Guest Author - Terrie Lynn Bittner

There aren’t any church meetings and most people are busy with their families. If you live alone, how can you hold a meaningful family home evening?

Some members don’t limit the term Family Home Evening to those family members who are living. That means they can choose to spend their FHE with family from the past, doing their family history. It’s a great time to reflect on those who came before and to think about the ways their choices affected your own life. Working from the Internet to gather family information, or writing what you know into a narrative form or timeline is a way to build a loving bond with the family you’ll be sharing eternity with. You don’t want to arrive and find yourself surrounded by strangers!

Moving the other direction, you can spend the time putting together materials for your children who haven’t been born yet, or if you won’t be having children, for your other relatives who can hand things down for you. Write your personal history. Create a book that tells your family about you--your testimony, your views, your fears and your loves. Put together a box of treasures to be passed down through the generations to come.

Family Home Evening is a time for families to study the gospel or to work on improvements in their lives. Even if you’re alone, you can set up a study plan for the evening or use the time to set and carry out goals. Consider your special time for your family of one.

Do you know anyone else who is alone on Monday nights? Call them up and talk or get together to do something special. Build your relationships with members of your ward family. Or do something to make the Family Home Evenings of others special—bring by a treat, put together some FHE resources you can take to a family with young children or write letters to people in your ward telling them how wonderful they are.

If you have family in your home, but they aren’t members, just plan to spend time with them. You don’t even have to tell them it’s Family Home Evening. Think of fun things to do together and spend the evening as a family doing something. If you do it every Monday, it will become a tradition. Start with a special meal and make a treat to enjoy during your time together. Whether you’re playing board games, going for a walk, or just talking, you’re fulfilling the purpose of the program, even if you can’t do it in the traditional way.