• Dasi-Ziyad Family Institute now provides Marriage education services by phone through Skype as well as direct services at our home office.
• Check out our latest blog at:  www.divorcereform.info/index.php/Non-Legislative-Efforts-to-Reduce-Divorce/Promising-Solutions-to-the-Marriage-Crisis.html   — Make a comment
• Stay tuned for information about soon-to-be published book:  Heart and Soul Connection:  A Devotional Guide to Marriage, Service and Love.  Co-directors, Krsnanandini and Tariq helped to write this book with members of the North American Family Vision Team.A video is being prepared to give details and invite you to support this project which will be featured on kickstarter.com.  The kickstarter.com website promotes interesting projects and raises funds for them.  We will keep you posted.
• Relationship Tip:  Try a different approach when you and your loved ones have a disagreement.  Be quiet.  Then, suggest “let’s talk about this tomorrow” and then really set a time when you will continue the conversation.  It’s interesting what time and calming down will do.
• Finally, if you have a relationship question, email us at info@dzfi.org.  We’ll respond.  We pray this year is the best yet for you and your family.

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If you and your spouse:

1. Are in a healthy marriage
2. Have been married at least 8 years (some exceptions)
3. Are committed to being a role model couple for others
4. Are committed to the principles of cleanliness, truthfulness, self-discipline, and compassion
5. Submit an essay: Why we want to become Certified Mentor Couple/Marriage Educators

You can get skills to work with premarital and married couples with a proven system that teaches you to coach and empower other couples with healthy relationship skills.  This is an interactive curriculum with role-plays, games, poems group activities and more. Our training will help you prepare couples for healthy marriages, save marriages and prevent divorce!

From Couple to Couple is a comprehensive, interactive, systematic Train the Educator course for teaching couples in successful marriages to mentor other couples. Designed and implemented by co-directors of the Dasi-Ziyad Family Institute, this course has been conducted in West Virginia, Florida, Cleveland, South Africa and Ireland. Mentor Marriage Educator couples receive training in how to assess couples for strengths and challenges, how to conduct themselves professionally and confidentially, and how to coach couples in relationship skills such as communication, conflict resolution, financial management, values clarification, setting goals, writing mission statements for their relationships and the importance of principled-centered lives. Marriage Educator Couples acquire a proven, practical system for working with other couples before and after marriage. This is a nuts and bolts course, and mentor marriage educator couples are given all the tools, training and support they will need to work with other couples.

Our team of committed, Certified Family Life Educators (CFLEs) works with healthy married couples in this fun, interactive, lively and practical curriculum for 3 Saturdays in a paradigm-shifting course that elevates the way couples view marriage. Couples that have become Certified Marriage Educators in our course tell us that their own marriages were strengthened and enriched as a result.

Our modest fee will allow you to become a local, accessible, well-trained, Certified Marriage Educator couple in your community, in your church and in your family.

Only $300 (reduced from $480) per couple for 24 hour, 3 day, in-depth marriage education training that includes the following:

• Couple handbooks and all training materials
• Step by Step Session Guide to work with a couple
• Discounts on DZFI couple retreats, courses and workshops
• Continued support through monthly teleconference calls
• Listings on our DZFI website (www.dzfi.org)

A $50 deposit will reserve your place in this training. Register and pay in full before May 20, 2011 and save 10%, a discount of $30!

Pay by credit card via PayPal by selecting one of the following links:

1. Pay $50 deposit now to reserve your spot
2. Save 10% by registering and paying $220 balance by May 20, 2011
3. After May 20th, 2011, pay balance of $250

Please indicate with your payment your address, phone number, the full name of the couple, and how many years married.

Pay by check, by mailing it to:

Dasi-Ziyad Family Institute
3320 Beechwood Avenue
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118

1. Pay $50 deposit now to reserve your spot
2. Save 10% by registering and paying $220 balance postmarked by May 20, 2011
3. After May 20th, 2011, pay balance of $250

Please indicate with your payment your address, phone number, the full name of the couple, and how many years married.

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While in Columbus, the two Co-directors, Tariq and Krsnanandini had two sessions with couples where we provided marriage education.  One couple is receiving premarital classes and the other couple has been married for about seven years.  Our work with these two couples underscores the urgent need for marriage education.  How tired are you of seeing or hearing about marriage break-ups?  How disappointed and hurt are the thousands of children who see their parents fight and divorce?  What about the millions of children who are growing up in single parent homes without the benefit of a very important and necessary parent  (the absent one)?

Somewhere, somebody has to feel a responsibility to do something. And, thank God, a new consciousness is gradually emerging in our world.  That we’d better take another look at the benefits of marriage.  That some of the spiritual principles we as a community have been negligent about, are probably much more important than we have acknowledged.  The Dasi-Ziyad Family Institute is an agency that has been in existence for well over a decade. Often, we felt that we were fighting an uphill battle, yet we are committed.  Sometimes, we receive cards, letters and gifts of gratitude:  “What can we possibly give you to repay you for how you have saved our marriage?”, one couple said.   “I wish I’d had your services in my first marriage,” a lady client told us recently.

It’s been said before and you will no doubt  hear it again:  “children are best raised in a two parent household with a healthy mother and father cooperating together.”  And, there are principles on which a healthy family must be based.   For example, truthfulness, cleanliness, compassion and self-discipline.  And, it takes a community to support a marriage.  And having a deep and abiding respect for all living things promotes an atmosphere of peace and security.

“What,” you may ask, “can I do?  I’m not married or I’m married but I don’t really have a marriage to sing about myself.”  First, become educated about marriage; take a workshop or a seminar about healthy relationship skills.  Read some of the current literature about marriage such as The Case for Marriage by Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher.  Give a  couple you know who is married or about to be married a gift certificate to take marriage enrichment or premarital education sessions.  Raise your boys to be good husbands and your daughters to be good wives.  This doesn’t mean they won’t do anything else like doctors, lawyers, firefighters, nurses, police officers, car mechanics or engineers.  But it does acknowledge the reality that most people will get married and most people want to get married.  What you do as a parent can ensure that when your children do marry, that they will have realistic expectations and be healthy contributors to their union as well as be able to honor their marriage commitment.

Teach boys how to clean the kitchen, how to cook, to put away their clothes and respect women.  Teach girls how to clean, cook, put away their clothes and respect themselves and others.  Teach your children to share, to have quiet time sometimes and to contribute some of their money to the household (either from gifts, allowances, or work).  Spend time teaching your children about financial matters—how to save, how to tithe, how to budget, how to write checks, what are interest rates, etc.  Show them how to talk to  and how to talk about the opposite sex by how you treat and talk about the opposite sex.  Eat dinner with your family at least once a day so that they will grow to value the time spent at the “kitchen table university”.  Mentor a child.

And pray.  Pray that somehow or other, we will have healthy family and community life.  And that we will realize what is most important in our lives before it’s too late.

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