Equal Partners

2 Cor 6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together

Men and women (in general)  have different temperaments.  Our children come with different temperaments as well.  Men tend to be a little on the disagreeable side and if the children are a bit disagreeable as well, Father's may be a bit avoidant to participate in certain routines. Disagreeableness or assertiveness help men leave the home and deal with workplace tasks.  Women tend to be on the more agreeable side, which can help with dealing with children without losing it. That said, it's still tough. 

Husbands and wives need to appreciate each other's temperaments and their pluses and minuses.   If both mom and dad are on the disagreeable side, it may be that having a bunch of disagreeable children to care for will be too much.  For agreeable parents with agreeable children, having 10+ may be a dream. The Church attracts agreeable people, but should be open an accepting to the disagreeable/assertive as well. Assertiveness has its value too. Also, agreeableness and assertiveness can be trained to a degree. 

In today's more equaltible culture, wives and husband might enjoy a more ideal and equal relationship.  Instead of dividing up the home tasks and waiting for Mom to tell Dad what needs to happen, Dad can be more involved and more cooperative in the family tasks.  Instead of looking at the efficiency of a division of labor, consider the synergy and and intimacy of working together.  Nurses in the hospital really come together as a team when they tackle the hard tasks together.  When there is a code brown, a great working team will all gather to make quick work of a dirty task. Also, working together is more fun.

If you can be a full partner and lift the household loads together, you might be surprised at how you and your spouse grow together.

Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Exaltation

In my opinion, exaltation involves the work of preparing spirits for their mortality. This could be considered giving spirits their "first lessons", eternal parenting, or teaching "morality prep'.

There are 3 lessons that must be learned during mortality and can only be learned now. 1. love God 2. control the body 3. submit to God's priesthood authority. 

If you never learn these lessons here and now, you can never learn them and consequently, you can never teach what you have never learned. 

In my view, the 3 degrees of heaven are not physical separations but more of a division of responsibility. It's kinda like the hospital with techs, nurses, and doctors. We all work together, but there is a hierarchy of responsibility. God is the Great Physician, The Physician of physicians, who desires all His children to become doctors, but some will settle to be nurses and techs-- worlds without end. 

If you desire to become like, and do the work of our Heavenly Father, the time to decide is now. There is no going back to medical school later.

No Law = No Humor

The Book of Mormon tells the story of Korihor who preached against the existence of God, against Christ and that religion was just another form of oppression. 

Alma 30:17 And many more such things did he say unto them, telling them that there could be no atonement made for the sins of men, but every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.

Korihor had a lot of success convincing people that all rules were arbitrary.  Korihor argued that there is no right and wrong; there is only what a person wants, what a person can do, and what a person can get away with. 

Sadly, in this lawless, "do as you will" world, there can be no place for humor. Humor absolutely depends on the harmless violation of rules.  Without rules, there can be no humor. The reality of universal truth is proven by the universality of humor. 

If there is something we don't find humorous, it is either because, we don't understand the rule the joke is based upon (premise), or we consider the rule too important and sacred to be harmlessly violated.  Sadly, in Korihor's world, if there is no law, there is no humor. 

2 Nephi 2:13 And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.

Reading Program: "My Neighborhood"

I am doing the "My Neighborhood" reading program with my daughter Vivian.  "My Neighborhood" was created by my mother,  Gayle Brosnahan.  Together with sight words, "My Neighborhood" is an easy, fun, and effective teaching tool. Smartphones, cameras, and wireless printing technology should make this system accessible to and convenient for most families to implement

The "My Neighborhood" program involves taking a picture of something in my daughter's world (bed, kitchen, computer).  We print the photo out on the top half of the page, and then my daughter crafts a sentence about the picture.  I write out the sentence with a Sharpie on another sheet of paper, cut out the words and scramble them. I then have my daughter unscramble the words and we paste them on the bottom of the page under the picture.  We do 1-2 pages daily and put all the pages together in a book. 

A modified version of this program might serve to be a very effective tool to help teach adult to read as well.