by Annette Lyon
I was about sixteen when Sister G. was my Sunday School teacher. She was a nurse, and at times her expertise worked its way into her lessons. I specifically remember how, after asking a question, she’d always follow it up with the same admonition:

“Now don’t give me nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Think harder.”
See, during her nursing school years, if you didn’t know the answer to a test question, she and her fellow students knew that they could almost always get points by including those symptoms in their answer. Most illnesses and drug side effects had one or most of those listed as possibilities, so those were pretty safe answers; ones you didn’t have to study or think about.

In Sunday School, we knew what she meant by that: don’t give her the pat answers of, “Go to church, pray, and read your scriptures.”

Fast-forward two decades, and I’m now a mother of a teenager not too far from the age I was then. Like most mothers, I struggle to know how to best nurture my children so that they’ll be shod with spiritual armor to face the fiery darts of the modern world. What can I do to keep them on the path and protect them from evil influences?

I believe those concerns boil down to one thing: what can we do as parents to help our children gain their own testimonies?

There are lots of things, of course. Be proactive about what media comes into our home. Hold Family Home Evening regularly. Teach them to work and to play and to cooperate together. Go to the temple for guidance and direction. Have gospel discussions.

The list goes on.

But with all due respect to Sister G, I now believe that the things at the very top of the list—the things most critical to whether my children will gain testimonies of their own—are the things she dismissed. Basically, the “nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea” she was so loathe to let us spout.
She might have been right that we as teenagers needed to look deeper at times, that we threw out those answers without really thinking about them.

But I also think she did us a disservice in making us push aside and minimize the power of prayer, of scripture study, and of attending church meetings. Those are the things that would make such a difference in our future lives.

It doesn’t get much simpler than that, but if those three things are solidly a part of a person’s life, everything else will likely fall into place more easily. Inspiration is more likely to be recognized and acted upon.
Life problems can be put into perspective and handled better. Spiritual and doctrinal understanding is increased. Spirits are uplifted.

Testimonies are strengthened.

More, without those simple things—prayer, scripture study, and church attendance—in place, nothing else goes as smoothly. A bump on the road of life can feel like a life-altering jolt. A question faced can be daunting without the companionship of the Holy Ghost to act as a guide. A trial faced without the Comforter ends up more painful and raw, lacking the soothing of the Spirit’s balm to the wounded spirit.

We generally know these things. But how often do we as adults forget them? Do we always go to church with worshipful hearts? Do we study—truly study—our scriptures? Do we pray with real intent every day?

How much more would we be able to bring the Spirit into our own lives (and then into the lives of our children) if we became more focused on those three simple things—a list that has become so mundane that we brush it aside as “too simple.”

Some of the Israelites, dying of snake bites, refused to look on the brazen serpent to save their lives. It was too simple.

So here’s a challenge: let’s let the easy answers take the spotlight for once. Prayer, scripture study, and church attendance will no longer be equated with that old nursing school trick of getting easy points.

We need to raise the bar, because our stakes today are much higher than those of the ancient Israelites’—what’s at stake for us isn’t just our mortal lives, but: our spiritual and eternal lives. And the eternal lives of our children.

My family will still hold Family Home Evening and do all the other things on the list. But I’m more committed to making sure that those three basics are at the top of the list.

Prayer.

Scripture study.

Church Attendance.

Testimony miracles will abound when the basics are put into place.