Until We Meet Again

This entry is part of my general conference application series.

Until We Meet Again, by President Thomas S. Monson

We had the greatest family home evening tonight. A few weeks ago, David asked if he could invite his friends from my work (my colleagues) to come for family night. Instead of persuading him otherwise or changing his mind for him, my wonderful wife went to work in preparing invitations, lessons, and other ideas for the visit. She told me of their plans, and I'm ashamed to admit that my reaction was one of "yeah, let's do that sometime" (note how I didn't plan for any specific time).

Working entirely out of love, she chose a date and asked me to deliver the invitations. (Wow! What a wonderful woman! She amazes me in so many ways so frequently that you'd think I would get used to how great she is, but this is yet another example of how amazing she is.) With such a direct push in the right direction, I tried to reclaim my role in leading out in family home evening by inviting my friends.

Well, tonight was the night that they came. It was such a treat to have work-family in our home, sharing in our little family's traditions. We had a craft activity (Popsicle stick picture frames), and Maryann gave the cutest lesson on families—it was the perfect evening, and the children got so much attention that they were shining and bouncing off the walls by the time the evening was done.

I hope we can have our friends over again soon.

I tell this story because I read President Monson's closing remarks to conference tonight. At the end of each conference, I feel so full of love and happiness that I wish that general conference could be every week (or at least more often than twice yearly), and I long to meet again. I had a similar feeling after our friends left tonight; I wished that they could either stay longer or come again very soon because of the feelings of love we shared together (and the fun, too).

President Monson charged that we be "good neighbors in our communities, reaching out to those of other faiths, as well as to our own." I loved the fruit of the Spirit (see Galations 5:22-23) that we shared tonight: love, joy, peace. And the best part was that I can still feel those good feelings two hours later! (Yes, we don't have many visitors to our home; you probably aren't wondering why...)

President Monson also said:

May we ever be mindful of the needs of those around us and be ready to extend a helping hand and a loving heart.

It's wonderful that when we reach out in love, we find that we are all lifted together. This reminds me strongly of Paul's counsel to the Ephesians:

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (Eph. 4:13).

Love leads to unity leads to Christ.