Today we had to go to the baptism class at our church.  I was less than thrilled, simply because I just took the class less than a year ago, but they said they changed some things.  And they did.

One thing they had us do was to sit down and come up with a family mission statement.  This was definitely not something I had ever thought about before.  Here is what we came up with:

1. To have a strong knit family that loves and trusts one another.
2. To always be able to talk with one another about everything.
3. To respect and care for one another as well as everybody else we encounter in our lives.
4. To be able to ask for help and openly give help to people in need.
5. To love the Lord and make that a part of our daily life.
6. To give our worries to God so we can stay positive.
7. To respect and support each others individuality.
8. Give praise to one another daily. 

This is where I thought we were done, but John said, no way, we must add two more things to make our family a perfect ten…and this is what he came up with.

  9.  Trust
 10.  Love

How do we take these statements and put them into action in our daily lives so that our daughter and the rest of our munchkins can learn these things?  One thing that immediately springs to mind is that right after New Year’s Eve when we got back from our cabin, one of John’s friends called and asked for help.  She was homeless and had just gotten out of jail.  We have always said that our door is always open for our friend’s and family if they need us, so when she said she needed a place to stay for a few days, it was no big deal to us.  We don’t have an extra room, so she was sleeping on the futon in our living room.  After a few days, I was going crazy!  She talked on her phone non stop all day to her boyfriend who was also in jail.  I don’t need somebody swearing around our daughter all day, and when I want to watch a tv show before bed, I want to hear what’s going on.  She was also eating all of our food, and I do mean all!  Every twenty minutes she was eating.  She ended up staying for a month, and didn’t help clean at all, kept going outside to smoke (which was really eating at me because cigarette smoke is one of the big things that makes me throw up from this pregnancy, even the smell of it from somebody who was near a smoker), lots of stuff was driving us crazy and we wanted to tell her to get out, but we just couldn’t do it.  We just made sure to pray for her every day and try to help her get back on her feet.  We were happy to help but at one point felt like we were being taken advantage of.


This is our family mission statement.  Does your family have a mission statement or something similar?  How do your daily activities teach your children these things?  I would love to hear your thoughts.