Eternal Family Life
YW Manual 3, Lesson 8

Today, we will be taking a plane trip. (Give each girl their ticket and have them review the details on their tickets).

Our destination is eternal life in the Celestial kingdom with our family. There is one layover along our trip: earth life.

*Draw 3 circles on board and label "pre-earth life, earth, eternal life". This is our flight plan and map of our trip.

Before you ever take a vacation, however, don’t you want to know as much as you can about where you’re going? When my husband and I go on vacation,we'll spend hours looking up how to get there, places to see, etc.

Let’s review what we should know about our trip.

1. In heaven, we learned of God’s plan for us to come to earth and live as families.
2.Life on earth is a test that will determine our worthiness to progress and become more like our heavenly parents.
3.According to God’s plan, if we are faithful and worthy in this life, we will receive greater blessings. If we are not, we will have limitations placed upon us in the next life.
4.If we prove faithful and worthy, our families will be sealed and our family life will continue eternally. This is all a part of God’s plan to provide a way for us to be together as families eternally.

Now that we know some essential details of where we are going, let's talk about the trip.

What if I told you that we’ve already completed one leg of the trip? We’ve already left pre-earth life! But on that 1st flight, we hit a little bit of turbulence and the luggage compartment popped open and all of our luggage fell out of the plane. Even so, the pilot landed the plane here on earth. We are laid over here for a while until it’s time to head toward our final destination. But, we have a great destination yet ahead of us so we need to start gathering items for our new luggage and get packed for our next flight.
What happens if you’re going to Hawaii and you pack snow boots, winter coats, a snowboard, gloves, hats, etc.? That vacation may not be all that enjoyable because you didn’t pack the right things.

For this trip, we need to pack so that when we reach our destination we will be able to enjoy ourselves! Also, there are certain restrictions on the sort of things we can take with us. Celestial Airlines doesn’t allow any tangible items on board your flights.
Let’s pack our suitcase. (Give each girl a cutout of a suitcase so they can write items "inside" the suitcase.) {Before my lesson, I had my girls draw a suitcase on a piece of paper and cut it out.) You could also provide a cute little printout.}
What kind of things should we pack so we can enjoy eternal life?(Examples-baptism, temple, repentance, scripture study, family etc.)
All of these things are great, butwhen Family is mentioned, tell the girls thatCelestial Airlines has strict regulations regarding packing family in your luggage. As a representative of the airline, it is your duty to share with them these regulations. :) {my girls giggled at this....}

  • What do we know about family life in the next life? (SeeD&C 132:19–20; those whose marriages are sealed in the temple and who live worthily will be exalted and will live as families forever; they shall be gods.
  • In which degree of what kingdom will families be allowed to remain together? (SeeD&C 131:1–4.)

When God organized the family unit he meant for it to continue eternally. However, that blessing will come to us only if we are worthy of it. In order to remain a family unit eternally, we must be worthy of going to the highest degree of the celestial kingdom.

  • Where would you need to be married in order for your marriage covenant to be binding eternally?
  • What happens in the next life to those who do not take the opportunity in this life to be married in the temples of the Lord? (SeeD&C 132:15–17.) What about those who do not have the opportunity in this life? (Temple sealings can be done for the dead.)
  • What will be the condition of those who do live as families in the next life? (SeeD&C 132:18–20.)
  • Why is it important that we prepare for eternal life now? I play devil's advocate here a bit, and asked why not later? why right now?
  • {I picked out one of my 16 year old girls and directed my comments at her....} Sam, when I was your age…do you think I planned on getting married in less than 3 years? 3 years! That’s no time. But sure enough, here I was 19 years old getting married. (I showed a Picture of me at 16/and at my wedding.)
  • I’m not saying you’re getting married in 3 years, but no matter when it happens, the time to prepare is now. You must have the temple as your goal now and start preparing for that! It’s not something you can just walk into. Much like our flight, you must have a ticket, a packed suitcase, and preparations made before you can obtain such a blessing.
  • Think back to when I asked you about packing for Hawaii… if you pack your snow gear, it makes sense that you should go to a place that has snow. However, if you had packed a bathing suit, beach bag, etc… it makes perfect sense to go to Hawaii.
  • In the same way, each of us will spend eternity in the kingdom that we have prepared ourselves for. It is worth every effort to qualify now for the blessings of the celestial kingdom.
  • We cannot live with our families eternally unless we are striving now to live a celestial law.

Okay, so now that we know the where we're going, what to pack, airline regulations, etc... we just have to wait for our flight to board.

During our layover on Earth, however, some of us tend to get bored and tired---and we tend forget that this isn’t our destination. When we get bored, we get lazy and angry and do things which might threaten our opportunity to board the flight where we want to go. (You know when you behave badly in an airport, security might detain you or put you on a different flight.)

We’re going to do an activity to represent this.
{Two girls of about equal strength are tied together in the middle of the room. Two other girls hold candy bars at opposite ends of the room. Each girl has 10 seconds to get her candy bar. The object is that they will pull against each other and neither one will get what she wants. When they talk about it and cooperate they can both get to their candy in the 10 seconds}.
With that activity, I wanted to show how it’s important that we work together, especially in regards to our family unit. We want to go to the same place together, and we can’t get lazy or bored or contentious during our earth life layover. We need to treat each other with love and keep an eternal perspective so we can go HERE (point to the map) together!

I then gave each girl a handout and a bag of peanuts. The handout's quote reads,
"It is plane to see that a wonderful future is yours! Your life’s flight plan includes a “layover” on Earth...a place in which you’ll obtain the blessing of a family. Be sure that family is with you as you fly towards a happy forever!"
This is a quote that I put together; however, it was inspired by the lesson and this talk, Hugh W. Pinnock, "Your Personal Checklist for a Successful Eternal Flight",Ensign, Nov. 1993, 40