Come Follow Me

I am so happy with the new church curriculum.  I think it's great.  We have used it the last 4 nights and are all enjoying it.  Our family scripture study was really stagnant before.  I know I didn't enjoy it.  This is largely because I didn't really try to enjoy it or learn from it, much less teach using it so this program is one of the changes I am most excited about.  The new curriculum is really helpful as far as guiding discussions. We have really only read the Book of Mormon as a family and I am happy we are reading the New Testament together.  I'm looking forward to using it for my personal study as well.  Jared and Lydia are not very familiar with the books in the New Testament so as we sat down to begin the first night the idea to sing the Primary song about the books of the New testament before we read popped into my head.  I figured we would sing it every now and then but they have asked to sing it each night.  We also had the idea to incorporate more scripture chasing and looking up scriptures.  Previously we read right after dinner at the table.  Mark or I would read a few verses and have Jared and Lydia each read a verse.  We decided with this program we will sit on the living room floor close together and all have our own copies of the scriptures.  That first night we took the time to explain what the books, chapters and verses were (Jared knew but Lydia was a little unsure) and later in the week we showed them how to use the index page at the front to see what page the books began on.  We've looked up footnotes and tried to cross reference with scriptures in the Book of Mormon to try to show how they support each other and then still read some in the Book of Mormon.  Its been nice to teach these practical skills and have them practice applying them.  Doing something instead of just sitting is so much better.  The questions provided have been very useful too.  Its really great for us to have some guidance for our discussions.  These first days have been so refreshing.  Jared and Lydia have both commented on how this is so much better.

 I wish I had managed my time better and had more time to prepare for this first week but I did not.  I had a lot of my own Book of Mormon reading to catch up on.  When President Nelson announced the challenge I remember feeling really conflicted.  My first reaction was "again?" Our stake presidency issued a similar challenge last December.  To try to read the Book of Mormon before the next Stake Conference.  It felt like I had just attempted this (and failed) and while the challenge was going it felt like every high council talk was about this.  They weren't, I was just being negative.  I had just started working at UVA before the announcement and thought that it would be a great idea to listen to the Book of Mormon each morning and afternoon as I walked to and from my car.  For whatever reason my phone wouldn't play the chapters and I found myself feeling angry and frustrated with the challenge.  And then I was mad that I was trying to do a good thing and it wasn't working and making me feel angry.  So then I just stopped.  I would occasionally have a big spurt where I would read for an hour one night and cover a lot of material.  This would happen a lot on Sunday nights. I found that I did better with "marathon catch up reading" than steady and sure.  I am not really sure what I should learn from that but am sure there is a lesson in there.  I never really followed through with what he instructed us to do for highlighting so while I did finish reading the whole Book of Mormon in time (I finished December 31st at 6:32 pm, a whole 5.5 hours to spare.  I read half of Mormon, and all of Ether and Moroni in 2 days to finish.) I am sure I did not get nearly as much out of it as I could have.  I was not reading regularly before so the challenge did get me doing that.  There was a girl in the first ward who came up with an idea to get more out of this challenge.  She called it "A Little Deeper" and every day she sent out an email to those who signed up.  She definitely got a lot out of this challenge!  It ended up sort of being a family affair and different siblings and her parents would write the emails.  I did enjoy quite a few of them and appreciated their efforts.  I think there were 2 times during the challenge that I was actually caught up.  In some ways this was nice because then I could think about what the emails had covered when I got to that section.  I am glad I finished and I did enjoy some of my readings but I am happy to be done and it makes me appreciate the new curriculum even more.