paragraph of The Family a Proclamation to the World we read:

¨Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.¨
www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation

BOOM! there it is, the key given to us by revelation given to President Hinkley and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.  I think there´s something really big that has to do with that word ¨respect.¨  Yesterday we were contacting and we met to couples sitting together in front of a house.  After talking to them for a little while we discovered that both couples have been with their pair for over 50 years.

I asked them what the secret was.  Both of the men responded the same; they told me that when there are dishes to wash, they wash them; when there´s cloths to be washed, they wash them; if their wives were sick or busy they cooked dinner and cleaned the house when it was needed.  They told me that the secret of long marriage is helping one another and working as a team.

Respect.  Bingo.

Talking to them was refreshing and it gave me hope that families can be together forever like God intends.

Things here in Ecuador are good.  My health is good and we´re rolling along.  However, I want to buy some pants as all of mine have holes in one place or another, I also need new shoes very very soon, and new jeans.  Do I have options?  If not, I can wait a little bit.

Love you all!