With life comes agency and the chance and responsibility to set our own individual course and to be accountable for it. Perhaps this is the greatest lesson we can learn from Lehi’s family—that we are individually able to choose a course of decency and integrity and wholesomeness; that “I, John (or Julie) will one day be a parent, and I am determined to be a ‘goodly’ one. I am determined that my children will have goodly parents, and so I will prepare myself and choose friends (for friends may be as important as family) who will help me succeed in that effort, and that I will prepare to marry a husband or wife with whom I may share that sacred responsibility.”

Parents owe much to children, and children owe much to parents, and future parents owe much to those whom they will bring into the world. Remember that “all the rules will be fair” with “wonderful surprises.” Leave with your Heavenly Father the questions that may disturb you about parents and families who are not perfect and about “eternal families” and other matters which you cannot accomplish yourself. In God’s good time they will be answered on the basis of God’s love and man’s continuing eternal agency.

This same happy blessing could be experienced in every quorum and class and Young Women and Young Men group in the Church if all of us would permit this “best in us” to guide our lives. Peel off the outer layers of shyness and self-interest and lack of confidence and invite to the surface the noble instincts and generosity of spirit we all possess as a heritage from our Heavenly Father.

We can start by feeling and expressing to our Eternal Father our gratitude for being part of his eternal family, and part of his great Church family which extends to far corners of the earth, and part of a ward or branch family. The family we were born or adopted into and the future family we will establish should also be of the greatest concern to us.

Those of us who are lucky enough to belong to one of the good, if imperfect, families we talked about before, can thank God and make our best efforts to be a contributing citizen in a home where friendship and values and traditions and discipline exist, and where we can make a significant contribution if we are willing.

Those whose families are not what we wish they were can be thankful to parents who through God’s gift have given us life, and we can do everything we can do to minimize conflict and enhance harmony in our homes. Some small miracles occur where there just doesn’t appear much probability that one young person can make a difference.

The opportunity and responsibility for testimony bearing exist first in the family setting. Our children should be able to remember the light in our eyes, the ring of our testimonies in their ears, and the feeling in their hearts as we bear witness to our most precious audience that Jesus was truly God’s own Son and Joseph was His prophet. Our posterity must know that we know, because we oft tell them.

Early Church leaders paid a great price to establish this dispensation. Perhaps we will meet them in the next life and listen to their witness. When we are called upon to testify, what will we say? There will be spiritual infants and spiritual giants in the next life. Eternity is a long time to live without light, especially if our spouses and our descendants also live in darkness because there was no light within us, and others, therefore, could not light their lamps.

But here is a caution for families. Suppose Church leaders reduce the time required by Church meetings and activities in order to increase the time available for families to be together. This will not achieve its intended purpose unless individual family members—especially parents—vigorously act to increase family togetherness and one-on-one time.

The number of those who report that their "whole family usually eats dinner together" has declined 33 percent. This is most concerning because the time a family spends together "eating meals at home [is] the strongest predictor of children's academic achievement and psychological adjustment." Family mealtimes have also been shown to be a strong bulwark against children's smoking, drinking, or using drugs. There is inspired wisdom in this advice to parents: What your children really want for dinner is you.

Mothers who know do less. They permit less of what will not bear good fruit eternally. They allow less media in their homes, less distraction, less activity that draws their children away from their home. Mothers who know are willing to live on less and consume less of the world's goods in order to spend more time with their children—more time eating together, more time working together, more time reading together, more time talking, laughing, singing, and exemplifying. These mothers choose carefully and do not try to choose it all. Their goal is to prepare a rising generation of children who will take the gospel of Jesus Christ into the entire world. Their goal is to prepare future fathers and mothers who will be builders of the Lord's kingdom for the next 50 years.

I quote from Elder Robert B. Thompson:
"The day appointed for the departure of the Elders to England having arrived, I [stopped at] the house of Brother [Heber C.] Kimball to ascertain when he would start [on his journey], as I expected to accompany him two or three hundred miles, intending to spend my labors in Canada that season.
"The door being partly open, I entered and felt struck with the sight which presented itself to my view. I would have retired, thinking that I was intruding, but I felt riveted to the spot. The father was pouring out his soul to . . . [God, pleading] that He who 'careth for sparrows, and feedeth the young ravens when they cry' would supply the wants of his wife and little ones in his absence. He then, like the patriarchs, and by virtue of his office, laid his hands upon their heads individually, leaving a father's blessing upon them, . . . commending them to the care and protection of God, while he should be engaged preaching the Gospel in a foreign land. While thus engaged [in giving those blessings] his voice was almost lost in the sobs of those around [him], who [were trying in their youthful way to be strong but having a very hard time doing so.] . . . He proceeded, but his heart was too much affected to do so regularly. . . . He was obliged to stop at intervals, while . . . big tears rolled down his cheeks, an index to the feelings which reigned in his bosom. My heart was not stout enough to refrain," said Brother Thompson. "In spite of myself I wept, and mingled my tears with theirs. At the same time I felt thankful that I had the privilege of contemplating such a scene."

That scene has been reenacted one way or another a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—a fear, a need, a call, a danger, a sickness, an accident, a death. I have been a participant in such moments. I have beheld the power of God manifest in my home and in my ministry. I have seen evil rebuked and the elements controlled. I know what it means to have mountains of difficulty move and ominous Red Seas part. I know what it means to have the destroying angel "pass by them." To have received the authority and to have exercised the power of "the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God," is as great a blessing for me and for my family as I could ever hope for in this world. And that, in the end, is the meaning of the priesthood in everyday terms—its unequaled, unending, constant capacity to bless.