Transcripts: Enjoy Life Forever!

Transcript: Family worship. The challenges and the rewards
[The Challenges]
Father 1: Finding a way to get everybody, five people at the same time, to have a whole evening together can be a challenge.
Father 2: I wondered whether I would be able to make our family worship interesting and beneficial. I was not very confident.
Daughter 1: A challenge for me is my own attitude toward family worship. I would hang out with my friends from the congregation.
Father 3: Children like it when you are interested in them and spend time with them, but you don’t always have the time and energy needed.
Mother 1: I had to provide financially for the family. I was always tired and worn out, so it was very hard to have family worship regularly.
Father 4: Kenzie, of course, is a child with special needs, and she has her challenges. And there are times when it just doesn’t work.
Son of Father 5: Sometimes my dad would make us attend family worship when I actually wanted to go to bed. It is quite annoying.
Father 5: That’s an honest reply.
Mother 2: We have three different age groups: We have a teenager, we have a preteen, and we have a son who’s very active and hyper.
Mother 3: My husband, not being a worshipper of Jehovah, might have different plans for the family.
[Consistency and Determination]
Father 6: When the Family Worship arrangement was introduced, it became a part of our service to Jehovah, didn’t it? We never miss a congregation meeting, so why should we miss family worship?
Father 7: Whether I’m tired or not, the consistency of having family worship is very important.
Mother 4: It really requires discipline, because sometimes there are things that we want to do, and we just know, well, the family study is what’s most important, so we have to give that up.
Son of Father 2: My friends and the brothers in the congregation often call me to exercise or play sports. Since the day for family worship doesn’t change each week, it becomes easier to turn them down.
Mother 5: I’ve said to the girls: “Let’s try to push each other. Let’s try to encourage each other,” because it’s not easy. I feel it has to start with me making the time and effort to leave work on time in order to be able to honor our family worship.
Father 2: I became confident that this can really be successful.
Daughter of Mother 5: I think the most important thing is the love we have for Jehovah. That keeps us going, I think. That’s our motivation.
Wife of Father 4: We are determined to teach her as much as we possibly can so that she’ll possibly understand, so that the truth will mean everything to her too.
Mother 5: We’ll get there. We’ll get there.
[Flexibility]
Father 6: We’re a family, and things pop up, and something can come up unexpectedly. So, we need to cover all the angles.
Mother 6: We make it relaxing. The children look forward to getting cake or fruit or something else so that it doesn’t get strict and rigid.
Wife of Father 4: We have to know when to be flexible.
Father 3: When you have children, you feel that you have to make small, short sessions so that they can concentrate on the subject being discussed.
Mother 7: As they got older, we had to change the methods.
Father 8: At times, we invite brothers in our congregation.
Wife of Father 8: We might get the kids to organize some questions so they can interview the brother or sister that is coming over, especially if they’re new in the congregation.
Father 1: So sometimes family worship might be about issues that our family is facing; sometimes it might be about things in the ministry that we want to try to accomplish; sometimes it might be about games. So, we’ve stretched out all over the floor and done all sorts of wonderful things for family worship because it keeps people engaged.
[Relevance]
Father 6: It’s all about asking the family what they would like to talk about. If the family is involved, it is a family worship rather than Dad, or myself, setting out the agenda for family worship. Well, then, it would be Dad’s family worship and not for the whole family. But if we get the feedback from the whole family, from everyone, everyone gets to put in ideas, then we just plan that accordingly.
Father 8: The reality of what we need now for relevance is that we need to make sure they are grounded in their faith and belief.
Husband of Mother 7: At every family study, we always try to focus on the kids’ spiritual goals.
Son of Father 6: Once, a kid at school came and asked me if I could play for the football team. And I thought it was a good idea, so I went to Dad and asked him. And then he said, “Oh, why don’t we do something called role reversal?” I would play the dad, and he would play the son.
Daughter of Mother 7: In my case, the biggest pressure I have to face is dating in school, and family worship helps me a lot!
Daughter of Mother 1: Instead of allowing my problems and negative emotions to fester within me, I shared these feelings with my family during family worship. Mom was very understanding, and she made an effort to come up with themes during family worship to address those issues.
Daughter of Mother 3: We decided to make a scroll out of the book of Isaiah. It really helps me to realize that Jehovah’s organization makes it easier for us to find the scriptures that we’re looking for and not to make it so complicated, like in Jesus’ days.
Son of Father 2: But for me, the best thing is to have an opportunity to express myself.
Daughter of Father 6: It’s good sometimes to break it up a bit, so it’s not always Dad talking.
[The Rewards]
Father 5: When I see how happy all the family members are after our family worship, I silently thank Jehovah for helping me fulfil my responsibility as the head of the household.
Husband of Mother 6: Our children have learned to be more outgoing and participate more in the meetings.
Mother 1: It was Jehovah’s way of telling me: ‘You are not alone. You have these precious children with you.’ It’s just that I wasn’t paying enough attention to them.
Son of Father 1: We open with prayer, and then right after that, it’s just amazing. It’s really fun. So, getting there is the hard part, but once we get into it, that’s when it starts, that’s when we start having fun.
Father 9: Family worship has been protecting my family, and it has been preparing my family for the difficulties we face.
Mother 5: We actually are more open with each other now than we ever were before. And we can discuss just about anything and everything, which is actually good.
Daughter of Mother 1: Family worship made me realize how happy I am to have Jehovah as my God and that I have many reasons to be happy.
Daughter of Mother 5: And it feels like I can just let go of what was making me sad or what was making me a bit angry, and I can just be like, ‘It’s fine’ because I know everything will be OK and Jehovah has blessed our evening.
(Logo: Black capital letters JW.ORG inside a white box. Copyright 2014 Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania)