Pinning with Purpose: Steps of Repentance FHE

Vacation, and Fall Break, and General Conference--oh my!

After a few CRAZY weeks, I finally was able to slow down and put together a family home evening lesson this week. For those who don't know, I have been doing a lesson for each of the chapters in the Gospel Principles Manual. This lesson corresponds with Chapter 12 - The Atonement.

I started the lesson by asking my kids, "What is the atonement?" They didn't know. My husband explained that the Savior took all of our sins upon himself, then bled and died for each of us. That way, even though we make mistakes, we can repent and be perfect again.

I wanted my kids to know that they have access to the power of the atonement each day as they repent. My kids think that saying, "I'm sorry" is repenting. But it's so much more than that!

I asked the kids to come over to the stairs. Bud is obsessed with the stairs right now. He loves to climb!

On the stairs I placed some signs showing the steps of repentance. To illustrate the steps of repentance I told them a little story. It goes like this:

There were two brothers playing baseball in their neighborhood. One of the brothers hit the ball. It went soaring, soaring, soaring until--CRASH! The ball had gone through their neighbor's window.

At this point I asked the kids what should the brothers do? Should they run away so they don't get into trouble? My kids said no, that they should go and tell their neighbor what they had done.

I explained the boys felt sorry for what they had done.

The boys went over to their neighbor's house and apologized. I told my kids to notice that even though the boys said they were sorry that isn't all they must do. They still had two more steps of repentance.

I told my kids that even though they had said sorry, the window was still broken. How can they fix the problem? My kids didn't know. So I continued with the story-- the boys then saved up money to pay for the window.

As part of asking for forgiveness and righting the wrong, I told the kids that they needed to pray to Heavenly Father and ask for his forgiveness as well.

After praying for forgiveness, I showed my kids the last step--don't do it again. To finish the story I told my kids that the boys decided to play baseball at the park where there were no houses close by from now on.

I told my kids that the peace they feel inside is the knowledge from the Holy Ghost that they have used the power of the atonement in their lives. We can always feel that peace whenever we repent.

Each time we repent we come closer to Christ. As we keep repenting, someday we can live with Him again.

I gave my girls one more scenario and had them tell me what they should do. The scenario is one that happens A LOT at our house: two sisters were coloring and one sister took a crayon from the other sister. It made her sister cry. What should the first sister do? Princess gave great answers and I knew that she understood what I as trying to teach.

We finished by reciting all 4 of the steps of repentance a couple of times.

Need some more FHE ideas? Here's the list of lessons we have done so far: