Due to some special circumstances, I have been called as the girls' seminary teacher. Don't think this job isn't incredibly intimidating to me, because it is! While I'm a pretty good teacher for youth, I am no kind of scriptorian. However, it was an inspired decision, and I'm glad to accept the challenge.
The girls and I have been meeting together for a week now. Sometimes we meet in the morning, and sometimes it's easier on all of us when we meet in the afternoon, or evening. It doesn't really matter--we get the lessons done, and we have a great time learning together.
The lesson for today was Mosiah 28-29, and the main focus of the lesson is the idea that with true conversion to the gospel, one will feel an increased desire to share the gospel. It felt to me that a returned missionary would be the best person to teach this lesson, so I asked Ethan to do it. I mean, c'mon, not only was he a stellar missionary in Poland, but he worked at the MTC, teaching other missionaries. This lesson was made for him.
No surprise that he needed about 30 seconds to look at the lesson, although I know that he could have taught us without any kind of lesson plan. I will admit that I was really excited to see how he teaches, and to hopefully learn something from him. He Skyped us, and we were ready to go.
Oh my goodness, I never knew it was possible to feel the Spirit over Wi-Fi. Just singing the hymn and saying the opening prayer was enough to fill my spiritual tank for the day (obviously it's not too deep). Then, I was reminded of the amazingly intelligent son I have. We spend five minutes a day on scripture mastery, and without even knowing what the scriptures were ahead of time, he jumped in and was beating the girls! With Rebecca's set of scriptures even!
You never know how fast time can move until you try and teach a seminary lesson in 40 minutes. I guess if there was no talking, no conversation and no sharing of thoughts, it might be possible, but with all six of us in attendance, there was no way it was happening. In fact, I think we adults may have had a bit too much to say, leaving the girls with little time to do so. Oops.
It was a beautiful moment, to see Ethan teaching me about the scriptures. All those years of trying to teach him the principles of the gospel, and it came full circle. Even more beautiful? His special, wonderful, lovely new bride was sitting next to him, and it felt like she had been part of the family forever. She only shared a brief thought, but I could see that she and Ethan are evenly yoked spiritually--she has beautiful thoughts and feelings, and as Ethan said, she's way too righteous, judging by all the notes and good things she has stuffed into her scriptures :-) It was a testimony to me of the beauty and truthfulness of the gospel. I wish I could have the people of the world feel the happiness that comes from seeing your own family members make good decisions, and recognizing that there's no better way to live.
Anyway, Ethan enjoyed teaching, and more than that, we loved having him as a teacher. We decided to make an event of it every week. Instead of Family Home Evening (which is typically held on Monday night), and instead of Seminary (which is supposed to be just the teacher and the students), we will be holding "Faminary". John doesn't like this name, because as he says, we didn't talk about any famines, but Seminary Home Evening just sounds too boring for me. Faminary makes us all smile, and that combined with gospel teaching, sounds just about perfect to me.
The girls and I have been meeting together for a week now. Sometimes we meet in the morning, and sometimes it's easier on all of us when we meet in the afternoon, or evening. It doesn't really matter--we get the lessons done, and we have a great time learning together.
The lesson for today was Mosiah 28-29, and the main focus of the lesson is the idea that with true conversion to the gospel, one will feel an increased desire to share the gospel. It felt to me that a returned missionary would be the best person to teach this lesson, so I asked Ethan to do it. I mean, c'mon, not only was he a stellar missionary in Poland, but he worked at the MTC, teaching other missionaries. This lesson was made for him.
No surprise that he needed about 30 seconds to look at the lesson, although I know that he could have taught us without any kind of lesson plan. I will admit that I was really excited to see how he teaches, and to hopefully learn something from him. He Skyped us, and we were ready to go.
Oh my goodness, I never knew it was possible to feel the Spirit over Wi-Fi. Just singing the hymn and saying the opening prayer was enough to fill my spiritual tank for the day (obviously it's not too deep). Then, I was reminded of the amazingly intelligent son I have. We spend five minutes a day on scripture mastery, and without even knowing what the scriptures were ahead of time, he jumped in and was beating the girls! With Rebecca's set of scriptures even!
You never know how fast time can move until you try and teach a seminary lesson in 40 minutes. I guess if there was no talking, no conversation and no sharing of thoughts, it might be possible, but with all six of us in attendance, there was no way it was happening. In fact, I think we adults may have had a bit too much to say, leaving the girls with little time to do so. Oops.
It was a beautiful moment, to see Ethan teaching me about the scriptures. All those years of trying to teach him the principles of the gospel, and it came full circle. Even more beautiful? His special, wonderful, lovely new bride was sitting next to him, and it felt like she had been part of the family forever. She only shared a brief thought, but I could see that she and Ethan are evenly yoked spiritually--she has beautiful thoughts and feelings, and as Ethan said, she's way too righteous, judging by all the notes and good things she has stuffed into her scriptures :-) It was a testimony to me of the beauty and truthfulness of the gospel. I wish I could have the people of the world feel the happiness that comes from seeing your own family members make good decisions, and recognizing that there's no better way to live.
Anyway, Ethan enjoyed teaching, and more than that, we loved having him as a teacher. We decided to make an event of it every week. Instead of Family Home Evening (which is typically held on Monday night), and instead of Seminary (which is supposed to be just the teacher and the students), we will be holding "Faminary". John doesn't like this name, because as he says, we didn't talk about any famines, but Seminary Home Evening just sounds too boring for me. Faminary makes us all smile, and that combined with gospel teaching, sounds just about perfect to me.
I don't like faminary because it seems like we are studying famines
ReplyDeleteI meant the name faminary not the event faminary. I prefer the name seminary home evening. It was a great experience and ethan and Rebecca are so cute .
ReplyDelete