This past week in my family relations class we talked about the importance of having good communication with our spouses and with our children and with our parents and brothers and sisters. Something that I really liked was the idea of having family counsels and patterning these counsels after the manner that takes place between the first presidency and the counsel of the twelve apostles. When they have their counsels, they open with a prayer and they begin by first expressing the love that they have for the other members of the group. Only after love has been expressed, do they begin discussing what they came to meet about. Every person then gets to express what they feel and think about the issue or the topic, and they stay until everyone reaches a consensus on the issue. Finally, they end with a word of prayer. I liked this idea, because I believe that when families have the opportunity to discuss things together and to allow everyone to have an equal say, then families can work together and learn from each other to become stronger as a family.

 I also liked the idea that there will be sometimes that the husband and wife need to counsel together and only together to make important decisions, just as sometimes the first presidency of the church will only meet together and counsel together to make certain decisions. I liked this because the relationship that we have with our spouse should be the most important relationship that we can have, except our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Because our relationship with our spouse is so important and so sacred, it makes senses that there should be times when we only counsel with each other and the Lord, and no one else.