How can you help prepare yourself and your family for Easter Sunday April 24? To get the most from the season, below is a list of resources you may want to consider reviewing with your family.
- Watch the new Easter video recently released by the Church.
- Read with your family scriptures about Christ’s Resurrection.
- Review with your family the meaning of the word Easter.
- Read “Family Easter Traditions” from the Ensign magazine.
- Read “How can I make Easter more Christ centered for my family and me?“
- Read “How We Teach Our Children about Easter.”
- Read a Family Home Evening idea “Focusing on Easter Worship.”
- Watch last year’s Easter video.
- Watch the video “An Apostle’s Easter Thoughts on Christ” with Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s testimony of Jesus Christ, available in both English and Spanish.
Please share in the comments below any other good ideas for families.
Sadly, we Latter-day Saints do a very poor job of celebrating Easter either communally within our Church meetings or within our families. In fact, our stake has decided to schedule stake conference on Palm Sunday (go figure). I don’t know why we don’t have a more formal celebration of the Holy Week tradition within our Sacrament meetings. We seem to have bought into the Christmas fanaticism but feel hesitant to fully embrace our Saviour’s victory over the grave with celebration and joyous rejoicing.
You might not be aware that stakes do not schedule their own stake conference. They are directed when to have the conference by the Quorum of Twelve.
As Michael mentioned in the first comment, I too have appreciated the blessing of focusing on the week preceding Easter in personal studies or family devotions. Here are a few other items that have been helpful to me.
Read “Reflections on the Savior’s Last Week” by Eric D. Huntsman from the April 2009 Ensign. Here is the link:
http://lds.org/ensign/2009/04/reflections-on-the-saviors-last-week?lang=eng
Note that Huntsman, a BYU professor, has expanded material related to this article online at this BYU-hosted website:
http://hccl.byu.edu/faculty/HuntsmanE/Seasonal-eh/index-easter.html
Another interesting article is “Restored Light on the Savior’s Last Week in Mortality” by Andrew Skinner from the June 1999 Ensign:
http://lds.org/ensign/1999/06/restored-light-on-the-saviors-last-week-in-mortality?lang=eng
David, so why would the Apostles schedule a stake conference on Palm Sunday? Would they likewise schedule one on Christmas Day if it fell on a Sunday? I really don’t understand why such an important Holy Day would not be celebrated.
Michael, I can’t image a better way to celebrate Easter than to go listen to an Apostle of Jesus Christ!
Thank you for helping me reach this wonderful lesson it is so good it really helped me