We did it! Week #1 is down guys. Has it only been a week though? Because I feel like I’ve learned so much more. First I’d like to get started with some myths that we discussed in Family Relations this week. The first myth is that love lasts forever. Not that I’m a professional, but I’ve heard and witnessed that love/marriage is hard work. The second myth was that more similarities lead to a better marriage. It was funny discussing this because I imagined finding a guy just like me, and it sounded amazing! But the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I got. Haha I think that it is important and perfectly normal to like different things. Another myth was that a happy marriage means that there are no conflicts. Like I said earlier, marriage is hard work! You have to learn to live with a different person and find out what works and doesn’t work with each other.

After we talked about myths, we discussed different trends that are happening around the world. There has been a delay in marriage. The average age for women is 26 and men is 28. For my LDS friends, women are 24 and men are 26 (Are these numbers higher than you expected?). Delaying marriage has influenced declining fertility rates. Women are having an average of 2 point something kids. Cohabitation has become very popular. About 60%-80% are cohabitating. This also contributes to premarital sex increasing and children being born outside of marriage increasing. Mothers are then often times left raising a child by herself and therefore having to go to work to provide for her and her child. There are increasing divorce rates. More people are living alone. All these trends contribute to the average household size declining.

We were also asked to share our opinions on the question, “Does it really matter how many children I have?” We were provided with the following quote,

"There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty? —To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into the families of the wicked, where they will be trained in wickedness, debauchery, and every species of crime. It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can."

- President Brigham Young

I absolutely love this quote. God gave us the beautiful power to procreate and he’s asked us to save this power to use within the bounds of marriage, between husband and wife. I believe that it is very important to communicate with our Heavenly Father often and more importantly to ask Him about your future families. God has a plan for each of us. We may have ideas of what we’d like our future families to be like. We can pray to God and cry unto Him our desires. However, God already knows. His plan is perfect and flawless and He will give us what we need. 

Here's a picture of the people who are most important to me. They've made me stronger and helped me become closer to my Savior, Jesus Christ.