The Book of Mormon Challenge

In the beginning of July our Bishop challenged our ward to read the Book of Mormon with our families and by ourselves and complete it by the end of the calendar year. He, being a businessman, gave each family a packet that had a calendar, stickers, weekly reading breakdown and a paper with quotes from President Hinckley.

Last Sunday the bishop was conducting and randomly called up a sister from the audience to bear her testimony about how her families Book of Mormon reading was going. He said this would now be a weekly event and you would not be given warning.

I was relived it wasn't me who had been selected since the sticker chart was still in the car from the previous week and while we had read the Book of Mormon reader (summaries with pictures) to the boys, we hadn't read from the real book to the kids. I truly didn't want to get called up and have nothing to report, so I started reading two chapters a day to the boys and we have eight stickers on our chart.

The only thing I was worried about was that the language would be difficult for the boys to understand. Thankfully they know the stories as well as I do since we have gone through the reader at least ten times. I stop to explain harder words and ask the questions to see if they follow, but they are doing a great job.

Last night we were reading 1 Nephi chapter 7 when Laman and Lemuel tie Nephi because they were "exceedingly wroth". The boys were very interested in this and thought it was amazing when the Lord gave Nephi the strength to "burst the bands." They were acting it out with Brynn's arms.

While we read chapter 8 we began to explain Lehi's dream, but Matt stopped us and gave a full account of what it was about; there was a river, a tree, a rod of iron, a building with mean people and how people drown. It was quite good.

When we talked about how Lehi was so worried that Laman and Lemuel would fall away after what he saw in his dream, the explanation soon turned to how Laman and Lemuel were turing "toward the dark side" aka like Star Wars. How this happened, I'm not sure, but if Matt's involved in anyway, somehow we can always get a Star Wars analogy worked in one way or the other. The kid keeps you on your toes!

Here's to six more months of happy readings and many more Star Wars comparisons!