Jeran: Forever Families

Jeran is our performer and clown. He's smart and witty and is probably the only one who isn't really afraid in front of other people. People commented afterwards that Jeran is the family comedian. He started off his comments like he was performing a huge public ceremony, then jokingly switched back to just talking in church. He also likes to puzzle things out and make sense of things, which shows in what he said on Sunday. (Picture taken ice skating on Saturday)

My talk is on the same thing I taught for the family home evening lesson last week, so I am going to go ahead and recycle a few things. My topic that I am going to talk about this afternoon is on eternal families.

When I am bored, I like to think about the big picture; why we are here, what happened before we came here, and what will happen to us after we die? We will be reunited with our families again, but when our parents are busy being reunited with their parents, we have nobody to be reunited with… I used to think that there might be a few holes in the plan of salvation.

But while I was preparing for my talk, I remembered a family chain my mom made for a family Christmas party after Joie’s family died.  The point of this was to help all of the cousins understand that we were all sealed together, and Joie was connected to all of us.  The chain my mom made was a big paper chain made of little rings, and each one had a name on it.  It started with the oldest, which was grandma and grandpa, then branched out to their twelve sons and daughters:  Chris, my mom, Sarah, Beth, Ben, Becky, Esther, Ruth, Joe, Steve, Jim, and Mike.  And connected to each of them was their spouse.  And then most of them had sons and daughters… I’m just gonna get to the point and say it was a very long chain.

But if we had wanted to, we could’ve added each of my dad’s 9 siblings to the list, and all their kids. (If we had really done this there would be no leftover paper on the planet.)  By looking at the chain, we could see that Joie was sealed to Nick and Ruth, her parents, but she was also sealed to our family. All you had to do was follow the chain from our family to her family and it was unbroken.

When we were done making the chain, we hung it on our grandparent’s Christmas tree. It reminded us that through the gift of the Savior, we will all be resurrected again; and through the power of the priesthood we will be sealed together as a GIGANTIC family forever.

The big picture of eternal families helps us all continue through trials and we’ve seen trails turn into blessings.  My grandparents are now on a mission, and their testimony of eternal families helps others who are learning about the church.  My other grandparents are about to head on a mission to Nauvoo to work in the temple.  My cousin is getting ready for a mission also, and as cousins, aunts and uncles we’re closer and have a lot of fun together.  Also, other aunts and uncles are adding to this family chain. Our family is also keeping the chain going also by adding Gabby to our family.  Having THREE sisters can sometimes be a pain…too many Barbies and no hot water in the morning…but the blessings of sharing are lives together forever are worth it (at least that’s what my parents tell me).

I know that we will all be reunited with our families in heaven, no matter how long it takes and no matter how big our family is.


(Link to the story of our family speaking in church.)