Sports and Family

Families are like sport teams!  If you run the right plays you will win every game. They both take practice, patience, work, love, unity, drive, forgiveness. Every family and team is a little different in abilities and skills, Some like more aggressive play calls while others like more passive calls. What family/team are you?
In sports there are an allotted number players on the court at one time. Their Goal is to score the most points and hold the other team to as few points as possible, who ever has the most points when time runs out wins the game. I had the privilege of playing sports in a small town in Nevada even though it was small, my school had produced many college athletes. Thanks to great coaches that taught us the game and related it to life experiences, many of us found a love for sports and for our families. Many of our coaches told us there were only 3 things that come before our team and sports 1) god, 2) family 3) school. They taught us to band together. They taught us that we were to stick up for each other off the court/field as if we were on the court/field. We learned to always watch our teammates and hold them up to the high standard our coach's had set for us, as a result we learned to be better people so that we wouldn't let our teammates or our coaches down. We conditioned often and ran our plays made sure that when game time came we would know how to make our plays outsmart the other team. Rarely did we get beat. on our basketball team we has a great point guard, he knew the game! he loved the game! he was smart with his dribbling and very skilled. he would execute the plays with exactness and expected the rest of us to as well if we slacked he would put us in line. we went on to play and win many tournaments. he was the leader and because he was so good he could often carry the team, he always out scored us and had the most steals and assists. this made many team members jealous and mad at him because we felt he didn't use our talents enough. He knew,even when we couldn't see it that, without the rest of the team he was nothing. He had to work with us to have him be at the top of his game. if we would have supported him more we would have been a lot better. it is the same with our families. in every family there is a "point guard", usually the father or mother. they call the plays and they need everyone else. sometimes the other doesn't see that they are needed and feel that the "point guard" is doing all the work, when truly they need the other to help them be the best they can be. We can "score" way higher if we set "plays" or goals and plans and then use them." just like basketball no one can do it alone it takes a whole team.
My favorite sport is American football. I love it! In American football there are a few more players. In traditional American football there are 11 players per team on the field. The game is a little more physical than basketball. We had great coaches as I mentioned earlier. Football take the efforts of every single team member. if the center doesn't snap the ball right it makes the rest of the team work harder to pick up the slack, same with any other position on the field. So it is with our families. When one child slacks it takes extra effort by the rest of the family to pick up the slack to get back up to speed. In every game there are plays that go wrong there has never been a perfect game on both sides by every single player. However there are teams that win the State Championship, World Series, Super Bowl, ect. every year. It is the same with our families we will never be a perfect family where everything runs great no one ever slacks and every decision is made correctly. We can however all win our own Super Bowl, world series, or what ever our favorite match is. our families all have the key players that will make our "team" run as smooth as it possibly can! 
Being a missionary there are a lot of hard things that we see, one of the hardest for me is to see how families are being attacked from ways that we cant always see. Many families think that they have already lost to many games to have a come back win. This is common thought but it simply is not true! Our Savior Jesus Christ has suffered so that us personally can " make a come back" but he has also suffered for our families. Families are central to gods plan. He loves families and wants them to stay together. I hope that you all will read The Family: A Proclamation to the World which will be on the page of links I like on the side bar.