First day of seminary Moses made an appearance to introduce the 5 books that he wrote.
Flecks of gold! They now go all around the white board and the board to the left of it.
I started out my morning so angry that I couldn't see straight. Angry at the POTUS over his nonsense remarks about the shooting in Oregon. Nonsense that we are talking about gun control instead of why this kid was shooting Christians. I was angry over Bill Nye the I don't have a degree in science guy but I know every progressive talking point and so I made a video about the science of abortion to put the smack down on Christians for their archaic silly beliefs. How was I going to teach my lesson about Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers because of jealousy and because he knew God. Jacob-now Israel wanted his family to "put away their strange gods" and go to Beth-el (the temple). After my morning rant with my teaching partner and my husband, the students began to arrive at my house. One of the students came in wearing war paint for school. It was awesome!!! It was just what I needed to focus. Then I asked another student to say a prayer for my angry heart for our opening prayer and it was beautiful and touching. It's time to put on some spiritual war paint. To take a stand. To encourage -with as much love as we can - people to put away their strange gods. These are the lessons from the Old Testament - along with: Success vs failure. What happens when we hearken unto the voice of the Lord and when we don't. How to forgive like Esau and Jacob. Luckily when we make mistakes -which we all will and do- there was an atonement provided to get us back on track and to give us strength and power beyond our own abilities to be righteous. God is mindful and merciful to our challenges. When we are struggling, He sends a kid in wearing war paint, gives a beautiful prayer for my heart to another, and then let's me run into a friend while on my morning walk who gave me an amazing pep talk. The kind of pep talk where we both symbolically spread on our war paint, had a team huddle, and resolved to fight another day against the powers of evil. God is with us and He loves us and He will strengthen us in all that we are commanded to do.
My favorite little helper E. I believe this lesson was on Rebekah.
I'm always looking for new and better ways to write out my lessons. This way is called mapping. I really liked it and used it several times. Some lessons didn't really fit this format and others I didn't write at all or just used notes.
Jordys primary class wrote to President Packer before he passed away and this is the response that Sister Packer wrote.
Seriously, how cute is Watson? He had some interesting points about Moses 6/ Genesis 5 that he wanted me to bring up to the kids in the morning.
One of the many reasons I love teaching seminary is that I get to know and love each of my students and be part of their lives. Ethan is one of my heroes because of his heart and determination and I'm lucky to know him. For a school project he decided to do a model of storming the beaches of Normandy - or "D-Day." He sacrificed many of his precious Legos to the cause by painting them. I love his attention to detail and his pop of color depicting an explosion. I couldn't help but think of Heleman when he wrote an epistle to Moroni which is found in Alma 56 "...I Heleman did march at the head of these 2,000 young men to the city of Judea...and they were determined to conquer this place or die; therefore you may suppose that this little force which I brought with me, yea, those sons of mine, gave them great hopes & much joy...never had I seen so great courage, nay, not amongst all the Nephites. For as I had ever called them my sons (for they were all of them very young) even so they said unto me: Father, behold our God is with us, and he will not suffer that we should fall; then let us go forth; we would not slay our brethren if they would let us alone; therefore let us go, lest they should overpower the army...Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: we do not doubt our mothers knew it" In many small ways we each are leading our own little band of warriors and also sewing seeds of great faith like those mothers. I want to be part of raising a generation of warriors of faith- water walkers- who know how to fight darkness and evil with light and do not cower in fear because they believe the promise God made when he said "fear not, for I am with thee." It starts with me knowing this myself and acting accordingly; and I'm grateful for the many opportunities that I've been given to practice.
Ever curious what the actual timeline of the kingdoms in the Old Testament looks like as laid out in 1 &2 Chronicles/chronological order? Or where the Book of Mormon fits in? Well here it is. Teaching the history of the 2 kingdoms and all the Kings has been out of my depth and hurting my brain, so hopefully this little timeline will give a nice clear picture to the students (and myself). Ready or not, this is happening in the
morning.
So excited for Goliath to make an appearance in seminary in the morning and super grateful to my friend for drawing him. I love this story! We will all face some "Goliath" size trials in our lives and we need to "be not afraid, only believe, with uncompromised confidence in God." ~ Jeffery R Holland. What I especially love is that David didn't want the armor and sword offered to him because they were unproved by him. He only needed his faith in Gods promises. He threw off the armor, grabbed his sling, and went running toward Goliath (who was just standing there expecting a sword fight) and won with the element of surprise. The sad part of this tail is that David faced another "Goliath" in being tempted by his lingering thoughts on Bathsheba and lost. If only he had faced that temptation by running in the opposite direction.
Trying to decide if the paternity test we included in the food boxes was funny or sad! After you make your Christmas meal you gather the potential family around and whip out this test and then - would it be "merry Christmas, you're the father" or merry Christmas, you're not the baby daddy!" Slight flaw with the free gift, it's not free to get the results. —
Since this was a seminary service project I'll use a scripture mastery verse - " and behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God" Mosiah 2:17
I can't remember if we helped out 3 or 4 times with putting together boxes of food for those in need in our community. I loved it and so did our class!
*sigh* only 3 more lessons after this. I can't believe the school year is almost over. It will be sad to say goodbye to the Old Testament. I really do love it! Tomorrow I'm teaching Micah who prophesied that people throughout the world would hear & hearken to his words...and here I am nearly 3,000 years later. Super cool! What did he tell the Israelites would "destroy you, even with a sore destruction?" no security, no consideration for women and children, no regard for prophets, and that the people only want to hear about indulgence...and then he gave the people hope IF they turned from their evil and repented and then he prophesied of the Saviors birth in Bethlehem. No matter what the rest of the world is doing, we must always "do justly, love mercy, & walk humbly with God". 6:8
This is what makes all the early mornings worth it! One of our students made these for his 2 seminary teachers and burned his hand in the process.
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