How many Book of Mormons should a family have? This is going to be a long, and pretty useless story, so buckle up.
First off my children like church, they like the gospel, they like going to church, reading the scriptures, watching general conference, going to the temple and early morning seminary, and participating any any religious activity we tell them to do. They participate in gospel discussions both in and out of the home and bear their testimony in church. However, none of them have developed or even really made an effort to have individual scripture study or prayers. Almost none of their religious observations are self motivated or driven, they will happily eat what is fed to them and truly enjoy it - but they have yet to ask for or produce their own spiritual experiences. (Megan a few months ago has started reading her scriptures in the morning, Madison has read a scripture/quote from a daily devotional journal every morning, Brock has tried to listen to a conference talk every day and has done it maybe 5 times, and Noah has had some good morning prayer streaks) But with all my "lack of religiosity" until I was 16, I was always making a real effort to read my scriptures as early as 5th or 6th grade. So I just wonder. I invite, I inspire, I challenge, I testify, I try everything I can think of to help them understand how important these daily holy habits are.
Around Christmas I was listening to a devotional from Elder Bednar and he was advising the audience to get a blank copy of the Book of Mormon every time they have a questions and read through it with that question or phrase in mind and mark it, and then write in the back what you have learned about that topic when they are done. Then he said "and by the time you are my age you should have four or five hundred Book of Mormons marked and on your shelf. ha! It sank deep into my heart.
Then a few weeks later I went to a stake women's conference workshop and they had a table full of probably 200 or more Book of Mormons and told us to take as many as we wanted. Remembering Elder Bednar's advice I thought it was a good time to stock up. So I grabbed 4 or 5 with intentions to grow my spiritual knowledge. When I got home that night I put them on my dresser, the kids came in for scripture study and inquired about them. They were intrigued, they asked several questions, I told them about Elder Bednar. Then I said, "if you think having a blank copy of the Book of Mormon will help you read and mark your scriptures you can have one." (BTW - they all have their own scriptures AND a blank BoM already - but sometimes new is novel). They perked up, all grabbed a book, a pen and started reading and marking (they really hate marking scriptures). I was filled with gratitude. Over the next few days I "spied" my kids reading and marking their BoM and they brought them to family study and marked them up. But in the moment when they took them they all felt bad for taking my BoMs and I assured them I didn't care and I would rather they have them.
Afterwards I sent a text to the stake RS president and asked if I could have a few more BoMs, she said yes and that she would drop some off. The next day we went to church, I guess they didn't get rid of all the BoMs so in the cultural hall their was a table full of BoMs. I guess every member of my family separately saw this table and thought of me. By the time we all got home after church (many of us had meetings and came home at different times) we discovered that every person took 5 or 6 BoMs to make up for the ones they took from me, then the RS president dropped of 5 or 6 more. And that is how we got all those Book of Mormons! Isn't that sweet?
At conference Elder Rasband begged us to flood our neighborhood with the Book of Mormon. I told myself that is what we were going to do with all of those. I haven't yet. I intend to. I will. I promise. Its just hard. But I will. I promise.
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