Family Home Evening and Table Climbing

My host mother, Lydia, likes to take charge of Family Home Evening lessons. One FHE, she asked us all what we heard in church.

My little sister Adwoa talked a bit about Sunday School. Lydia said, "Nice try." Then Essie said what she heard in sacrament. Lydia said, "Nice try." I didn’t want a 'nice try', so I gave a slightly lengthy monologue and seemed to pass the test.

When it was Kweku’s turn, he said: ‘You want to know one thing I heard at church? One thing I heard at church was: ‘Amen.’”

It is safe to say Lydia was less than amused and rephrased the question to ‘what did you learn at church?’

We finally got her to crack a smile when Essie said she learned that Sister so-and-so had a baby.

JJ had an interesting activity in store for FHE. It is called ‘table climbing’ but it turned out to be more like ‘rolling off the table onto the floor with a giant thump.’ If anyone wants to try it, I will tell you how. Lay on the table. Roll off without falling on the floor. Grab whatever you can with whatever limb you can. Get from one side of the table to the other (under the table) without touching the floor. Roll yourself back up onto the opposite side of the table from where you started. More succinctly, go down one side of the table and come up the other without touching the ground.

I made it the first time because luckily there was a bar on the bottom of the table. When I tried it without using the bar, I fell on the floor the first time. I tried again and was able to briefly suspend myself in the air under the table, and it took a battle with gravity to roll myself back up onto the table.

JJ didn’t seem to have a problem with it. Rock climbers are so aggravating sometimes.


Essie and Adwoa both dropped flat onto the ground. I wanted to see Lydia try, but didn’t want to push my luck in volunteering her.


Another time, JJ and I decided we wanted to play the newlywed game, Kweku against Lydia. It was so funny hearing their perspectives. Kweku saw her one night in the dark and offered her a ride. He said it was because he felt sorry for her. She said it is because he fell in love with her the second he saw her. She did not like his car and told her friends at work about it. They said she could do better. She left the house 15 minutes before he was supposed to pick her up on her first date with him. On purpose of course. He persisted in continuing to visit her at work.

Though they couldn't agree on all the details, Kweku summed it all up with the last statement, "It was the dimple that did the trick."