Changes, Already?

Alright, so this will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, even a little, but I've been thinking about this project and have decided to make some changes.  First, instead of listing this week by week, I'm just going to do a separate study guide for each chapter.  I realized that I wanted  to ask a lot of questions for each chapter, and I didn't want Tori, or myself, to feel overwhelmed by the idea that it all had to be done in one day and then give up.  So I've decided to just do it by chapter, and Tori can move through it at her own pace.

Whew!  I feel a load of stress come off just typing that! :)

So I'm organizing this in Google Docs so that each "book" in the Book of Mormon has it's own folder, and each chapter is a separate file.  I'm battling my OCD tendencies that are nagging me that the study guide is set up in my first format and the desire to go change it, but for now, I'm ignoring that and just letting it be different.  We'll see if I can fight off the nagging voice indefinitely!

Over the last couple of weeks, I have felt some pretty strong promptings that our family needs a little bit of a spiritual overhaul/revival.  With all of the chaos of the last several months, we've been in survival mode, and it's time to dust ourselves off and get back to some things that we've been slacking on:

1) Family Home Evening.  I'll be honest; we've never been stellar at being consistent with this.  I've realized that part of the reason for that is my perfectionist tendencies.  In my mind, if we have FHE, it has to be a spiritual giant of a lesson (complete with handouts, finger puppets, a homemade board games, and a skit), songs sung to one of us playing beautifully on the piano (in perfect pitch),  refreshments that somehow tie into the theme of the lesson, are healthy, tasty, and fun for the kids, and a creative family activity to top it all off, like going on a nature hike, a Broadway musical, etc. etc.  Sound impossible to you?  Yeah.  Me too.  Which is why we never have FHE.  So I've decided that it's time to give up idealism and embrace the real world.  The real world in which we sing a song a capella and only Todd and Tori are on key (Aaron and I will just have to do our best), we have a 10 minute lesson, a quick snack that can be as easy as apple slices or ice cream sandwiches (but may get more interesting if time and energy allow...thank-you pinterest!), and our activity can just be a round of UNO or a pillow fight.  Period.  The end.  Sounds MUCH more doable.  Especially when a gem of a woman created this incredible collection of FHE lessons that correspond to what the kids are learning in Primary this year.

2) Scripture Mastery.  Have you seen the list of scripture mastery scriptures?  Huge.  Better start now.  Again, thanks to another wonderful woman far more creative than I, there are already some flashcards made.  Printed out these ones for Tori and these ones for Aaron on some cardstock, hole punched them and put them on a ring to keep them together.  I also hung a big empty frame in our bathroom and am writing the scripture of the week (25 D&C scriptures, so I figure a new one every 2 weeks...the kids are doing D&C this year in Primary) on the glass with a dry erase marker so they'll see it while they're brushing teeth, washing hands, etc.

3) Morning Prayer and Devotional.  I finally did it.  Committed to telling Todd to wake the kids and I up for family prayer no matter how early he leaves in the morning.  Uggh.  Hate. Mornings.  I also wanted to send my kids to school with some more spiritual armor, but we do our family scripture study at night.  Again, with the help of pinterest, this is no problem!  I just printed out this woman's daily devotionals and voila! 5-minute morning devotionals.  Jenna also had a great idea to use "Stand a Little Taller" by President Hinckley for more devotional ideas.  I've also thought that a Friend article would work as well.

Alright, I'll report back on how all of this craziness goes.  For now, here's the link to the study guide for today:

Book of Mormon Study Guide: 1 Nephi

Book of Mormon Study Guide - Week One

In my search for a more meaningful method of scripture study, I came across the following study guide a mother had developed for her eleven-year-old child:

http://www.bookofmormonstudyguide.com/

I looked over it and loved the idea of using a study guide for my children to use to go through the Book of Mormon before they turn twelve.  I liked a lot of these questions, but wanted to add quite a bit to it and personalize it a bit.  Plus, this gave me new direction to go through the scriptures myself!  So for now, my scripture study goals are to go through the Book of Mormon and develop a study guide for Tori as I go.  I'll use this study guide as a rough draft of sorts, but I plan to add to it.  I spent today developing week one, and enjoyed it so much that I completely lost myself in it and didn't stop until the kids came home and I realized I'd been studying the scriptures for a couple of hours!  Love it.

Here's my study guide for week one:

Book of Mormon Study Guide, Week One: Introductory Material


Feel free to copy this for personal use only and change it up any way you want.  I found out today that just personalizing the questions without even getting to the answers is a great way to study! :)

Really? Another Blog?

Recently, I was looking for a fresh approach for scripture study, and came across this woman's blog and scripture journals:

Click here to see my dream scripture journals!

Seriously, this woman is amazing.  There's a ton of wonderful things on her blog.  And she just single-handedly gave me a huge inferiority complex because I will never make anything that artistic, comprehensive, and lovely!  But it's not about comparing ourselves to others, right?  It's about doing our best and getting into the scriptures every day.  That's the goal.  Someday I may venture into a more complex scripture journal, but for now, it's about baby steps.

So I decided that I can do my own version of a scripture journal and I really like the idea of a blog because it's easy to turn into a book when I want to and I like typing better than writing.  I may eventually decide to do a paper journal as well, but for now I decided to start this blog.  I plan to use it like Nephi used his small plates.  As a place to record impressions, personal revelations, blessings, favorite scriptures, quotes, conference talks, or anything else that strikes a spiritual chord.  The desire to do this came from the following quote from Elder Neal A. Maxwell:

“The prompting that goes unresponded to may not be repeated.  Writing down what we have been prompted with is vital.  A special thought can be lost later in the day through the rough and tumble of life.  God should not, and may not, choose to repeat the prompting if we assign what is given such a low priority as to put it aside.” 

 As with my family blog, who knows how often it will get updated, but at least I have a place to record things.  It's a start!