During the second hour of the fifth Sunday this past December, many members of the church living in the Utah Area were subjected to a video recorded message from the area authority and his counselors. Several people described the message as “icky”. While members in any given area comprise a small percentage of church membership, I share my analysis of the broadcast because the messaging is harmful, yet common in the church.
Here is a link to the broadcast recording on the church’s website: November 20, 2024 Utah Area Broadcast: The Power of Making and Keeping Sacred Covenants
Title: Covenants and Our Relationship with God
Speaker: D. Todd Christofferson, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Elder Christofferson introduces covenants as the broadcast topic. His remarks comes across as a web of contradictions; reading the transcripts highlighted for me why I often feel confusion when he speaks. For example, he states, “Our principal covenantal promise to God is to obey Him in all that He commands and to love and serve Him and our fellow beings.” Cue puzzled minion look on my face. I still have not figured out what exactly this statement trying to communicate. A question I have is since some general authorities assert that obedience to the church is synonymous as obedience to God, does this statement mean we covenant to obey church leaders?
If Elder Christofferson’s remarks leave you puzzled as they do me, know that his remarks are often like trying to follow a snarled tangled thread. Here is a summary I extrapolated from his talk: We must make a covenant to obey God in order to have a place in the kingdom. Obedience is the most important. Oh, also love God and serve others. Covenants create a relationship. Our side of the relationship is to obey God. Covenants allow us to transform. Obedience is what gets us back to God. Obedience looks like keeping covenants. Keeping covenants means obedience which means doing the things these guys in the area presidency are going to tell you about. If you don’t do these things, you won’t get back to God and I will have failed to honor church pioneers. Please, please do the things these men are going to talk about.
My takeaway:
Obedience as defined by church leaders is the objective of many messages by church leaders.
Title: The Power of Sacred Covenants
Speaker: Kevin W. Pearson, Utah Area Presidency
Pearson begins, after what seems to have become an obligatory quoting of President Nelson, by stating that he will talk about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost because youth and adults will not understand covenants if they are not taught by parents and leaders. I assume that Pearson places himself in the category of a parent and leader rather than an adult learner. He then goes on to describe attending a stake baptism where he was concerned about what was said and not said about the Holy Ghost. Here is the story upon which he builds his talk:
Did he really say that we don’t receive a remission of sins when we are baptized? For now I’m going to set that statement aside because I have so many questions about it. How did that statement make it past correlation? Is this a new teaching? Is the song “When I Am Baptized” going to be taken off the church website since it teaches that wrongs are washed away at baptism? So many questions.
As I sat listening feeling flames of anger growing in my body, I wondered why I was having such a visceral reaction to Pearson. There is beauty and truth in teaching about the Holy Ghost. The expansive role of the Holy Ghost as a revelator, teacher, and comforter are what I have shared with my kids. So what exactly was going on with Pearson in his talk?
Shame and violence.
Kevin Pearson is adept at shaming people; I’ve heard him shame people before. If you aren’t familiar with shame and what it is, here is a less than two-minute video that describes shame: Shame vs Guilt. Here are ways Pearson shames his audience:
- Tone and word choice.
- Pearson’s harsh, stern tone communicates that his audience is not as good as he is. He is the leader; the wise one. His adult audience can’t be trusted to learn things for themselves. He must “boldly” teach them. With his tone, he sets himself up as superior to his audience of fellow disciples of Christ. As a parent, I have learned that tone is what my kids and students hear first. When I am exasperated, frustrated, or tired, I try hard to stay patient to keep my volume down, words kind, and curious about any given situation. However, it took me a long time to learn that my kids still said I ‘yelled’ because they picked up on the tone of my words. Tone communicates what we really feel inside.
- Judgement.
- The stake baptism he attended did not give talks that were up to his standard. Rather than using what they did say as a starting point to build upon, Pearson rants about what he didn’t hear. He clearly communicates that what was shared at the baptism was inferior and not good enough. Listening to Pearson, I felt so sad for the people in that stake who I hoped would never hear what he had to say about their efforts that Pearson initially described as a beautiful service before ripping into the ways that it was inadequate.
- Assumptions and Exclusion.
- Pearson assumes, based on what he did not hear at the baptism service he attended, that church members in the Utah area do not understand the Holy Ghost, the importance of baptism, or the sacrament. He says, “Sacrament meeting is a sacred time. If properly understood, no one would intentionally miss partaking of the sacrament and honoring the Sabbath day. It would be unthinkable!” He shames by exclusion as he presents himself as the superior who knows better than the not-good-enough inferiors he is speaking to. Without curiosity about people’s lives, he broadly dismisses people to make assumptions about why someone would not attend sacrament meeting on any given Sunday.
Next is violence. (TW: rape)
I never met Haim Ginott. He died a few years before I was born. His writings as a teacher and later child psychologist significantly influence my parenting and teaching. In his book Between Teacher and Child, Ginott shares a report of one person’s observation of a 7th-grade class:
“I went home, stunned by what I had seen. Thoughts ran through my head. No one had smiled. In the whole time, no one had smiled… All that we call education was conceived in love…warmth, caring, ease, sensitivity, tenderness, skill. What I had witnessed had nothing of this. It was more like a sadistic attempt at forcible penetration –a raping of children. And still we demand that the children respond.”
As the second hour wore on that Sunday, I looked around the room. There were no smiles. The climate of the room was frigid. When the meeting ended, there was a literal stampede for the door. Later that night, I thought of the violence with which Pearson delivered his message; shaming is an aggressive act. Pearson’s violent delivery was the equivalent of psychological rape; he attempted to force his message into people with every bit of power of domination acceptable in a church setting.
My takeaway:
I know Pearson is a real person. Kevin, I hope that this post somehow finds its way to you and that you are open to feedback. Perhaps you are not aware of the damage you cause people. To quote Uncle Ben from Spider Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The power of your position carries with it a responsibility to stop harming people.
Title: Temple Covenants and the Endowment
Speaker, Elder Hugo E. Martinez, Utah Area Presidency
Condensed, this talk consists of two words: wear garments.
This talk pulsated icky vibes. Would there be any other setting in which people, both adults and teens, would be in a room with some people they know and some they don’t to hear a message about liturgical clothing that functions as underwear given by a person they’ve never met? I find myself at a loss for words to describe how icky this is. I do not want that level of intimacy with adults in the room who I may not even see outside of church. I don’t want that level of intimacy with the teens in that room; some of whom are my former high school students. It’s incredibly inappropriate.
My takeaway:
Most of this talk consisted of quoting President Nelson. I want to reiterate that we do not make a covenant to wear garments. Wearing garments is not part of keeping any of the temple covenants. There seems to be a great deal of fear about members creating their own relationship with garments that is different from the relationship church leaders want members to have.
Title: The Great Blessings and Godly Power in the Sealing Ordinance
Speaker: Brian K. Taylor, Utah Area Presidency
I confess by this point I was tuned out. Reading the transcript confirmed this as I didn’t remember anything past the second paragraph. A few thoughts that ran through my mind as I counted down the minutes to the end of this talk:
- Are young adults not getting married as much in the temple or married as young as leaders would like them to?
- Beth Allison Barr’s next book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry, releases on March 18th and I am eager to read it. Will the scholarship in the book change how I see the sealing ordinance?
- The eternal marriage thing really messed up my approach to marriage. My husband and I have had to do a significant amount of therapy to create a partnership marriage based on choosing each other instead of a marriage based on completing a church ordinance.
- Telling people who aren’t sealed that it’s ok because their day is coming ignores the pain of life now. In my ward divorce both recent and long past, as well as people who have never married constitute a significant percentage of the ward. The youth who heard these messages are implicitly told that Jesus is not enough; that it is marriage that saves.
- I do not want the promises in Doctrine and Covenants 132 -the thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions quoted by Elder Taylor. I want the opposite of that. I want a little cottage in the woods, near mountains and ideally not too far from an ocean, where family and friends gather for meals and linger with warm conversation and cheery laughter.
- Elder Taylor refers to sealing as the crowing sealing covenant. For me, baptism is enough. Sometimes I wish I had never gone to the temple. Baptism brings me joy and connects me to Jesus. Sealing, on the other hand, is complicated.
My takeaways:
As my kids are growing into young adulthood, my wish is that they focus on a relationship with Jesus. If they choose to be sealed, I hope it is something they choose to do with a partner because that is what they both want as opposed to feeling like it is something they have to do to be accepted by God.
I felt a bit sorry for the two area presidency counselors because I’m not sure they had much say in their topics given that both talks heavily relied on quoting President Nelson. It must be exhausting and scary to be given a calling for which you may or may not be prepared or for which you may or may not have skills to succeed. I feel the same way for the men serving as the bishop and counselors in my ward. They are kind, thoughtful souls who want to do right by their congregants. It would have been great if they had previewed this message and chosen not to show it. I got the feeling they were a bit blindsided by some of the things said in the broadcast.
In the end though, the kindest thing we can do for church leaders and ourselves is to develop critical thinking skills to recognize when we hear shame, violence, and fear at church. With critical thinking and reflection, we can choose to toss out the harmful, incorrect, or poisonous messages while keeping anything good, beautiful, and nurturing.
35 Responses
Oh my…. This is the worst broadcast! So many yikes!! I don’t even know where to start. Baptism doesn’t wash away your sins?! Since when? I’m so tired of new doctrine just being rolled out in random talks and then we all get gaslit by leaders and members who swear it was always this way.
It doesn’t when you are baptized as an eight-year-old child who up until that point has not been accountable for sin and therefore has none to wash away. I haven’t heard the broadcast though so don’t know if he made that comment in the context of a child’s baptism or not.
The Bible Dictionary says this about the Holy Ghost: “…the Holy Ghost acts as a cleansing agent to purify them and sanctify them from all sin. Thus it is often spoken of as “fire” (Matt. 3:11; 2 Ne. 31:17; D&C 19:31). 2N31:17 “… For the gate by which ye should enter is repentance and baptism by water; and then cometh a remission of your sins by fire and by the Holy Ghost.”
The Bible Dictionary says this about Baptism: “…. is also the doorway to personal sanctification when followed by the reception of the Holy Ghost.”
According to most Christian denominations, baptism itself does not “wash away sins,” but rather serves as a symbolic act representing the cleansing of sin through the blood of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, meaning the Holy Ghost is ultimately responsible for taking away sin; baptism is a visible expression of that inner transformation.
Baptism is seen as a symbolic act of repentance and new life in Christ, not a magical act that automatically removes sin.
The Holy Spirit is considered the true agent of cleansing and regeneration, working within a believer to remove sin.
So this isn’t new doctrine or a change. I think a lot of people don’t bother to read the study tools in the LDS Bible. And we are expert at perpetuating traditional speech such as, “wash away sins.” But, truly, it is the HG that cleanses us, hence the symbolism of fire, which is the ultimate cleansing agent. A dive into scripture shows other times ‘fire’ is used a cleansing agent.
This part really hit home for me: “The youth who heard these messages are implicitly told that Jesus is not enough; that it is marriage that saves.”
As I have taken a step back from church, I have been contemplating the role of the savior in our doctrine. Temples seem to be the goal, covenants are the way to get there, families are central to the plan. Where is Jesus in all this?
I agree. I just said this to someone this week. The sole focus of the church seems to be on prophets and covenants. Men and buildings. That’s not who Jesus was or what He was about.
Yes, the focus feels anything but Christ and his grace.
Amen. It seems every year that the church feels less and less like the Church of Jesus Christ and more and more the Church of Temples and Eternal Families.
Your last paragraph is GOLD. Indeed that is the kindest thing we can do. Developing critical thinking skills will save us loads of heartache as we’re able to cut through shame and baaaaad messaging like these.
I like your comment about thrones, kingdoms, principalities. My idea of heaven is Rivendell from
The Lord of the Rings. Food, music, books, fireside, and friends and family.
That stood out to me, too!
Mines Hobbiton. Food, friends, cozy homes, things that grow.
LDS doctrine on marriage and marriage relationships can be harmful and stunt our personal growth. I too have had therapy… to help me differentiate from my spouse and find a sense of self. Not to mention the harm purity culture has played in our marriages and healthy relationships.
Instead of wearing pants to church, we should all wear tank tops. That will say something, now won’t it?
Tank top day, I love it, I’m in! Let’s wear them to all regional broadcasts
A few months ago my Relief Society had a HORENDOUS lesson about garments. We were discussing Elder Oaks talk from April Conference. I really should have walked out as soon as I realized that was the topic. It was terrible. One sister was even in tears.
So the next RS Sunday I made sure to wear a sleeveless shirt. I got quite a few double takes, but I was determined that those judgmental sisters really think about what they’d said. Did they really believe that they could judge righteousness based on someone’s clothing? The weather turned cold after that week so I haven’t worn a sleeveless shirt to church since then, but I plan to again in the spring. So yes, I highly recommend sleeveless shirts as a way to get people’s attention.
(And I should add that normally my ward is really cool. I think that’s what hurt the most about that lesson. A lot of people that I’d assumed were safe said some very hurtful things.)
I agree with you that Pearson seems to habitually show arrogance and to shame his audience, and I love your analysis of what he shared here, its spot on. I was appalled by the shaming, angry, coercive talk he gave in which he said young men have an obligation to the prophet/God to serve missions. He said they shouldn’t pray about whether to go. I resent him for this because this kind of approach disseminated down to my own son and harmed him. This analysis of the whole event is great. These messages aren’t inspiring and don’t bring joy, and they are deeply confusing and contradictory. In recent years, it feels to me like most general leaders are acting out of anxiety and grasping for control.
I recently went back to the temple and it was strange to see the focus on Christ that somehow didn’t match up for me emotionally with what I know and believe about my Savior. It felt sterile. I’m still pondering what this disconnect is about.
As I sat and listened to this broadcast this past week I once again felt a disconnect. The roles of the Holy Ghost feel so like the roles of a Mother. It feels often like the church is lightly touching pieces of truth but not connecting the dots or really holding them with real intent.
The overall emotion from this broadcast was one of distrust for all of us and our ability to connect with the Divine. Does anyone else feel pushed along a conveyor belt of ritual disconnected from deep meaning?
“Ritual disconnected from deep meaning.” Yes, exactly.
My daughter and I were just pondering ways to access/create meaningful ritual(s) for our family. I am not currently choosing to attend the temple. I have been discovering personal ritual, but feel it lacking for my family as a whole.
My daughter mentioned what she has been reflecting on as our family culture. I loved her thoughts so much, because what she said was so mundane to me that I missed it as meaningful.
All this to say we are now discussing how to been intentional about our familial culture and seek ways to create ritual through it.
I hope you find what works for your family.
I breifly read through the transcripts, and found myself most confused by Brian K. Taylor’s discussion with President Nelson- somehow taking care of his wife will sustain the prophet in his calling? The story felt so vauge, confusing, and unhelpful. Instead taking time to encourage spouses to work together as equals, he chose to share that story. I was struck with the sense that church leaders think if LDS men are just extra nice to women, maybe that will make up for women’s secondary role in the church.
That part bothered me, too, mostly because it ignored a large portion of his audience. He centered a married man in that story and made no effort to suggest that women also should love their spouse (we women are used to drawing the lessons out of male-centered stories, but I hate that we have to do it). All the youth in the room are not married yet. There are many single people in the church. Instead it was counsel from white married men, to white married men. Again.
Your point about pedestalizing women so that they are appeased is spot on. I would much rather that there has been a few women helping prepare and present this message.
I often wonder what this power is that they say you get from making covenants. I am not great at fulfilling these covenants that I entered into – more out of community expectation than real understanding of what I was agreeing to. While I didn’t feel the same level of “ick” about the messages about garment wearing, I was somewhat amused by the “covenants don’t take a day off” comment, meaning we shouldn’t take a day off from wearing them. I chuckled to myself because while he said you should keep them on except for obvious reasons, I thought, “yeah you’ve never had a baby have you?” So many days after birth and feeling exhausted from nursing and postpartum bleeding, the garments were off for a bit until I figured out how to shower again and not leak from everywhere. (My apologies if this causes anyone to gag, just saying giving birth is messy). The comment about treating your wife like a princess or a queen was a bit cheesy. No thank you, President. How about treating a wife like a true partner with a will and intelligence equal to the husband? Respect for both partners. Overall, this was a snoozer of a broadcast. Same old song. I do feel we need to pay more attention to covenants and what we are actually committing to when making said covenants, preferably well before such covenants are actually made. Informed consent is crucial, even for young children considering baptism. We should be careful not to add trivial tasks to such covenants that really aren’t part of them, or overly complicated language that muddies the meaning. Was it Brene Brown that said, “clear is kind”? Let’s be more clear about everything Jesus taught and showed by example. That’s my two cents.
Thank you so much for this. I’m not sure if my ward is in the “Utah Area” so I don’t know if this was shown in my ward. But I’ve been suspicious of 5th Sunday lessons ever since that one a few years ago when they did something similar focusing on missions. So this Sunday when my husband was sick and the rest of the family was in the fog of the week between Christmas and New Year I decided that it was probably a good week to skip church all together. If this was shown in my ward then I’m so glad I decided to stay home.
5th Sunday lessons used to interest me a lot because they were a chance for a ward to focus on what the WARD members needed to hear. Yeah, sometimes they were a little lack luster, but even then they at least felt home grown. I don’t like this way of pre-packaging messages and give them out to everyone in a certain area. The result is impersonal and tone deaf.
@Lydia “If LDS men.are just nice to women…” This! Superficial praise and pedestal-putting of women does not equal respect. Loving one’s wife, although admirable in itself, does not necessarily mean she is valued as equal.
I did not attend the original meeting. However in my ward we had a 5th Sunday meeting on the same topic wherein–I kid you not–our bishop explained that the law of consecration means to do whatever the bishop tells you to do even if you don’t want to (followed by some rather bizarre examples of our ward members doing exactly that). He praised to the skies a generous brother who had some neckties to give away, and instead of giving them to the DI or to neighbors, he brought them to the bishop to ask his advice and prayers for who should receive these used ties. It was truly surreal. As for me, I will do what the LORD asks me to do, led by the Spirit and my own Christ-given conscience. That is my priesthood power and it has nothing to do with the whims of a controlling bishop.
Wow, I was taught that when you’re baptized your sins are washed away. I guess I was taught wrong. As a former CTR 7 Primary teacher my husband and I went to all our student’s baptisims. All those who spoke on the gift of the holy ghost did it in such a way that those children understood. The talks were uplifting and we could feel the spirit at all of the baptisms.
We don’t go to the fifth Sunday meetings. Most of the ones in our SoCal stake/ward are on how we have to convert our neighbors; how going on a mission is a commandment; the whole obedience BS; and one meeting actually had someone from the stake tell us the ‘correct’ words we have to use if we discuss the gospel with our neighbors. **I raised my hand, “Are you serious?” Head thump. But then again I do live in the area where Prop 8 was heavily pushed on us. Since I refused to be a part of that hateful movement, whenever there was a meeting to go over the ways we had to be ‘obedient’ and support the proposition, we didn’t go.
You’re so right about garments! We don’t make a convent on wearing them. There is no special heavenly power when you wear them. If anything I feel it’s symbolic.
I’m in the Utah Area and I was there in my ward to hear this last Sunday. The shaming about the stake baptism service broke my heart. I am sure the baptism speakers were just trying their best to give age-appropriate messages to eight-year-olds, but that wasn’t good enough since it didn’t mention all the complicated words (covenant, atonement) that Kevin Pearson wanted them to say. It’s hard to imagine that the area presidency ever spent any time in a primary calling. When I taught primary singing time, I had to simplify many gospel concepts because children can’t think abstractly. Frankly I think that adults could benefit from a more simplistic gospel message, too: God loves you, and you can show your love for God by loving each other. That’s it.
About the baptism not washing away sins — the only thing I can think of is that young children are not capable of sin, so in this case baptism doesn’t cleanse them from sin? But if that was the case, he should have clarified that!
Mostly all this covenant-talk feels circular to me. We are told over and over how important covenants are, and it’s implied that we don’t understand how TRULY important they are because if we did, well, they wouldn’t need to tell us how important they are, because we would know how important they are. And by this point, I’m like, what are we even talking about?? (Take me back to my primary calling, please!)
Some thoughts re the baptism doesn’t wash away sins comment from whichever leader it was. Was this a child’s baptism? I was in a stake leadership meeting (in Canada, about five years ago) where Elder Bednar flat out said singing songs in Primary about children being baptized to wash away sins is teaching false doctrine, because children are not capable of sinning and therefore do not need baptism for a remission of sins. He’s right, and making that correction may help children who tend towards scrupulously and are terrified of committing the tiniest of infractions post-baptism because they will no longer be “perfect”. Not sure how that song made it through correlation but I will be very surprised if it makes the cut in the next songbook. I haven’t spent time teaching in Primary and have no children myself, so I have no idea how the baptism of children is currently presented n the lessons.
That children cannot sin before the age of accountability is pretty basic LDS doctrine and I would think nobody is surprised that proxy baptisms are not done for children under the age of eight. But the Church has done a poor job of separating the different reasons for baptism for children who turn eight (to become part of the body of Christ, make baptismal covenants) and those over the age of accountability (for a remission of their sins before then becoming a part of the body of Christ and making baptismal covenants). The purpose of the Sacrament going forward would be the same for everyone.
Regardless, it sounds like the presentation of this concept and that of the purpose of the Holy Ghost by the area authority left much to be desired, with no allowance for talks at children’s baptisms to be generally kept simple and meaningful for the children whose day it is. Heavy-handed and shame inducing “correction” is the furthest thing there is from teaching in the Savior’s way. Perhaps the Utah Area leadership needs to review the Church’s own manual.
It felt so icky, you did a great job explaining why. I was frustrated when I learned the youth had also watched it… in another room… Nothing like having my teenage daughters shamed about things like garments??? They really thought that was appropriate for children as young as 11?
Also… multiple quotes about covenants giving us extra love and mercy…. So God loves us more than other people? Since when? Because I was taught my whole life that God loves everyone
And some convoluted reasoning about people making covenants being bound to God despite their choices… even if they leave…. I’d need to look at the transcript, but there was some logic acrobatics going on
I’d also like to see the transcript to count references to Jesus and the atonement… cuz I don’t remember hearing any…. just covenants path, covenant path, covenant path. Last I checked, I’m saved by Jesus Christ. Not covenants. Not garments.
Typing with my thumbs on a small phone screen so please excuse any errors
I sat through the video this past Sunday during the 2nd hour. I became increasingly frustrated and angry as I listened to the messages. I was especially turned off by Pearson’s judgmental tone and the way he pursed his lips in disapproval at the end of certain statements. I feel that church leaders are scared because they are losing control. They see that some members are not following the rules that help create boundaries around our community. Because of the democratization of information, many members are taking back control of their spiritual lives, and deciding which parts of the church work for them and which do not. Although I think this buffet approach is happening in regards to a variety of church issues, it is most noticeable with garments, because it is so easy to see when members are not wearing them. The leadership’s reaction to this has been fear based. They are trying to weaponize covenants in an attempt to enforce obedience to the institution. This approach sounds desperate and insecure. It completely loses sight of the whole point of covenants; which IMHO is to help us become disciples of Jesus Christ and draw us closer to the Divine. I want to come to church to hear inspiring and loving messages about following Jesus. It pains me to think that the messages we heard this Sunday will not help questioning and/or progressive members want to continue participating in our community.
So well said!
Thank you!
We had Kevin Pearson speak several years ago in both sessions (night and day) of Stake Conference. On Saturday night, he took a 12 minute talk and went on for 40 minutes…it was tone deaf and painful! Especially since many of the stake were invited to a fabulous family’s daughter’s wedding reception which was to end at 9…it was great as many just walked out to attend the reception as he was speaking. The Sunday session was a repeat of Saturday night… hours I will never get back!! His tone is so annoying and off-putting…
Thank you for this! Tone-deaf messages reinforce the uneasiness I feel about continuing to attend. My daughter enters Sunbeams today and I am so nervous about what she’ll be taught this year with D&C. If these are the messages that adults are supposed to listen to and obey, what messages are the children getting from all of this?! I fear we’ll continue to hemorrhage members if this is the messaging we’ll continue to receive from church leadership.
I’m in the Utah area, as well. We, too, had a 5th Sunday lesson on this material. However, the Sunday School president put a huge chart up on the board with quotes from the leadership session on one side and quotes from Come, Follow Me on the other side. He had the class compare how the teachings from one are reflected in the other. After reading here about the talks in the leadership broadcast, I wonder if the Sunday School president thought it best to just use the parts he found relevant and leave the rest behind. It’s too bad that what is being taught isn’t more uplifting and useful!
Ugh! The Utah Area Presidency has a youth broadcast this Sunday (January 12). I have 3 children that are invited and told them we will not be attending.