Blog Tour: Creating Your Forever Family by Rachel A. Sullivan

Book Description:

Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. It has been decades since the family proclamation was first presented to members of the Church by President Gordon B. Hinckley. But despite the passage of time, the counsel provided in the family proclamation is ever more vital in these tumultuous last days. Creating Your Forever Family is an indispensable resource, providing practical application of the nine principles outlined in the family proclamation. Featuring counsel from Church leaders and stories of these principles in action, this book offers ways to incorporate these values in everyday life, from interview questions to help kids open up, to game night ideas, to fun family dinner conversation starters. Families will be strengthened as each member gets involved in the discussions and applications. Now is the time to fortify families and truly embrace the principles of this great proclamation.

Rorie's Review:

There is SO much good information in this book. I started marking passages on the first page of the introduction. I love how the author includes application ideas at the end of each chapter, making it that much easier to put each of these principles into play in your own life. I also really enjoyed the three appendixes (appendices?) at the end with interview questions, dinner-time conversation starters and family fun ideas. Just those things right there made this book worth reading.

The author covers each of the nine principles that are covered in the family proclamation - one per chapter. This is the type of book where you don't necessarily need to read it in order, you can skip around to whichever topic you would most like to work on. The downside to this book is that it is very textbook dry. I was unable to read more than a few pages at a time before I started to fall asleep. Again, keep in mind that there was a lot of great information in the book, it was just presented in such a way that it was hard to stay alert.

I plan on keeping this book and going through it over and over again to implement the application ideas, and use the ideas presented in the back of the book as well.

Tarah's Review:

It took me longer to get into this book than it probably should have. I just haven't been in the mood to pick up much of anything, but when a book is non-fiction that makes it three times as hard for me. I do absolutely love the cover though. Very clean, very simple and very nice to look at.

Once I did get into the book I found so many things that I want to start trying in my own family. There are things we already do, but we could do better and be more intentional with those things. I particularly enjoyed the prayer chapter. I teach the Beehives at church and when I first got in we implemented a Prayer Jar to increase unity in the class. I was a little worried about how the girls would feel about praying for someone specifically, but I was shocked to find how much they enjoy it. It did take a time or two to get used to it, but now, if I forget the jar or something the girls are right on it and they don't have any problems praying for one of the girls or leaders. It's very inspiring. If it works that well in a YW's class I can only imagine how powerful praying for each individual person in a family would be.

So many other good nuggets, but I also enjoyed the chapters on repenting and complimenting your children. The one thing that bugged me through out the book was the line at the bottom of the page that separated the actual text from the references. There wasn't enough space between the two and I kept thinking the line was underling an important passage or something, and it drove me bonkers. I would have liked to have seen more spacing there and maybe make the references a font size or two smaller.

Tour Dates:

Sept. 17^th: http://fireandicereads.com/, https://www.rockinbookreviews.com/

Sept. 18^th :  https://brightlystreet.com/, http://empowermoms.net/

Sept. 19^th: http://ldswritermom.blogspot.com/, https://joyinthemoments.wordpress.com/

Sept. 20^th: https://www.singinglibrarianbooks.com/, http://lisaisabookworm.blogspot.com/, https://ldsandlovinit.blogspot.com/

Sept. 21^st: http://heidi-reads.blogspot.com/, http://literarytimeout.blogspot.com/

Giveaway:
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Title: Creating Your Forever Family
Author: Rachel A. Sullivan
Publisher: Covenant Communications, Inc.
Published: September 2018
ISBN: 1524406775
Source: We received a copies from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Purchase: Amazon Deseret Book