Joseph F. Smith

As most of you already know, I am related to Hyrum Smith. Every year we have a "birthday celebration" for Joseph F. Smith whose birthday is November 13th. I have only been to a couple of these birthday celebrations, but I decided it is something that we should start doing. You get to see Elder Ballard and Elder Oaks, and it's great for the kids to learn about their heritage.

This year when I told the kids we were going to a "Joseph F. Smith thing in Salt Lake for Family Night", they were less than thrilled. I told them they had a choice..."we could go to the Joseph F. Smith thing for family night, or we could sit in the family room for 4 hours and just stare at each other." They actually thought staring at each other would be more fun. Thankfully they were wrong.

We arrived downtown almost an hour before the sign in started (yeah, I got the information wrong), so we had some time to kill. We met a really nice lady, whose name I can't remember, and learned more about her family than we would ever want to know (that's probably why I can't remember her name, I'm trying to block out most of her stories). But she was really cute. She gave the girls a little book about Joseph F. Smith with little stories about his life and we read the book several times before the program started. We were also about to walk around and look at pictures they had of Joseph F and the wife that our family comes through, Julina, who was also his favorite wife...or so the story goes. The pictures were great and Kyle decided that he wants to grow his hair to look like Joseph F., I vetoed that right away.

Kyle's favorite picture of Joseph F. Smith is the one on the far right. That's how he wants his hair

Kylee got to participate in the program because she turned 8 this year. She went up front with the other kids and sang Will Bring the World His Truth. It was cute and she got a little picture with a quote from Joseph F. Smith for participating. Elder Ballard spoke on families and how sacred they are, and that we need to fight for marriage and for our families. It was a really nice talk and his testimony was really powerful.

Because Samantha is under 8 years old, she was able to go into the "nursery". They have someone dressed up like Joseph F. Smith and he tells stories about his life. Samantha was really excited to tell us the stories. On the way home Samantha said "My night was really fun, it was better than yours because I didn't have to sit in that room and be bored." Though I wasn't bored, I had to agree with her.

I'm so grateful for my heritage and hope that I can pass that gratitude down to my children. I'm glad we finally decided to attend this year. It's something I want to continue.