The word “home” evokes so many tender memories for me. My mother making popcorn balls for Family Home Evening. My parents sitting there smiling broadly as their children put on incredibly bad plays. My mother patiently teaching me how to read, write, and play the piano. My mother reading to us nightly, first from a book of fiction and then from the Holy Scriptures, always in that order. I recall standing at the yearly ward Spring Sing and living out my mother’s dream of a family band as we merrily sang, “. . . two humpty back camels and chimpanzees.” Working along side my mother in the garden, canning, cleaning, cooking . . . everything that comes with home. But most of all, I remember without fail, my mother’s steadfast belief in the Lord, the gospel and in her children. Never, ever, did I doubt that I could accomplish anything I wanted to as long as I was willing to work hard enough. I remember my father willingly placing his hands on my head and administering blessings of comfort and healing. I remember steadfast testimonies shared often and love, pure unadulterated, all encompassing love.
When I read Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin’s quote:
“The righteous molding of an immortal soul is the highest work we can do, and the home is the place to do it.” Ensign, May 1993, p. 68
I thought to myself, yes. This is true. And so I thank my parents for the growing-up years; for the hardships, the good times and the bad all painted onto a beautiful canvas and displayed for all to see in their children. As we have gone out into the world, my parents have produced a lawyer, doctor, mathematician, artists, writers, business owners, homemakers, composers and more, so much more. Many of us strong in the gospel and in the knowledge of who and what we are. My parents carefully planted within our hearts the knowledge of being a child of God.
Children of God take that knowledge, cherish it and look to the heavens, for with God, nothing is impossible.