Family Home Evening: Scriptures, Living Prophets, and Brownies

Our Family Home Evening lesson was another lesson I "borrowed" from the Relief Society lesson.  Actually, the RS instructor handed out extra copies of her materials just for that purpose!  To start the lesson, everyone received a basic map of the US, similar to the one above.  We were to draw a line of how we would travel from Arizona to New York City by foot.  Several people talked about the shortest distance being a straight line while others considered routes to avoid the mountain ranges.  Still others thought following major roadways might be helpful.  One sister decided to only travel through the states she knew!


After our family chose their path, I passed around a transparency of the same map, except it also had some major obstacles like mountain ranges and wide rivers.  We counted how many of these obstacles our path crossed and what path we would have chosen if we were aware of the obstacles locations.  From here, we had a discussion about how the scriptures are our map; they warn us of obstacles and hazards.  We also compared the words of the living prophets to current maps as opposed to maps 30 years old.  Our living prophets know the specific obstacles we face today.  This was a great hands on activity that helped us all visualize the importance of reading scriptures to understand where we are going and the best way to get there.


For our activity, we teamed up and played a simplified version of Scrabble.  The kiddo in charge of the activity didn't want to deal with double, triple and quadruple points.

The evening ended with homemade brownies and ice cream.  I love this Hershey's brownie recipe:


HERSHEY’S BEST BROWNIES
1 C butter
2 C sugar
2 tsp. Vanilla
4 eggs
¾ C cocoa
1 C flour
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. Salt
1 C chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease 13” x 9” pan.  Microwave butter for 2 minutes, or until its melted.  Stir in sugar and vanilla.   Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each.  Add cocoa, beat until well blended.  Add flour, baking powder, and salt; beat well.  Stir in nuts.  Bake for 30 - 35 minutes, until sides just pull away from pan.