By Nettie H. Francis

Everything I need to know I learned in family council.

Wait. You mean, Kindergarten, right? Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten. Isn’t that how it goes?

Nope. Everything I need to know I learned in Family Council. Let me explain.

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By Nettie H. Francis

The song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads” (D&C 25:12). If music brings blessings upon our heads, I need as many as possible, especially in my role as a parent. I am not a master musician, but I have learned to use music on my quest to becoming a master mother.

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By Nettie H. Francis

I am NOT a politically correct mother. I discriminate based on age and gender, and whether or not you’ve finished your homework. (For example, those who have may go out and play.) I insist that girls wear dresses and boys wear ties to special occasions. I teach my girls to cook and sew, and my boys to dig ditches and mow lawns.

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By Nettie H. Francis

Las Vegas is a wilderness. I know, because I moved here from a comfortable “Jerusalem.” I wasn’t as supportive as Sariah must have been when Lehi announced that they were moving. I’m sure she just said, “Whatever you say, Honey. I’d be happy to leave all this gold behind and go live in a tent.” But, I’m not such a submissive wife. It took a while for my “Lehi” to convince me that the Lord had called us to move; and to the wilderness, no less. Moving was also difficult for me because I was great with child at the time. In fact, I was due the following month. Besides leaving my comfortable home behind, I had to leave my comfortable doctor and familiar hospital as well. Luckily, we found a wonderful new provider to assist us, and my first born in the wilderness arrived the day after we moved into our new home. We named her Sariah.

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by Nettie H. Francis

Oranges remind me of freedom—and of an experience I had when I was sixteen years old.
At the last bus stop the students climbed out, used the clean restrooms, bought sodas and stood around talking and laughing as usual. I walked a few feet away from the group and looked east, toward rolling, green hills. In the distance I could distinguish two faint, grey lines running parallel along the hills. I looked up at the huge, West German flag waving over me. It was July 1990, nine months after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and I was on a student exchange trip to Berlin.

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