Family Home Evening – Service to Others

Object: Help our family put into practice the Savior’s example of serving others with love.

Lesson: Taken from For the Strength of Youth and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s April 2010 General Conference Talk, “You Are My Hands.”

Here’s What We Did: For our lesson we read and discussed the topic “Service to Others” found on p. 38 in For the Strength of Youth. We then read this from President Uchtdorf’s talk:

     "True love requires action. We can speak of love all day long—we can write notes or poems that proclaim it, sing songs that praise it, and preach sermons that encourage it—but until we manifest that love in action, our words are nothing but 'sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.'
     "Christ did not just speak about love; He showed it each day of His life. He did not remove Himself from the crowd. Being amidst the people, Jesus reached out to the one. He rescued the lost. He didn’t just teach a class about reaching out in love and then delegate the actual work to others. He not only taught but also showed us how to 'succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.'
     "Christ knows how to minister to others perfectly. When the Savior stretches out His hands, those He touches are uplifted and become greater, stronger, and better people as a result.
     "If we are His hands, should we not do the same?"

After our lesson we chose four families in our ward we thought needed to be remembered.

One was a widower, one was a widow, one was a couple who our children have noticed have not been to church for the summer months, and one was a sweet older couple.

We put our children to work signing cards and drawing pictures. Since their homes were within walking distance, we enjoyed the evening delivering our homemade muffins (recipe below) and our handmade cards.

My husband was inspired to take the route that he did! When we arrived at the last home to a wonderful widow in our ward, she was having trouble with her sprinkler system. So my good husband jumped in.  And while he was outside getting wet, my boys were inside helping her connect her Wii system!!

Truly, the Lord blessed us to apply the words spoken by President Uchtdorf!

Orange-Cranberries Muffins
Makes 2 dozen

3½ cup flour
½ cup sugar
1½ teaspoon salt
5 teaspoons baking powder
1½ cup warm milk
2 eggs, beaten
2/3 cup oil
Zest and juice of one orange
¾ cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Grease or place baking cups into 24 regular-sized muffin tins.
In large bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Make well in middle and add milk, eggs, oil and orange juice. Mix only until dry ingredients are mixed together. Batter should be lumpy. Stir in orange zest and dried cranberries.
Spoon batter into muffin tins, about 2/3 full.
If desired, sprinkle tops with granulated sugar or sweetened orange juice mix (like Tang).
Bake in oven for 10 minutes.
Reduce temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking for 10-15 more minutes or until golden brown.
Remove from tins and place on cooking rack to cool.