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Show Home evening manuals ready for distribution to LDS families Just off the press are the 1969-70 family home evening manuals 60,000 of them in Enp-iisv, and 32,000 in 16 foreign languages, announces the LDS 1....--. rne manuals contain lesson outlines following this year's theme: "Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." Most of the discussion material mater-ial focuses on the teachings of the Bible and the Book of Mormon Mor-mon and prescribes a daily reading course of the Book of Mormon. The entire manual is designed to help young family members discover for themselves them-selves without adult lecturing lectur-ing or preaching the various ways faith in Christ can be obtained ob-tained and nurtured and inscribed in-scribed into daily lives by parents par-ents gathering their children around them in weekly home meetings and there teach them, give family members counsel, express family differences, plan ing lamny projects and developing devel-oping family solidarity. "My professional activities," wrote a noted psychiatrist, "brings me in contact with many families that have problems. prob-lems. It was most refreshing to receive the Family Home Evening manual and to look over the lesson material it contained. con-tained. Most of the problems I try to settle for parents and children could be avoided or promptly settled if families could be brought to understand and live at least the first three lessons in this handbook. Inferior In-ferior feelings, trying to be somebody else other than one's self and failure to believe in repentance, create the background back-ground of most of the problems I find in families. The Mormon Church Family Home Evening is the most effective preventative preventa-tive program I have seen." (D. Carlos Mason.) Elder Mark E. Petersen, a member of the Church's Council Coun-cil of the Twelve Apostles, says:"Surveys and studies made in various parts of the U.S. indicate in-dicate that 80 per cent of our delinquent children say they had no real family life and that their parents set them a bad example. Lack of religion is characteristic of delinq u e n t families. It is interesting to know that a police report from one large American city showed that 84 per cent of the juvenile juven-ile criminals in that city had no real family life, no religion and did not attend church." The Family Home Evening over the past few years has demonstrated that it can develop de-velop character in parents while teaching and training their children. To a large degree, the family, fam-ily, the Mormons believe, determines deter-mines a child's place in his community. The goal is to strengthen the family unit, as a means of developing all members mem-bers and building better citizens. |