January 2015, Week 2

*Today in church I was able to attend a Ward Conference for another ward in our stake.  It is the first in a series that I will be attending in the next few weeks.  We heard our Stake President's talk for the first time, and he presented the theme of "Preach My Gospel," and the challenge to read the manual from cover to cover.  He is extremely interested in missionary work, and has had that as our theme in some way almost every year, but he says that rather than seeing it as a missionary theme, we are to look at the "Preach My Gospel" manual as a tool for teaching our families core doctrine.  By extension, we will want to preach the gospel, but he wants us to focus on teaching our families first.  I am anxious to begin.

*Today I presented the Sharing Time for this ward.  They have a smaller primary, with such sweet children.  Our presidency was asked a while ago to determine how we will use the "Preach My Gospel" manual this year in the ward primaries, and we decided to focus on chapter 6, which is about the attributes of Christ.  The theme for Primary this year is "I Know My Savior Lives," and we thought this focus will align well with it.  We came up with four challenges for the children can do--memorize the 9 attributes, read a set of scriptures about them, read about them in the manual with their families and tell in their own words what they mean, and do something that exemplifies each attribute.  Once they do all four challenges, we will give them a certificate.  For the Sharing Time, I told about people I admire for their good attributes (my grandpa, who showed faith by praying before each time he flew a combat mission in WWII, and President Monson, who showed love and charity in so many examples), and how Jesus Christ is the perfect example of all.  We read some scriptures showing other attributes He has (patience, knowledge, hope, virtue, humility, obedience, and diligence), and then showed the "Preach My Gospel" chapter where we got the list of attributes, and then introduced the challenge.  I then got to bear my testimony about how these attributes have blessed my life.  So far we have had pretty positive feedback about the challenge.  I hope it helps the children have a way to open up discussions about the theme with their families.

*Today I spent some time with the Spanish branch primary.  They have a wonderful president, and some other great leaders, but it is a lot of work to make everything happen that needs to happen on Sundays.  I just went to observe, and to answer some of their questions.  I also got to play the piano for them.  Usually, the music leader just uses a CD, as they don't have a pianist.  I can imagine how hard that would be as they try to learn new songs, and want to go over specific parts.  I hope I was of some help, even though I didn't always understand exactly where she wanted me to start playing.

It was awesome!