The following is the text that I used in a talk that I gave in our church services. If you are unfamiliar with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the things that make us unique is that we don’t have a paid preacher to give the sermon each week. Our sermons are given by members of the congregation who are assigned by our local leaders – who are also unpaid members of the congregation. While it can be stressful when you’re the one who is giving the talk (what we call these assigned sermons), it is also a really great way to get fresh perspectives on gospel principles each week.
I also want to make sure that I say up front that I hold faithful followers of other religions in the highest regard. While this post focuses on some of the unique things that I love about the gospel that I cherish, it is not meant in any way to put down anyone else’s beliefs. I believe that all faithful people, regardless of religious tradition, are given inspiration and light from God and that all are beloved children of Heavenly Parents. I don’t think I’ve said anything in here that those who believe differently would find antagonistic, but if I’m wrong and any of this feels attacking to your own beliefs, please know that was not my intention and I apologize if that is the case. This message was written in the context of being shared with those who share my beliefs, but it might feel different to those who don’t.
A few years back I considered converting to Catholicism when I discovered that my Catholic friends can decide to go to mass at 7pm on Saturday nights and then they can sleep in on Sunday mornings. I am not a morning person and that option was really appealing! My Catholic friends are some of the most Christlike people I know and I’ve drawn closer to my Savior through my association with them, so I would still have a good faith community and I could sleep in on Sundays – it was sounding like a pretty good plan!
Unfortunately, I really like having the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine & Covenants, and living prophets, and temples, and continuing revelation, and eternal families, and the Plan of Salvation, and degrees of glory, and eternal progression, and a Heavenly Mother, and ordinances for the dead, and Relief Society, and the priesthood in my home, and ministering, and callings, and missionaries, and self-reliance, and General Conference, and Come Follow Me, and the word of Wisdom, and patriarchal blessings, and personal revelation, and physical resurrection, and our understanding of the Godhead.
So… I decided against Catholic conversion. But, if you want to know whether or not I have a testimony of the church just remember this – it’s the first day of daylight saving time, my 1 year old is a lousy sleeper, we have 9am church… and I’m here. That should tell you pretty much all you need to know about my testimony of the gospel.
When I was asked to speak I was given a couple of scriptures to speak on. However the bishopric also offered me an out that I could speak on whatever was in my heart right now. I tried at first to stick with the scriptures that had been given me, but there was a challenge that had been something that I wanted to write out, and the further I got into writing my talk… the less my talk had to do with the scriptures given. So I finally let the bishopric know that my actual topic was going to be President Nelson’s talk from October 2017 General Conference.
I had thought his talk was given recently recently, so I was surprised to find that it was almost 8 years ago, back when President Nelson was still Elder Nelson. He issued a challenge that had struck me and I had pondered on it over the years, but never taken the time to write out my ponderings.
As I wrote my talk I looked up the quote that I remembered, pasted it in, but I didn’t actually re-listen to the talk 🤦♀️ This morning, after I’d finished printing out my talk I finally listened to it while curling my hair and found so much in it that I wished I had incorporated into what I was going to share! I had spent all week trying to cut bulk out of my talk because I was worried that I would go over, and it was really too late to change things so I was just mad at my own lack of preparation.
However, when I got to church the returning missionary who was speaking with me mentioned that she didn’t have a lot to share. Aw man! I’d just spent all this time cutting parts of my talk out and now I was going to be short instead of long!
Luckily I was able to pull President Nelson’s talk up and add in some of the things that had impressed me while listening to his previous address. I think it was a little tender mercy because if I hadn’t cut down what I’d originally written I wouldn’t have had time to share President Nelson’s words directly – it’s interesting how the Lord works with us.
President Nelson shared this in his talk –
My brothers and sisters, how precious is the Book of Mormon to you? If you were offered diamonds or rubies or the Book of Mormon, which would you choose? Honestly, which is of greater worth to you?
Remember in the Sunday morning session of the April 2017 general conference, President Thomas S. Monson pleaded with “each of us to prayerfully study and ponder the Book of Mormon each day.” Many have responded to our prophet’s plea. […]
Something powerful happens when a child of God seeks to know more about Him and His Beloved Son. Nowhere are those truths taught more clearly and powerfully than in the Book of Mormon. Since President Monson’s challenge six months ago, I have tried to follow his counsel. Among other things, I’ve made lists of what the Book of Mormon is, what it affirms, what it refutes, what it fulfills, what it clarifies, and what it reveals. Looking at the Book of Mormon through these lenses has been an insightful and inspiring exercise! I recommend it to each of you.
I was impressed when I heard this talk to hear that Elder Nelson took the time to take the prophets challenge at the time. Somehow I had always thought of those challenges as being for regular members of the church. The apostles were in their own league and beyond having to do what the rest of us do, right? That really strengthened my testimony of how important it is for us to follow the direction of the prophet – even the apostles take it seriously.
President Nelson posed these questions –
“First, what would your life be like without the Book of Mormon? Second, what would you not know? And third, what would you not have?”
I tried to take his challenge. But I found it difficult to imagine my life without the Book of Mormon in it. I was raised in the church. Every single ancestor on my dad’s side of the family was baptized into the church during their own life time as far back as the church was restored, and my mom was raised in the gospel too. I was even raised near Palmyra, New York until I was 10, so church history was part of my childhood. Growing up, our family was always at church activities, my parents served in leadership roles, and the gospel shaped my life.
I attended BYU, where I met Eric, and as most of you already know we got engaged within 9 days of our first date. We married in the temple and now almost 18 years later we have 5 beautiful kids that we’re busy trying to also raise in the gospel. So far, I think I’ve had a pretty good life, and every single good thing in my life – I can tie back to the gospel.
I don’t say that with the intention to brag. Actually, somewhat the opposite. Because my life has been so entrenched in the gospel I can’t even fathom who I would be without it. When President Nelson asked about what my life would be like without the Book of Mormon I couldn’t even come up with a reasonable answer. Without the Book of Mormon does my Australian mom come to Utah – where my dad’s family only lived because of the restoration of the church – so that they find each other, get married and decide to have me? Who am I without the Book of Mormon?
This has caused me to stop at times and question – do I believe the gospel because it’s the only thing I know, or is it actually something that I know to be true for myself? Had I been raised in a different family would I have been just as firmly convinced of Catholicism, or Judaism, or Islam, or even Atheism? How much of what I believe is just because of my surroundings rather than my own personal search for objective truth?
I have a bit of what I’ve heard termed ‘holy envy’ for converts to the church. Not that I would trade my upbringing or the privilege that it has been to have that light in my life all along. I just wish I could better appreciate and value the truth and light that I have been given.
However, even without that experience, I can identify the good things in my life that have come as a result of the Book of Mormon. While I was being a little bit flippant in my list of reasons to not swap 9am church for 7pm mass – I’m also 100% serious.
There were over 20 things on that list that I identified as being unique teachings, programs or practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – and I wouldn’t trade anything to have to give up a single one of them. They might not all be directly from the Book of Mormon, but the restoration of the church was spurred by the Book of Mormon so I’m counting them all as byproducts.
As I tried to define what the restored gospel has given me, I grouped those truths into five categories that have shaped my life and testimony. I want to talk to you a little bit about the things that I would not know or have without the Book of Mormon. (as a side note, if you go to President Nelson’s original talk he includes his own list that he shared outside of his talk that I think would be a great study topic)
The first is Continuing Revelation – The Book of Mormon, the Doctrine & Covenants, living prophets, General Conference. I can’t understand a context of a loving God who would give direction to some children at one place and time, but not care about others. The restored gospel teaches us that the heavens are open and have been open to people regardless of where they live or when they live. God spoke to the peoples in the Americas, He speaks today, and He has spoken to many people throughout time.
God loves all people everywhere, everywhen. That to me is exactly what a loving God should look like.
Second – Organization and Authority entrusted to regular people. Relief Society, the priesthood, church callings , missionaries, ministering, self-reliance, patriarchal blessings, and personal revelation. The restored gospel uniquely empowers ordinary people to serve in extraordinary ways. Even my own 2 young sons have been given the priesthood to serve in our community. Where else do 14 & 16 year olds get that kind of authority?
From Relief Society presidencies to young missionaries, each of us has a role to play in God’s work. You don’t need a fancy degree or special training – God needs YOU and me. We are all called upon to serve God in our regular lives – you don’t have to live in a convent and give up everything to qualify. We’re taught in D&C 4:3 that “if ye have desires to serve God, then ye are called to the work.”
As Elder Holland pointed out, “imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with.” and I’m so grateful that He is willing to work with us.
Third – A knowledge of who we are, why we’re here, where we’re going. The Plan of Salvation, degrees of glory, and eternal progression. I can’t even understand how people get through life without this knowledge. These truths give life so much purpose and hope. Knowing that our loving Heavenly Parents desire the greatest possible happiness for us—even to progress eternally—fills me with hope and purpose.
Fourth – The rites of the gospel being offered to all. Temples, eternal families, ordinances for the dead, a physical resurrection. In many Christian traditions, the importance of baptism and sacraments is widely accepted, but what about those who never had the chance?
Would a just and loving God deny salvation simply because of when or where someone was born? The restored gospel is finally able to bridge the gap between the necessity of baptism and the impossibility of all to receive it in this life.
The reality of temple ordinances reassures me that God is truly no respecter of persons—every soul has an equal opportunity for exaltation.
Fifth – A better understanding of the Godhead. Their physical reality, their origin and the fact that we have a Heavenly Mother.
We don’t talk a lot about our Heavenly Mother, in large part because as a church we don’t really know a lot about Her beyond the fact that She exists and that we as women were created in Her image and can grow up to be like Her. I will be honest, this frequently causes me a lot of frustration to not know more about Her. BUT…. I have a Heavenly Mother. And because of the restored gospel, I know that. Of course I want to know more, but I know I have a Heavenly Mother. There’s a version of deity that looks like me, and I have someone who I can look up to and become like. I don’t know that I can properly express what that truth means to me in my life.
Testimony
I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon in my life. I may not know what my life would be like without it, but I do know that my life is immeasurably better with it.
I want to bear my testimony that I know that the Book of Mormon and the gospel truths that we have gained as a result of it are true. I’m so grateful for the organization of our church and that I can be a part of it. If you don’t have a testimony of the Book of Mormon I would encourage you to take President Nelson’s challenge as well. Consider the light and truth that is in your life because of its teachings.
I don’t just believe this because it’s the way I was raised—I believe the gospel because I’ve seen the power of the Book of Mormon in my life. I’ve tested it, and it has strengthened me. As the Savior taught in Matthew 7:16, “Ye shall know them by their fruits” The fruits of the Book of Mormon WILL bless your life. I testify that the Book of Mormon is true.
I know that we have Heavenly Parents who know and love each of you. If you don’t know that for yourself, ask Them, I know they are waiting and desperate to show you how much they care about you. I’m so grateful for our Savior and that through Him we can live and grow through eternity. I share these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
A few days after writing my previous Open Letter in Support of the Utah Education Fits All Scholarship my boys surprisingly made it off of the wait list and received scholarships for this school year! A whole world of opportunity was opened to my boys. I spent a lot of time over the last month navigating the scholarship and determining how we could be the best stewards of that funding. However, while we were in the middle of all of that navigating the state legislature passed a bill changing the program for the upcoming year. I understood the reasoning behind a lot of the changes, however some of them I found to be shortsighted and show little understanding for homeschooling processes. The most egregious of which is that they cut funding for homeschoolers (but not private schoolers) from $8000 to $6000 for students over age 11 and $4000 for students age 11 and under. The letter below is my response to that change in particular.
I want to start by expressing my deep gratitude for the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program. While homeschooling can be done on a budget, access to adequate funding empowers families to provide high-quality educational experiences that greatly enrich their children’s learning. This year my two oldest sons were awarded scholarships to pay for their education. These scholarships have enabled our family to enroll our sons in BYU Online High School, equipping them with an accredited, structured and challenging curriculum that fits their needs. My son, who dreams of becoming a robotics engineer, has been able to access essential resources and programs that further his passion. Additionally, despite my personal lack of artistic ability, I have been able to provide my children with quality enrichment through professional art classes, ensuring a well-rounded education. These are just a few of the benefits that our family personally has experienced. This scholarship has been truly transformative for our family, and I know we are not alone in experiencing its benefits.
In light of how much of a difference the $8000 grant for our children has been this year, it was very disheartening to learn that the state legislature has voted to cut funding for homeschoolers to $6000 for students over age 11, and $4000 for students age 11 and under, while leaving funding for private school students the same. If a child’s education is funded by the state, shouldn’t all children be treated fairly? This sends a troubling message that some students’ education is less worthy of investment simply because their learning environment looks different.
I am writing to express my deep disappointment regarding these proposed changes. This change feels discriminatory—just because my children are educated outside a public or private school classroom does not mean that their education is any less valuable than that of a student enrolled in a public or private school. If we agree that all children deserve a quality education, then we should also agree that arbitrarily reducing funds for homeschoolers creates an unfair two-tier system where some children’s education is valued more than others.
Education is a public service that benefits the entire state. Some argue, “Why should I pay for your child’s education when I don’t have kids?” The answer is simple: the children of today will be the nurses, engineers, grocery store workers, and service providers of tomorrow. Ensuring their education is an investment in our collective future, one that will determine the quality of services available to all of us as we age. In many ways, those without children receive the highest return on investment—while parents bear the direct costs of raising and providing for these children, society as a whole benefits from their education.
When we examine the numbers, the inequity in this funding decision becomes even clearer. According to the Utah State Board of Education (schools.utah.gov) even the lowest-funded charter schools in Utah still spend around $7,752 to $7,797 per student. Not a single public school district in the state funds its students below $8,000 per pupil—the lowest district expenditure belongs to Iron County School District at $11,396 per student annually. Yet, under the new proposal, homeschoolers—would receive only $4,000 for students 11 and under and $6,000 for students over 11. This is a drastic and unjustified reduction in funding for students whose educational paths may look different but are no less legitimate.
There are significant misconceptions about what “homeschooling” truly looks like. Many homeschoolers do not receive the majority of their education in the home but rather through community programs, specialized classes and private tutoring. My sons, for example, take courses through BYU Independent Study, participate in robotics and speech & debate teams, and attend art classes taught by a local artist. My daughter is dyslexic and was hoping to find her better fit this next year with private tutoring – a hope that’s been made much more difficult as her funding next year will now be half of what it would have been this year. Even those resources that are home based are often expensive – our preferred history curriculum alone costs around $700/year before accounting for the supplies (printers, internet access, notebooks etc) that it takes to utilize it. Their education is rich, diverse, and engaging—and less costly than the resources given to public school students—but it is not free.
Research shows that homeschoolers often outperform their public school peers on standardized tests. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, homeschool students typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests. (nheri.org) This demonstrates that homeschooling can be an effective educational approach that yields positive academic outcomes.
Furthermore, homeschooled students excel in higher education settings. Studies show that they tend to have higher college GPAs than their traditionally schooled peers, and they perform equally well in graduation rates. (psychologytoday.com) This indicates that homeschooling not only prepares students academically but also equips them with the self-discipline and adaptability necessary for long-term success.
Additionally, homeschooling fosters entrepreneurial characteristics. Research suggests that a homeschool education can positively influence entrepreneurial skills, giving students the ability to think creatively, solve problems independently, and seek out self-driven learning opportunities. (eric.ed.gov) Given Utah’s strong entrepreneurial spirit, supporting homeschooling aligns with the state’s economic future.
While homeschooling may be more economical, that efficiency comes at the expense of one of the most overworked and underpaid groups in our country—stay-at-home moms. The fact that I personally drive my children to their classes rather than having them take a school bus, or teach them math one-on-one rather than having them sit in a crowded classroom, does not mean that these services come without cost. Homeschool parents generally have their kids at home during the traditional school day, so to compensate we often enroll our kids in more extracurricular activities to provide a life balance for the children and our families. It is more than reasonable for us to expect that we should have access to similar funding to provide an education for our kids – not three-quarters or half of what private school students get. Even at the full funding rate we are only asking for about 2/3rds of the funding that public school students get across the state. We should not be punished for being able to maximize the state’s investment to improve educational outcomes.
Reducing funding for homeschoolers may have unintended consequences. Families who might have chosen homeschooling could be forced back into public schools they already determined weren’t the best fit. More students returning to the public school system means higher costs for the state, not savings.
Homeschoolers have proven that they can make efficient and effective use of educational funds, often stretching resources further than traditional schools can. But this efficiency should not be punished. Instead of cutting funding for students whose parents take a direct and active role in their education, we should be supporting policies that ensure all children—regardless of where or how they learn—have the resources they need to succeed.
I urge you to oppose these funding cuts and support a policy that ensures homeschoolers receive fair and equitable access to educational resources. Please take a stand for all students, regardless of where or how they learn.
Have you ever had a moment where you realize something you think is an obvious bit of knowledge is completely foreign to someone else? This happened to me while watching “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” with my daughter. If you’ve never seen the musical, it tells the story of Joseph in Egypt, with each song set in a completely different musical era. It’s a little eccentric but very fun. When Pharaoh appears he is styled as an over-the-top Elvis impersonator. I’ve always thought it was a brilliant cultural nod to have the King of Egypt portrayed as the King of Rock ‘n Roll. I chuckled at the cleverness but when I looked over I noticed my daughter’s blank stare. I mentioned how great I’d always thought it was that Pharoah was styled like Elvis. I expected her to have a lightbulb moment when I named him as Elvis. Instead, she gave me that vague, polite nod—the kind that says, “Uh… sure, Mom, if you say so.” That’s when I realized: my daughter had no idea who Elvis was. I was a little shocked but I chalked it up to some cultural naivete and didn’t think too much more about it.
The next day however, I decided to test my 13-year-old. Surely he, with a few more years of cultural exposure, would know who Elvis was. I retold the story to him, expecting him to shake his head at his sister’s cluelessness—but instead, he didn’t see what the big deal was. I decided to meet this head on and asked him directly, “Do you know who Elvis is?” He responded confidently, “Oh yeah! Didn’t she write some Christmas songs?” Uhm… I mean, Elvis does have a Christmas album, but he’s definitely not a she. I was surprised that my kids didn’t know who Elvis was. I mean, he wasn’t a huge part of my life, but he’s such a massive cultural icon… EVERYONE knows who Elvis is, right?
Feeling I should fix this gap in their knowledge, I pulled out my phone and started Googling Elvis with my son. As we scrolled through articles and videos, I had a realization—I didn’t actually know all that much about him either. I mean, I could spot an impersonator easily enough, name a few songs and knew catchphrases. But when it came to his actual history, or why he was so important culturally, I only really had a vague overall idea of why he was who he was.
It occurred to me that while Elvis came on the scene during my grandparents’ young adulthood and was still very culturally present until he passed when my parents were in their teenage years, he was gone before I was born. While my grandparents were really there when he came on the scene and witnessed that cultural revolution firsthand, the experience was a bit different for my parents. Elvis was no longer a surprise by the 1960s and 1970s—he was just part of life. I only knew Elvis from recordings and general cultural awareness, but I had no personal experience with him in my own life. Today—unless I intervene and teach my children myself—my kids won’t know Elvis at all.
As I reflected on this, I thought about the Nephites. When King Benjamin gathered his people to speak, his words were so powerful that the people fell to the earth, overcome by the Spirit and filled with the joy of redemption (Mosiah 4:1-3). They entered into a covenant with God, committing to follow Him with full purpose of heart.
These people experienced one of the most profound spiritual moments recorded in scripture. But their children—too young to comprehend the weight of that moment—grew up without the same experience. Years later, we read, “Now it came to pass that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin, being little children at the time he spake unto his people; and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers.” (Mosiah 26:1).
In the same way my kids wouldn’t recognize an Elvis song unless I played it for them, the rising generation didn’t just “pick up” faith in Christ—they needed to be taught. When that teaching stopped, so did their belief. It wasn’t good enough that their parents knew, or that their parents had their own personal experience that had brought them to Christ – their children needed to have those experiences for themselves.
I also thought of the people in 4 Nephi. It’s always amazing to me to read that chapter and see how quickly the people go from seeing Christ to complete wickedness and destruction. We read in 4 Nephi 1:16 that, “surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.” You would think that the advantages of living in such a society would speak for itself. However, by the time the grandchildren of those who had personally sat on Christ’s knees (3 Nephi 17:21-25) were growing old, His presence had faded from memory. What had likely seemed obvious to the second generation after Christ might not have seemed like something they needed to explicitly teach to the third. As they stopped remembering, their society quickly disintegrated and fell into destruction.
I don’t really care much if my kids know Elvis—sure, he was a cultural icon, but knowing about Elvis really isn’t going to be that important in their lives. However, I do really care that my children know Jesus. The fact that I have had personal experiences with my Savior and His gospel does nothing for the next generation unless I help them have their own experiences. I can’t assume they’ll just “pick it up” because I know. If I don’t deliberately teach them, the testimony and experiences I’ve cherished will fade away when I do. That is unacceptable to me.
I hope that my faith won’t end with me; I want it to be a foundation for generations to come. If I don’t take the time to teach my children the gospel explicitly, how can I expect them to hold onto something they never truly had? My goal in teaching them is not just to pass down knowledge, but to help them develop their own relationship with the Savior. My own experiences might fade from memory, but if I can help my children gain their own, then their faith can become ‘steadfast and immovable.” I can think of nothing that I want more than that.
I began writing this letter to my state legislators but felt that it should be shared more widely as well. I hope this gives more citizens of Utah a better understanding of how beneficial this program is to many Utah families. If you haven’t heard of this program before it is a new program this year that allows families that feel their children would be better served outside of the public education system to access up to $8,000 to go towards their education. You can read more about the program here, or a comparison to public school funding here.
Dear Utah State Legislators,
As a mother of five children with widely varying educational needs, I have witnessed firsthand how individualized education helps children thrive. I am writing to urge you to support expanding the Utah Fits All Scholarship program. This past year over 17,000 Utah families, including mine, were denied the funds to help us strive for greater educational excellence for our kids. This program could be extremely impactful for us and countless other families across the state. I hope that sharing our story helps to demonstrate how expanding this program would improve the educational opportunities for Utah’s kids.
My oldest two children (15 & 13) are currently homeschooling through OpenEd (formerly My Tech High). Their curriculum includes resources from BYU, American Heritage, Independent Education Program, the Utah Military Academy, Khan Academy, and more. It has been a huge benefit for them to find the exact right fits for them in each of their subjects. It has given them a love of learning and allowed them to really excel in their individual areas of talent, and get help in the places that they struggle most.
Their younger sister (11) has found that she is happiest at our local public school where she has been greatly blessed by the resource teachers who have helped her overcome her dyslexia. She loves learning with her friends and has enjoyed participating in the school play, Battle of the Books, Knowledge Bowl and any other extracurricular activity that the school has put on.
Our next youngest (7) is thriving at Renaissance Academy in their dual language immersion program learning Mandarin Chinese. He needs LOTS of stimulation to keep his very active mind busy, and finding a program where he can be challenged each day has been amazing for him.
Our experience has shown us firsthand how crucial it is to have access to diverse educational options that cater to each child’s strengths and challenges. If I were to try and shoehorn any of our children into the other one’s learning path, they would feel stifled and frustrated. Our public schooler bristles at the idea of having to wear a uniform at a charter school. Our charter school student would go crazy to have to keep himself occupied at home all day. My homeschoolers have taken public school classes and loathed the bureaucracy. Tailoring their educations to their unique needs has helped our children thrive and prepare to be productive adults.
A one-size-fits-all approach to education does not work. Each child is unique and deserves to learn in ways that work with their strengths, challenges, and interests to nurture their potential. Public schools can serve many students well but they aren’t the right fit for every child. Expecting all students to thrive in the same setting is like serving bread to someone with Celiac disease and insisting it should be enough just because it works for most people. The goal of education funding should be to ensure every child has access to the resources they need to succeed, rather than limiting families to a single option. Programs like Utah Fits All provide the flexibility to ensure each child receives the support they need without financial barriers.
The flexibility of the Utah Fits All Scholarship program is essential in allowing families like mine to allocate resources where they are most needed. We have made financial sacrifices as a family to provide their education so far, and OpenEd has been an incredible blessing in expanding those resources to a degree. For our family, these scholarships would open many doors, including allowing our oldest sons access to BYU Online High School diplomas, advanced engineering instruction, and college-level classes. We believe that our children are every bit as deserving of state funding for their learning as any child in a public school classroom.
We don’t want to take away from the public schools – we have children there too, and they provide a great service to our communities – but we believe that the wisest stewardship of state funds includes allowing students to use those funds to maximize their personal potential. Encouraging excellence in all of the students in Utah will help grow our state better than giving only standardized solutions.
Our youngest child hasn’t been mentioned yet as he is only 21 months old and hasn’t yet started any formal education. I hope that by the time he begins his educational journey that Utah Education will fit him as well.
With your support, all Utah children will have access to the opportunities to reach their full potential. By expanding the Utah Fits All Scholarship program, you empower Utah families, including mine, to provide the best possible education for their children.
Thank you for your dedication to improving education in Utah and helping our children to succeed.
I was asked to help the Temple and Family History committee in our ward give a fifth Sunday presentation about family history. If you’ve been given a similar assignment I hope that you might be able to use some of what I’ve done (or go ahead and use all of it, the work’s been done so it might as well get more mileage) to help you prepare a meaningful lesson for your ward as well. Or if you just want some inspiration and to learn a little bit more about how you can be more involved in Family History in some way, or why it might be important to you, this is your chance to pretend like you were at my presentation that day 🙂
Specifically the committee wanted me to talk about how people can upload memories to Family Search as a way to help with their family history work. I was given WAY more time than I needed for that particular part of the demonstration so I decided I would start with some of the “why” behind family history and then work my way up to showing the “how”. I figured the memories section would take me 5 minutes at most and I had the whole meeting, and I really wanted to recreate a role play that I’d seen done in a previous ward that had deeply impacted my view of family history.
Well…. of course sacrament meeting that day went over by a good bit and it took awhile to empty out the chapel after the combined missionary farewell & homecoming that day. So my time was cut short. In the end I never made it past the “why” to get to the “how” that I’d actually been asked to talk on – oops! The ward members still seemed to really appreciate what we did get to and I think it was still a successful and meaningful lesson. My husband afterwards rolled his eyes at me. It was so typical “Brittny” to find a way to do a completely different assignment than I was asked to do, and have people like it anyways. I really did have every intention of sharing what I was asked to do though!
I figured since I’d put this all together I would share it here too, and actually put in the part that I promised I would get to in my original presentation. If you jump to the end I have all of the files that you are welcome to use and modify if you like any part of it for your own ward. I’ll go through basically what I presented in the blog post too so that you understand the context, rather than just having slides that don’t mean anything to you.
I actually presented with my mom, which was fortunate that she happened to be in town for that 5th Sunday because she is the family genealogist and knows MUCH more about all of this than I do. I’ll include my slide deck and print outs at the bottom and if someone else wants to do something similar in their ward I hope that this gives you some good ideas to put together an easy and compelling lesson 🙂
So I’m going to admit up front that most of my graphics are AI generated. I’m not artistic and I had specific ideas for how I wanted to portray some of the ideas so AI was my best bet… but if you look too closely there are definitely cursed faces and some real jankiness in some of the graphics…. So try not to look too closely. When I was asked to teach a fifth Sunday temple and family history lesson I thought it was kind of funny because I don’t actually do genealogy. I know how to open up Family Search and poke around a little bit, I know how to look people up in census records and I know I have the right skill sets to really be good at genealogy. But I don’t do genealogy. Why?
Because right now I feel like my part of doing genealogy work is in the branches rather than the roots. Rather than feeling guilty that I’m not spending my time finding my ancestors I’ve embraced the fact that I’m devoting my time to their descendants – and that’s ok! When I was growing up my grandma was the family genealogist and my mom didn’t have the time to order microfiches and fill out pedigree charts. Today my mom has moved into her genealogy era and I’m the one running to soccer games. But I know that one day I won’t have soccer games to run to and I’ll be the one ordering copies of death certificates to fill in the charts. I know that sometimes we have family history lessons and if you’re not in your genealogy era you might be tempted to pull up candy crush and tune out – but I hope today that we can help you find ways that you feel you can be a part of family history in whatever era you’re in today. I’m not going to tell you that you have to do all the research if research isn’t your thing, or attend the temple every single day. But there is *something* each of us can contribute to this work and I hope to help you find something that you can do in your present era.
As we started to put this lesson together my mom told me about this video clip that she saw at Roots Tech a couple years ago. The original presenter wasn’t able to make it to the convention so at the last minute they pulled in an engineer to give this breakout session. Now, I’m a computer programmer and I know that the last thing you want at your big convention is to pull out the engineers and make them talk. Engineers are rarely people people. They are happy to hide in a closet and build cool things but please don’t make them talk to someone about it. But what this engineer had to say completely changed the way my mom looks at family. The video was too long to watch in our lesson and there wasn’t just one little clip that showed the point, so I’ll summarize.
At the beginning of his presentation he told the audience that what they’re doing is all about building relationships and uniting families. He went on to talk about all of their different updates and each time showed how each tool and feature was created with the object of building relationships. If you’ve used the “find my relatives” feature before it might seem kind of silly – unless you understand that the idea isn’t necessarily to help fill out a chart but to connect you to other people.
So that’s what I want to focus on – it’s all about relationships. It’s not about charts, or records, or checking boxes at the temple – it’s about relationships. If you take nothing else away from what I’m sharing THAT is what I want you to take away. Temple & Family History work is about building relationships. I told you that I don’t do genealogy, but one of the ways I contribute to our family history work is by trying to still build relationships on both sides of the veil. Obviously the ones with my own living family feel the most important, but I try to treat my ancestors as real people because… they are. I can’t be the one digging through records right now but I try to do my part to listen to my mom when she’s discovered a new line or wants to show off the pictures she got from her dad. I may not be finding the people myself, but I try to always cherish the memories or tidbits of information that I can learn about those that have gone on before so that I can build a little bit of a relationship with them.
I would like to hear from you in the comments about how we build those relationships with those who have come before us. I thought I would start by telling you some of my own experiences. This picture shows some women who are an important part of my personal family legacy. I am on the far left and my daughter is on the far right. If you think my daughter looks like she might have just been crying that’s because we’d just done a gender reveal for our 5th baby and she’d just discovered that he was going to be a 4th brother… and NOT the sister that she was hoping for. Next to my daughter is my mom – we get told that we look identical pretty much all the time. Next to me is my grandma, and there in the middle is her mom – my great grandma. Pretty cool to get a picture with 5 generations of women all together!
Almost 2 years ago we went as a family down to Australia to celebrate my great grandma Kitty’s 100th birthday. We were a little bit late because of COVID restrictions and she was actually closer to 101 but it was such a treat to get to introduce my kids to their great great grandma. Grandma Kitty is pretty feisty. One of my favorite stories of her is that in the middle of COVID in Australia they had restrictions that made it so that you were only allowed to go to the grocery store on particular days based on where your name fell in the alphabet or something like that. One day she told my grandma that she was pop down to the shops and my grandma said, “Mom, you can’t do that, it’s not your day to be allowed to go!” My great grandma replied, “I’m 99 years old, what are they going to do to me? I’ll just act confused and tell them ‘Oh sorry love, I don’t understand all these new protocols.’ and they’ll let me shop.” Don’t stand between an old lady and the grocery store when she wants to go! She was still living on her own when we went to visit her at 101 and I think she’s amazing. I hope to grow up to be every bit as independent as she is – and to live as long!
I don’t know how many people have personally known their great grandparents personally but when I was born I had 5 of my 8 great grandparents still living – I’m the oldest child of an oldest and 2nd oldest child so the gaps are a little more condensed. On the other hand my husband is the youngest of 9 kids – his great grandparents were long since gone by the time he came around. Only our oldest two children were able to meet his last living Grandma, but they were too little to remember even that meeting.
A great grandparent might seem fairly removed from you personally if you haven’t had them in your life, but my great grandparents are people I feel very connected to. I can remember my Grandma Bonnie playing sports with her grandkids. I remember my Grandpa Tom whistling for the lorikeets in his backyard. I remember my Great Grandpa Anderson visiting our home in California and insisting on working in the yard – despite being well into his 90s and my mom being convinced it would be the thing that killed him and that the family would hate her forever. I remember the raspberries in my Grandma Arlene’s backyard that we would pick while my parents would visit with them inside.
These are very real people. Despite Grandma Kitty being the only one of those great grandparents still alive – she’s kicking around now at 102 – I know that all of them were invested in me while they were here on earth – and I can’t imagine that investment disappeared just because they passed through the veil. I think of my relationships with my own kids. I may not know a lot about what happens in the next life but I do know that it would take a lot more than death to erase the love I have for them. We may not remember these people but I know that they remember us and I am certain that they play a very active role in our lives, even though we don’t necessarily always see their hands in our lives.
For the next part of my presentation we did a little role playing activity that got people really involved. We had handed out little slips of paper with short stories of some of my actual ancestors. Everyone that had been assigned a role came up to the podium (we were in the chapel) and we assigned one side of the podium to be spirit prison and the other to be spirit paradise.
If I had a little more time I would have tried to have the people who came up be from real families that matched the roles of the families – i.e. one of the families in my script was a mother, father and two daughters. I would have liked for it to have been an actual couple in our ward with two daughters and have them stand up as a family – but my casting time was limited. It worked out beautifully even without doing that though and the experience was awesome all together.
I had the individuals come up to the microphone in order (the slips of paper are numbered) and they would read their little story. Just a few lines about their name, where they lived, something cool about them. At the end of the story they would ask – “Does anyone have my name?” Before the meeting had started we handed out slips of paper with a picture of the temple and a name of one of the ancestors to youth in the audience. If the name was in the audience the youth could come up to the podium and bring the ancestor from spirit prison to spirit paradise.
I intentionally structured the script so that the first whole family was all easily accounted for and they all made it to spirit paradise. You could tell that people were starting to get a little kind of giggly from the hokey representation. Not irreverent or anything just it was kind of fun to take people from spirit prison to spirit paradise and it was a little silly. Then as one particular brother got up he got to where he asked, “does anyone have my name?” and you could tell that it hit him. If no one out there had his name, he couldn’t go on. It changed the mood just a bit as the weight of it was felt a little more.
The second family that I had selected was a couple with two daughters. As we went through there was someone who had the name of the father. Someone who had the name of the mother. Someone who had the name of the first daughter… but no one had the name of the second daughter. She had to go back to spirit prison. Suddenly you could tell things got a little more real for the class. Oh… wait. You mean without someone to take her she doesn’t get to go to spirit paradise? Oh…
The next family wasn’t found at all, and the feeling was sadder still as a whole family didn’t get to go on to the other side. The last family was that of my Grandpa Tom. He had done his own work during this life so he got to go on to spirit paradise but he was trying to connect with his biological father that he hadn’t known and his son that he was estranged from in this life. The father and son weren’t able to get up and go to the other side.
While we were all sitting there I got up and told everyone how I was feeling. Of course it was happy to see so many people making it to spirit paradise. But no matter how many people made it, I was still infinitely sad about those who were left behind! Sure that second family had gotten 3 out of 4 members to the other side. Hey in school 75% is a passing grade! But oh, if that one left behind had been my child… it would count as a zero to me. I can’t imagine a happiness in the next life that involves leaving any one of my children behind. Seeing the people left in spirit prison was heart breaking.
After we sat with this for a minute I had my mom get up after this and explain why these people weren’t found at first and how we did eventually find them through family history work.
The first family I shared was the family of my 4th great grandfather Ira Allen. Ira joined the church in 1845. The family that we had stand up were representing his parents and siblings. All of their work had been done back in the 1800’s. They were easy to find because they were people that Ira would have known personally and he made sure their work was done himself.
The next family was that of my 3rd Great Grandfather Joseph Cabella. He was a ship’s captain that was lost at sea in 1847. His wife was pregnant at the time but the baby only lived for a few months after birth. The mother lived for 4 years longer before leaving their first child – who was only 8 years old at the time – an orphan. The father, mother and oldest daughter were easy enough to find – their oldest daughter was my 3rd great grandmother and her parents show up in the records plenty. Their work had all been completed in the late 1960s and 1970s. The baby though wasn’t obvious to find. She doesn’t show up on census records, she had no children of her own – there was no one to carry on her legacy. My parents found her through good old fashioned detective work. They felt like they ought to take another look at this family and really comb the records to make sure there was no one that was missed. Luckily Cabella isn’t a very common last name so searching records in their area for that last name inevitably pulled up relatives, the trick was just finding how they fit. As they did this they came across a birth and death record for Rose. She never appeared on any census but she still appeared in those records. Her work was finally completed in 2010. At this point in the presentation I was going to have “Rose” stand back up and ask “does anyone have my name?” I had a friend in the audience who was handing out the names of these lost people who could then have them come forward and take them to spirit paradise. Unfortunately, we ended up being strapped for time and that kind of got skipped but that was the intention.
Cyril Challoner’s family was more recent. He is the cousin of my great grandfather – one of the few great grandparents that I did not get a chance to meet in this life. While the other people that I highlighted were direct ancestors of mine, Cyril was a little more lateral. He, his wife and daughter were all killed during the bombings on England during WW2. They have no living descendants today. The only way they could be found was for us to explore more of our family tree than just our direct line.
The final family that we highlighted was my great grandfather Tom Smith. I talked about him earlier as the grandpa that I remember whistling for lorikeets in his backyard in Queensland Australia. You would think his genealogy would be super straightforward – he was a genealogist up until his death in 2014! We had the Smith line covered way way back and thought we were just working on branches that were going to be really hard to fill in because the records from so long ago would be difficult to find.
Then, after my grandfather’s death my mom did an Ancestry.com DNA analysis. Her report came back that she had Russian Jewish ancestry. Huh? How could that be? Slowly she was able to piece together that her biological great granddad was not the man that her great grandma was married to. Through a series of digging through records, comparing pictures, and talking with DNA matched relatives she determined that Tom Smith’s dad was actually Leopold Hirschberg – a sailor who was living in Liverpool, England at the time. Tom’s middle name of “Lusitania” suddenly made sense as his father survived the sinking of the Lusitania the year before his birth.
We actually found mention of Leopold in a book called Wilful Murder: The sinking of the Lusitania, however at the time he was using the name Leonard Thompson as a means of avoiding prejudice against his Jewish heritage. He was tricky to find with different names and no records that would confirm his identity but it was fascinating as we put some of these puzzle pieces together. We had joked for years that Grandpa Tom looked a lot like Tevya from Fiddler on the Roof and it was interesting to discover that we weren’t far off – his ancestors came from a town very similar to Anatevka. This has opened up a completely different line of research for putting together our family history.
This finding of Jewish ancestry was especially interesting to me. As I had named my children I’d felt very strongly drawn to specifically Hebrew names for them. It wasn’t anything intentional, but when I looked back I could see that I’d decided to give them names like Samuel, Daniel, Esther, & David. You know what names we found in this lost branch of our family? Yup, all the same ones. My older boys have had the opportunity now to go to the temple and do the baptisms for ancestors that share their names – ancestors that I didn’t even know about when I gave them those names.
The DNA analysis also started connecting my mom with cousins that she didn’t recognize. A little bit of sleuthing uncovered that during his military service in WW2 my grandfather had fathered a son in Ireland. The boy had spent his whole life searching for his dad but never connected to him. He had passed away before his father. We believe that this whole crew of estranged fathers and sons has been connecting on the other side and making up for the lost time they never got to have on earth. It has been an honor to reconnect them and restore these lost ties.
I hope that watching these examples has helped you see how you can start to connect to your deceased loved ones. These are real people, even if we don’t remember them anymore. If you’re familiar with the movie Coco you understand the sentiment that you die twice – once when your heart stops beating and once when there is no one on the earth who still remembers you. Through reconnecting our families and taking those family members to the temple we help make it so that these people are not forgotten. I would like to discuss some of the ways that we can make deceased loved ones feel real.
One of the ways that I have found has been a simple change of semantics. I no longer take names to the temple – I always take friends. Now I know this sounds kind of hokey, and I will admit that when I started doing this, I felt really dumb about it. But I have forced myself to always talk about these people as friends rather than names. Whenever I’m ready to go to the temple I call up my mom and ask her if she has any of her friends that she wants me to take to the temple. I will tell you that even if I felt dumb calling them friends, after doing the work to find these people, learn their stories and put them back together – my mom feels zero irony when I ask her for a friend.
Whenever I can I try to have my mom tell me a little bit about the person whose work I am doing. At the very least I try to look at the card and see where they were from and how long they have been waiting for me to take them to the temple. While I’m waiting I try to at least take a second to close my eyes and say hi to them and let them know that I’m excited to be with them that day. My 13 year old son recently went to the temple after having my mom give him a little bit of information about the people he was doing work for. He came back telling me how much better it made the experience when he’d done the work to find someone himself.
If you think you can’t take a family name to the temple because you haven’t been doing the research yourself – you’re probably wrong! It has never been easier to find a friend from your own family to take to the temple. I was going to record a video to show you how to do it but I found this one that someone else had already taken the time to make. So I’ll let them do the explaining, but it’s less than a 2 minute video – and it literally doesn’t take any more time than this to get family ordinances on your phone. I have done it on the way to the temple and they have printed it for me when I arrived. I don’t think they could make it much easier!
Ok, now that you have a name you need a time to go to the temple. I feel like we’re all busy and finding the time is one of the hardest parts of getting to the temple. I’m going to put in a quick plug for Ward Temple Night, if you have it in your ward. I was able to attend ward temple night just before giving this presentation and as I sat there I kept thinking “I really hope this is what heaven is like!” I love attending the temple, I love the peace that is there and the chance to serve, and just being somewhere with no one climbing on me for a little while. But attending with our ward was even better.
As I walked into the chapel I saw sisters from our ward who scooted over and made sure there was a place for me. I was able to watch as a few other sisters walked in. Literally with each person who walked in that I knew my heart swelled with happiness to see them there in the temple. It’s always great to go – but it’s even better when you can go and feel that love and connection with each other too. As I felt the happiness of seeing members of our ward family in the temple it made me think of how it must feel to see friends and family reunited on the other side of the veil and how much more excited we will be to see each other there.
So, if you’re looking for a good time to go to the temple – it’s much more fun going with your ward. If your ward doesn’t have a ward temple night, or the night they have doesn’t work for you – find a friend! My oldest boys are homeschooled and so are home during the days. They made a goal to go to the temple weekly and we scheduled it in our calendar. Then we decided to invite some other homeschooled kids in our neighborhood. We now take our whole van full of boys to the temple once a week! It’s wonderful for my boys to not only serve in the temple, but to get to do so with friends.
If you haven’t gone to the temple recently it might feel intimidating to navigate the new scheduling process. I promise it’s not hard! Here’s another video that shows you the process. It’s only 71 seconds long, so there’s no excuse to skip over watching this if scheduling an appointment has been keeping you from getting to the temple!
Ok, now we get to what I was *actually* asked to share, which is how to share memories on Family Search… which I never got to. The Temple & Family History committee wants me to give the other “half” of my presentation, but I’m going to have to put together a lot more to really make this into a full presentation like they’re looking for (so… stay tuned, that’s probably coming 😂) My mom has used the memories feature to upload pictures that she inherited from her parents of her ancestors. Using those pictures she’s been able to find people she didn’t know she needed to look for. There will be people in pictures from a wedding or other event and she will look and say “ok, I know who this is, and who that is… but this person looks like they are probably family – see they have the same nose and smile…. hmmm.” Then she knows to go piece together clues until she can find out who it is. If you find a family picture with 5 kids, but you only have 4 kids in the records, it looks like it’s time to do some research!
Being able to read the memories about those who have come before is a powerful way to bring them to life and appreciate all that has gone into putting you where you are today. In Family Search you can now upload your memories, photos, records etc. in a place where they will be preserved and shared with others who connect with your family. Below is a quick video that explains how to do this.
I hope you’ve caught a little bit of the vision of why family history is important to you. Maybe you’ve found some way that you can be a part of it. I hope that you will go out feeling like these are real people and not just names on the page. I bear my testimony that I know that that is true. I know that the work that we do in temples is so important. We need our ancestors and they need us. Life and salvation are a group project. In D&C 128:15 we read “And now, my dearly beloved brethren and sisters, let me assure you that these are principles in relation to the dead and the living that cannot be lightly passed over, as pertaining to our salvation. For their salvation is necessary and essential to our salvation, as Paul says concerning the fathers—that they without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect.” I know our Heavenly Parents love us. They love those who have come before us and those who will come after us. The Plan of Salvation is such a gift. It will not be complete until we have connected the whole human family. What a privilege it is to be a part of this great work. I leave these things with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Resources
If you would like to use the materials I put together for our 5th Sunday lesson you are welcome to do so. If you can I would recommend talking to people in your own ward who have their own experiences with tracking down lost family members. It’s much more powerful to share personal experiences and I promise you that you have similar experiences in your ward too. I aimed to have 4 different types of families represented –
A family that was super easy to find – clear records, everyone accounted for right off, no problems at all
A family where *most* of the family was easy to find, but someone was left out and discovered later
A family that was very difficult to find because they have no one left on earth that is their posterity
A family with some tricky connections that we could only find through DNA matching and comparing memories & photos
You obviously don’t have to follow my family sets but I was aiming for people who could be found through totally different methodologies to highlight that there isn’t just one way to do genealogy. It would be really cool if you could get these examples from different people in the ward and highlight how the ancestors are connected to your own ward members. I was working on this presentation on my own but if you have a committee it could be fun to see different people’s research.
However, you are of course welcome to just use the ones that I’ve already put together. Included below are the Power Point presentation that I used, the script that I put together for the “does anyone have my name” section, “temple names” to go with the participation section, and a blank set of “temple names” if you choose to put together your own script.
Role Play Instructions
If you want to do the “Does anyone have my name” section here are the steps that I would take to keep everything organized –
If you are using your own family history experiences, I would recommend writing out your script and putting numbers in front of each person’s part and the gender of that person. This makes it easiest for keeping everyone in order and making it easy for casting to not have to read through the whole part to determine whether to give the part to a man or a woman.
Once you’ve made your own script use the fillable PDF to create “temple names”. I’ve made the name cards with a spot for the name, birth date/place, and death date/place. At the bottom I have a spot where you can put the gender (again, this makes it a lot easier for casting when you get to teaching the lesson), and stage. The stage lets you know when to hand out the cards. I’ll explain my stages in a second.
Whether you’re making your own script or using mine – print both the script and the temple names file that you are using. I would recommend having 2 scripts so that you have one on hand to follow along during the presentation
Cut 1 copy of the script and the temple names into strips so that you can hand them out
Before your lesson starts hand out the script strips and the temple names that either say “SELF” or “Stage: 1” – DO NOT HAND OUT STAGE 2 YET!
SELF: These temple names are for people who would have completed their own temple work in their lifetime. These should be handed to the same person who gets that part of the script (in my script this would be Thomas Smith & Ira Allen). They completed their work in this life so they don’t have to wait for someone else to come forward with their name
STAGE 1: These temple names are the people who are easy to find and their work is completed right away
STAGE 2: These temple names are the people who were difficult to find and won’t have their work completed until after you explain the work that went into finding them
Choose someone who can be in the audience who can hand out the Stage 2 names during the presentation AFTER you’ve completed the script. It really helps to have someone who understands the whole presentation so they know when to hand these out
I love General Conference, they are two of my favorite weekends of the entire year. I’ve posted in the past some FHE lessons to help prepare kids for conference and posted my thoughts on conference many times. For awhile I tried running a General Conference book club, but it never took off like I’d hoped. I love that we now have the opportunity to basically have a book club type discussion in Relief Society every other week for these wonderful words from our prophet and leaders!
For the past four years, I’ve had the privilege of serving as the Relief Society Secretary in our ward. Part of my responsibilities has included helping to coordinate lesson schedules for both the Relief Society and Elder’s Quorum. Our process started with a very basic spreadsheet, but through the years, it’s grown into something much more organized and collaborative. After spending so much time perfecting our system I’m excited to share it with you! Hopefully this General Conference lesson schedule spreadsheet can help you simplify the process of creating a lesson schedule for your ward too! (The spreadsheet is currently pre-populated with the talks from October 2024 conference)
The Why Behind the Spreadsheet
Our goal with creating this schedule is simple: we want to foster meaningful discussions in both the Relief Society and Elder’s Quorum by focusing on talks from General Conference. By coordinating our lessons, we give families the chance to talk about the same messages during the week—making it a shared experience between spouses, family members, and even friends. We also aim to ensure that our lesson topics reflect the needs of the ward while balancing seasonal themes (like gratitude near Thanksgiving or talks on the Resurrection around Easter).
The Spreadsheet in Action
The process actually begins before General Conference even happens. About a week before, we prepare a version of the spreadsheet that has no talks listed—just the basic structure. Both the Relief Society and Elder’s Quorum presidencies share this sheet to ensure collaboration. It would be easy to include the bishopric as well, but in our ward, that hasn’t been part of the process historically.
During Conference weekend, one member of the presidency keeps the spreadsheet open and fills in the talks as they happen. We usually rely on KSL’s news blog to get the titles quickly—usually within 30 minutes of the talks being given. Once all the talks are in, the real magic begins.
Each presidency member marks the talks they feel would be most valuable for discussion by simply placing an “X” in their assigned column. It’s a straightforward way for everyone to voice their opinions on which talks resonate most with the needs of the ward. We also start a discussion on our Relief Society’s GroupMe about the conference so that we can get feedback from the sisters in our ward in real time about what is resonating with them.
Creating the Lesson Schedule
After everyone has had time to vote, the presidencies meet together to plan the schedule. We start by listing out all the Sundays that need to be scheduled on the right-hand column of the spreadsheet. This usually starts with the fourth Sunday of the month following General Conference and going through to the second Sunday of the month after the next General Conference, and includes every second and fourth Sunday in between. We are sure to take note of any Sundays where lessons won’t be held due to Stake Conference, holidays like Christmas, or other special events.
From there, we typically look at how the talks ranked based on the votes. The spreadsheet includes a formula that automatically takes all of the talks that received any votes and puts them on the schedule page in ranked order. This makes it SO much easier to sort through and find which talks that we all liked. The highest-ranked talks often go straight onto the schedule, though we leave room for discussion if someone feels strongly about a particular talk that didn’t get as many votes. Sometimes a talk might have been a favorite of everyone’s but it might not really be a good discussion talk, so we try to take those things into consideration.
Another thing we consider is seasonal themes. For example, if there’s a talk on gratitude, we might aim to schedule it near Thanksgiving. We also try to link talks that share similar themes. If we find talks that complement each other well then we might assign two talks to a particular week to maximize conference coverage and create cohesive lessons.
Sometimes there are talks that feel more appropriate for Relief Society or Elder’s Quorum individually. In those cases, we’ll schedule separate lessons, but we still try to coordinate so that most lessons are aligned.
Once we’re happy with the schedule, we send it off to the bishop for approval. After he gives the green light, we input the schedule into Tools so that everyone in the ward has access. (If you don’t know how to input your schedule into Tools I’d recommend checking out this YouTube video that has a great walkthrough)
Ready to Try It?
If this process sounds like something that could help your ward or organization, you can copy our template Google sheet and customize it for your own use. It’s been such a helpful tool for us, and I hope it will make your lesson planning just a little bit easier and helps your presidency organize lessons in a way that fosters unity and meaningful discussion in your ward. If you have any questions or thoughts, I’d love to hear them in the comments! 😊
For several years now I’ve been maintaining a reimbursement tracker for families who use My Tech High in Utah to help fund their homeschooling. This year the Utah State Legislature passed a bill that allows families much more direct access to educational funding for their students through the Utah Education Fits All Scholarship. I had a few parents who received these scholarships ask if I could create a similar tracker for their students, so I took an evening to repurpose my My Tech High tracker into something that will work for UFA Scholarship recipients as well.
Unfortunately our family was not awarded scholarships this year so we will be continuing with My Tech High this year. I feel like it’s appropriate though for me to explain why I support these scholarships (and hope to be awarded in future years), as well as to share some of the classes and resources that I would have spent the money on this year. Hopefully this helps others to understand the need for this type of program, and helps connect those who did receive a scholarship with resources that they will find useful. If you’re just here for the tracker you can click here to skip to the instructions (and don’t feel bad if you want to skip ahead – I’m not known for telling short stories 😛 )
My Kids Educational History and Needs
I have 5 kids ranging in age from 15 years to 14 months and through the years we have used many different educational approaches to meet them each where they’re at. When our oldest was 5 (2014) we sent him to kindergarten at the local public elementary school. He had taught himself to read at a fairly high level long before kindergarten but we felt like it would be a positive experience for him to attend public school for the social aspects. Overall he had a very positive experience but I noticed that every day he came home with blank worksheets. I quickly worked out that since he was so academically advanced he wasn’t getting attention to help him progress as the teacher had to put her focus on the students who were far behind. I didn’t fault her for that one bit – if I had a class with one student who could read chapter books and others who didn’t know their alphabet, my focus would be on the latter group as well. But I recognized that my son, who struggles with staying focused, was not being challenged in the ways I had hoped.
So for first grade (2015) we decided to pull him out and homeschool him. Luckily our elementary school was really accommodating and allowed him to be associated with a mainstream class to join in for specialties each day. It was awesome! They would even let him ride the bus in the morning and I would just come and pick him up after specialties. He really liked computers, art and PE but he has some sensory issues so he disliked music. It was a really great middle ground while we were dipping our toes in the water for homeschooling.
I found a program through our school district that would give him access to K12 curriculum and it seemed like a great way to get started in homeschooling with the support of the public school system. I’d love to say that our first year as a homeschooling family was magical – but honestly it was miserable! The program was WAY too much of worksheets and it destroyed my son’s love of learning. It took us years to rebuild his love of learning after that – it was one of the worst mistakes I’ve made as a parent.
Luckily, during our first year of homeschooling we learned about My Tech High and we enrolled with them for his second grade year (2016). Our younger son was entering kindergarten and we decided to homeschool him as well. Their individual learning styles and needs could not possibly be more different. While my oldest had taught himself how to read, his brother has a bit of dyslexia and took many years to get up to a normal reading level. I was very grateful that we had him at home over the next few years so we could focus on the things that he really shines at (he’s a deep thinker, a natural entrepreneur and a stellar engineer among other things). He never felt like he was stupid or behind just because his reading skills took a little longer to develop than other kids’ did. My younger brother struggles with dyslexia as well and I still remember holding him in my lap one day after kindergarten while he cried telling me that his teacher had called him stupid because he couldn’t draw Y’s well. I’m forever grateful that I was able to spare my son from similar humiliation and that we could meet him where he was at.
We continued on with our homeschooling journey until our 3rd child started kindergarten in 2019. Like my second son she also struggled with dyslexia. We chose to homeschool her as well – which turned out to be an amazing choice as it set us up beautifully when schools were shut down and altered in 2020! We were so grateful that we didn’t have to make any significant changes to our lifestyle during lockdowns. While her reading skills significantly lagged she actually kept right up with her brothers on their history and science curriculums. Most people wouldn’t dream of teaching a kindergartner about WW2, or how fiat currency works, or how electricity works – but our daughter got to be a part of all of that while home with her brothers. I’ve heard many times how impressed people are with her reasoning and knowledge because she was never pigeonholed into younger subjects.
As we continued to work with our daughter we found that her reading ability was significantly worse than her brother’s. In second grade (2021) we decided to get her tested for dyslexia, and we found that she did indeed have dyslexia. She spent a year in specialized tutoring to help her progress in reading beyond what I was able to do for her at home. I was again glad that we’d had her at home where she didn’t feel like a failure for being behind. We focused a lot at home on how awesome she is at math and other things and met her where she was at on reading.
As she continued in her reading tutoring I decided I should probably have her eyes checked as well. We took all our kids in for vision exams and discovered that she had a severe convergence insufficiency – which means that her eyes wouldn’t work well together and she would see double for any objects that were near field (in her case meaning basically anything closer than arm’s length). No wonder her reading was so bad – she couldn’t hardly see the words on the paper! We were able to get her into vision therapy and they were able to resolve her issues entirely within 8 months.
At the same time she decided that she really wanted to try out public school. I warned her that she would have a tough time being so behind in reading but she wanted to give it a go. So in 2022 she started 3rd grade at our elementary school and loved it! Her teacher was so great with accommodating her reading skills and her IEP got her individualized reading instruction that helped get her caught up while we were fixing her eyes. She has been completely happy with her choice to be at the public school and I’m happy for her.
While our daughter was trying out public school our oldest decided that he would also like to take a couple of classes at the local middle school. With My Tech High we were able to work out split enrollment so that he attended school for two classes every other day, but did everything else at home. This was a fantastic split for him. In addition to the subjects we covered at home he spent his time outside of school to participate in Lyceum Orchestra through American Heritage and joined Beginning Speech & Debate through the Independent Education Program. Our oldest liked his split schedule enough that he decided to do it again this year, and convinced his younger brother to join him in split enrollment. He loved it even more than his older brother despite being VERY skeptical at first at how he would fare in a public school setting.
This past year (2023) our 4th child entered kindergarten and we had to decide what to do with him. We like to call this kid neuro-spicy – he’s probably somewhere on the ADHD spectrum. Like his oldest brother he also taught himself how to read and is SO busy. We knew that he is happiest – and we are happiest – when he has structure and lots of stimulation. I’m not great at providing that at home so we decided that he needed to go to a more traditional school setting. We enrolled him at a local charter school because they had full day kindergarten and he has been SO happy there. Everyone knows him and next year we’re hoping that he gets a place in their Mandarin immersion program and he will continue there.
Looking ahead – our plan for this coming year is for our 4th child to continue at his charter school, our 3rd will continue full time at public school, our 2nd is looking forward to continuing with split-enrollment, and our oldest has decided to go a fully homeschool route with community classes but none through the public school. I don’t yet know what to expect from our 5th child – he’s only 14 months old so there’s still plenty of time. But I know for sure that his educational needs will be different from my other 4 children’s needs.
Why I Support Utah Education Fits All Scholarships
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in our journey it’s that education is NOT one size fits all – not even close! There is probably nothing more individual than the educational needs and desires of each child, and that’s fantastic! I have a very small sample set, but each of my 5 kids have had needs that were completely different from one another and we’ve had to allocate each of their resources differently. Not only have their needs differed from one another, but they’ve differed from year to year!
This is why I am so supportive of the Utah Education Fits All Scholarships. The state of Utah spends $11,000 annually on each student in the public education system – but that system cannot tailor an education to each student. It’s just not set up to do that. Giving choices to parents allows parents and students to make the choices that fit their child best and gives them the chance to really maximize our tax dollars to give Utah kids the most advantages to succeed wildly in the world. I’ve been able to do quite a bit with the $1800ish/student that My Tech High has provided – but I go through those funds very quickly and spend far more on my kids’ education throughout the year than what I get reimbursed. These $8000 scholarships make it truly possible for parents to give their students the educational opportunities they deserve.
I feel very blessed that we have the means to provide education for our kids beyond what we’ve been reimbursed – but being able to effectively educate our children should not be a privilege reserved only for the upper class. Homeschool, private schools, micro-schools, and hybrid options should be available for all Utahns so that we can all give our kids the education that best fits their individual needs. For many kids that may still be the public education system, but no one should be forced into a system that doesn’t fit their needs only because it’s the only place our tax dollars will follow them.
Where Our Scholarships Would Have Gone
As I mentioned before, we were not awarded scholarships this year, but that hasn’t stopped me from considering where we would have spent the money. To be honest, my kids’ educational opportunities this next year improved simply by making those considerations. I sat down one day and considered what extra things I would spend that money on. After listing it out I realized there were some things on that list that might not fit into our My Tech High budget, but that felt worthwhile enough that we could make sacrifices to fit them into our household budget. So here are the things I would have spent money on for each child if we’d been awarded scholarships. I’ve tried to link things as much as possible in case anyone else is interested in these resources. Most of them are things that I’ve used to some extent in the past so I feel like I can heartily recommend them 😊
Child #1 – 15 years old, 10th grade
My oldest child is hoping to be a computer programmer when he grows up (considering that both of his parents are programmers, that seems to be a likely possibility). He is an avid reader and loves creative writing. He has been taking violin lessons for 8 years now and is really coming along in his talents there. He doesn’t love physical activity but he’s willing to go skiing with his dad and siblings on the weekends and has gained a lot of confidence through those activities.
In addition to what’s listed he would continue to do his math through Khan Academy and would participate in LDS Seminary (both of which are free). With the leftover funds we would probably update his computer set up to be more functional for the kinds of programming projects he wants to work on. I’m sure we would easily fill out the rest of the funds with books, office supplies, field trips and other miscellaneous expenses.
Child #2 – 13 years old, 8th grade
My second oldest child is an aspiring robotics engineer. While he reads adequately he could still definitely use some support to get up to grade level. He is constantly active – he loves soccer, bike riding and skiing – especially soccer. He has taken piano lessons off and on since he was 5 but doesn’t currently have a teacher so he hasn’t progressed much recently.
In addition he would also continue using Khan Academy for his math with some private tutoring over Zoom. Luckily the private tutoring is done with his grandma and she’s willing to tutor him for free 😉 He was hoping with a scholarship to be able to do split enrollment at the local middle school to continue taking art and science classes. Unfortunately our school district has been very hostile towards becoming a vendor for the scholarship so we probably would have needed to source those classes elsewhere – which would add to our budget of course. I’m sure any extra funds would have been quickly gobbled up with some reading tutoring, robotics projects supplies, or improving his workstation.
Child #3 – 10 years old, 5th grade
I actually didn’t apply for a scholarship for our daughter. She’s happy & thriving at the public school so I wouldn’t be inclined to pull her out even if she was awarded. The point of the scholarships is not to destroy public schools – but to make them the most available for those who succeed there! Public education seems to “fit” her so why mess with a good thing? However, freeing up some funding in our household budget by her brothers being awarded would have made it easier to pay for the dance and violin lessons that she would like to take this next year.
Child #4 – 6 years old, 1st grade
I also didn’t apply for our younger son as he’s also thriving at his charter school. Although if we had been awarded I might have looked more earnestly into therapies and guidance for dealing with his neurological differences. It also would have made it easier for us to sign him up for Let’s Play Music and rec league soccer. If we were awarded in future years I would definitely look to see what other options are out there to really meet his educational needs better, but for now he seems happiest where he is so we’ll just leave him there.
Child #5 – 14 months old, not in school
Obviously I didn’t even have the option to apply for my baby, and his educational expenses right now are pretty minimal (especially with so many hand-me-down toys from his older siblings) – but I couldn’t leave him out! Being awarded would open lots of options for him in future years but we’ll wait to see what his educational needs actually are.
Spreadsheet Instructions
Thanks for sticking with me through all of that, or skipping past my whole story without complaining. You’ve made it to what you’re here for – learning how to use the new tracker! If you’ve used the My Tech High tracker in the past this new spreadsheet should feel very familiar, but it’s MUCH simpler. I will walk you through how it works below.
❗❗The first thing you need to do is make a COPY of my spreadsheet. ❗❗I frequently get edit requests for the master spreadsheet from people who miss that step, and then you have to wait until I see the email and respond to it… and I will tell you to make a copy 😜 So save us both some time and don’t skip that step! Here’s the link to the Google Sheet- Utah Education Fits All Scholarship Reimbursement Tracker.
Let’s start with how to make your own copy. To do this you go to File->Make a copy…
After you do that a box will pop up asking for a name for this document. I recommend naming it something like “UFA [school year]” so that you don’t get your workbooks mixed up in future years.
The first thing you will do is enter your students’ names and grades in the Students sheet. You can also pick a color for each student which will just make the rest of the workbook prettier – and making it pretty is what’s most important right?
On the left it shows a budget breakdown for each of your students. At the top it tells you how much money you have remaining to spend across all students. You will not need to make any changes to these columns because everything will be calculated automatically. You may notice in my example that I’m over budget for Sam but it doesn’t take the negative amount away from the total available to spend because you can’t spend over the limit for any particular student.
On the purchase list you simply enter in the items you have purchased, the price paid and then select the student the purchase is associated with. As you do that you will notice that the “remaining” balances will update to show you how much is left in each category. Ok one last worksheet to go! Go ahead and click on the “Reimbursement Cover Sheet”.
You won’t need the reimbursement cover sheet until it’s time to submit your receipts but I find this to be really handy. At the top of the page you can select a student and then the rest of the workbook populates with all of the purchases for that period. I will print this page to a PDF and then use it to help me make sure I have all of my receipts together before submitting them at reimbursement time. I use the free program PDFBinder and put the cover sheet first and then add all of the receipts in the order they’re listed on my cover sheet. This makes it easy to see at a glance what all of my expenses were and help me get reimbursed faster. I don’t know yet what the reimbursement process will look like for this scholarship but I feel like this will likely be useful.
Once you’ve already made one submission and you need to make another then if you go back to the Budgets worksheet and check off the “Submitted?” boxes on the expenses that you’ve already been reimbursed for, then when you go back to the Cover Sheet worksheet you’ll see that it only displays the receipts that you haven’t yet been reimbursed for.
One last tip for anyone who considers themselves lightly advanced. If you want to sort your purchases – Select all of the purchase list cells by clicking on the “Item Purchased” cell and dragging your mouse until you are down to the submitted column on your last row. Then go to the “Data” menu and select “Sort range”.
Check the “Data has a header row” box and then you can sort things however you like. I usually like to sort by student, then by cost high to low. The sorting won’t stay as you enter in more items, but I find this to be handy as I’m trying to keep organized – especially when I’m getting ready to submit.
And that’s it! Hopefully this helps you to better keep track of your scholarship expenses and budget in the coming years! If you notice anything that I’ve missed please comment below so that I can get it fixed!
How to Say Thank You
If this is useful to you there are a few different ways you can help me out. First, if you haven’t already contacted your Utah state legislators in support of the Utah Education Fits All Scholarships – please do so now! We’re counting on continued momentum to make it possible for us to get scholarships next year. Or if you know how to get us bumped to the top of the waitlist we’d gladly accept a scholarship this year 😉 (just kidding… sort of 😜 )
Next, I can’t say enough how much it means just to read comments of people who have been helped by my tracker. Leave a comment here or tag me on Facebook – you have no idea how much that makes my day! These trackers have taken a lot of work and it really just makes me happy to know that they are helpful to others ❤️
If you really want to be helpful, if you would consider following my page on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter it would really help me as I try to grow this website into a thriving community. I try to post things that are interesting and I have lot of other great resources – homeschooling, tech, that I’d love to get out to everyone.
You can also consider making a purchase through my affiliate shop (I’m trying to update it with all of my favorite homeschooling resources) to help me keep this site going or making a donation to my site. If you’re looking for more ideas on what curriculum you want to use check out my curriculum recommendations post or if you’re looking for ideas on how to schedule your day check out my homeschool scheduling post. Happy Homeschooling 🙂
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the Utah Education Fits All Scholarship other than as a parent who hopes to have students in the program in the future. This tracker is provided free of charge and without warranty. I intend to keep all formulas and information current and accurate however I accept no liability for any faults in the program. Use at your own risk.
I should have posted this month ago, but I didn’t quite know how to get people prepared. Right now I have traveled thousands of miles to get my family in the path of totality for today’s solar eclipse. We were able to go to Rexburg Idaho for the eclipse in 2017 and it was so breathtakingly amazing that we literally planned this trip on our way home. We knew this was something that we absolutely did not want to miss.
I will try to get video during the eclipse that I will share on my pages but before that happened I thought it might be helpful for some people to see some of the videos and resources that helped me before our first eclipse to really appreciate all of what happened then and will happen again today.
I apologize that this post is a little bit quick and dirty but hopefully the resources still help some people.
First, if you do nothing else download this app and it will help you to know exactly what you’re looking for and when. It costs $2 but it will absolutely be worth both of those dollars. https://www.solareclipsetimer.com/
I would also recommend watching as many of these videos that I will post below as you can. They’ll help you understand some of the phenomena that you are going to see so that you appreciate them when they come up.
This has a bunch of videos, any of them are worth your time
Also if you have little kids I recommend making a barrier around their glasses with a paper plate like we did –
Finally, this is the post my brother-in-law shared after the last eclipse – https://www.facebook.com/share/p/G7nkMKnbuwa8jxJj/?mibextid=xfxF2i . The family that they hosted was mine and the nephew he quotes was my oldest. He said what I experienced so much better than I could express it at the time.
We’ve been watching the weather all week and nervous about cloud cover. We’ve been praying for clear skies. Right now our skies look like this –
I saw that out our window and immediately sang in my mind, “I’m glad that I live in this beautiful world, yes I know Heavenly Father loves me” ❤️
On Sunday night our stake held a Life of Christ Open House in our building. Each ward was assigned a specific segment of Christ’s life to represent in displays or activities in different classrooms. Our ward was assigned Christ’s ministry in the Americas to portray. At first our ward council really struggled with what they were going to do. Despite months of lead time and plenty of attention given to the project it just wasn’t coming together.
Finally they decided they needed to bring in some outside help. Which is when they realized that in our ward we had someone who works for church headquarters designing visitor center experiences, a professional artist, and someone who owns all their own professional lighting and sound equipment. They quickly turned the project over to this team of creatives and – despite a now very shortened timeline – they came up with an amazing experience.
They separated our room into three sections. The first featured a hand painted mural of Christ’s visit to the Americas. This was really stunning to see as people walked in. Brian Hailes designed the mural digitally and then projected it onto the large format poster boards so that he could have help from his kids and other members of the ward to complete it without losing his vision. It was really cool not only to see the finished product but also to get to watch how many people were able to work together to get it made. (Brian has a really neat series of portraits of Christ that he’s been working on recently that you should definitely check out as well as many other great books and art resources.)
The third section featured artwork of the Savior done by kids in our ward. They were certainly less artistically impressive than the mural in the first room, but it was nonetheless really tender to see the testimonies of our children portrayed in artistic format. Well, perhaps with the exception of my 6 year old’s drawing. It featured Jesus on the cross… with snowballs all around. At some point he’d gotten a highlighter and wrote “pooper scooper” on the piece as well 🤦♀️ I’m sure the caption was not necessarily intended to go along with the subject matter, but he’s 6 so anytime he can write “pooper scooper” it probably seems like a good idea. *sigh*
The section I was in for most of the night was the middle section. Since the brother who designed the experience worked for the visitor’s center department he was able to borrow a 8 foot tall Christus statue from church headquarters. It is one that they will take when they do open houses at new temples to be part of a temporary display.
Once the statue was in place the brother who was responsible for it requested that one person be given the role of guarding the statue. As you might imagine, a statue of that size would be expensive to replace and he did not want to be on the line if something happened to it. Somehow as they looked around the room 5’2″ Brittny seemed like the best person for the job, so I was assigned for the night as Jesus’ bodyguard.
My job was basically just to stand by the statue, not let little kids climb on it and react with sufficient anxiety if someone bumped it during set up. I felt a little silly, and extremely inadequate. I mean, Jesus didn’t exactly look kindly on keeping people from coming to see him and He rebuked Peter for defending Him with a sword. Pretty sure whatever protection Jesus needs, He can handle it Himself. (Yes, I’m being a little bit silly since obviously the statue was not *actually* Jesus, but I still felt there was some interesting scriptural precedent to the role).
However silly I felt acting as bodyguard, it was actually a really neat place to be throughout the night. One of the coolest parts was to watch as little kids would come in the room. The kids were generally running around the building while their parents were working on setting up their own part of the displays. Without fail when a kid would come into the room they would run in and then stop dead in their tracks. They would look up at the statue and say, “WHOA!” Then their first reaction was always to run back out of the room to bring a friend to see the statue as well.
I loved seeing that. Isn’t that what we should all do when we find Jesus in our lives? Our first reaction should be to share Christ with others. That’s what Lehi’s first thought was after partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Life. I want to be more like all of those kids and be so quick to bring those around me to Christ.
The experience also gave me pause as I stood in the room between the people who were there and Christ. I wondered, who am I keeping from knowing Christ? I may not stand in my day as a bouncer who won’t allow people to approach Him, but am I sharing the gospel? I have a knowledge of my Savior and I have a responsibility to share that knowledge with others.
I also asked myself, does the way I live my life as Christ’s follower make others want to know Him too? When I do declare the gospel those who don’t know Christ for themselves may judge Him based on my actions. I have to take care that the way that I act towards others makes others want to know Him as I do. I hope that others can feel of His love because of the love they see through me. It reminded me of this song that was part of the BYU Young Ambassador fireside when I was on their tech crew years ago.
My biggest task in protecting the statue was being conscientious of His outstretched hands. They are easily the weakest part of the statue and easily knocked into. As I was taking care that they remained in tact I wondered about whether I take the same care to keep His doctrine in tact. Am I careful in the way that I teach His doctrine so that it remains clear to others? Can I be trusted with keeping safe those in my care and the callings I’ve been entrusted with? It was a team effort, especially as the men were carrying the statue back out at the end of the night. We are all given a small part of the task of holding up the kingdom and it takes every one of us doing our part to protect the doctrine and care for God’s children here on Earth.
My favorite part of the whole night was after the open house actually began. For the first bit of the open house I was still charged with watching over the statue while visitors came in. As a couple of little girls came in I could see that they were hesitant to approach the statue. While their parents were looking at the other parts of the exhibit I quietly motioned them forward. I’d been instructed that people were permitted to touch His hands and feet so long as they didn’t stand on the base or hang on it.
So I brought these two girls forward so they could have their own moment with the Savior. Together we knelt down and lovingly touched His hands and feet as we spoke about our Savior. It was so tender and it reminded me that THAT is exactly where I want to be. I believe the kind of guarding that Christ truly wants. Not the kind of guarding that would keep people away but that will bring people TO Him with gentle care. I want to be in a position that I am bringing others to Christ so that they can have their own experiences with Him. Sharing my experiences is nice, but the ultimate goal is for everyone to experience His love directly for themselves.
Not long after that I was relieved of guard duty. I went quickly home so that I could get my four oldest children and bring them up. Of all the people that I want to help have an experience with the Savior my own precious babies are at the very top of the list. I was eager to bring them back so they too could feel the love that I know our Savior has for them.
This last picture isn’t of the statue that was in our building on Sunday, but a much larger version that lives in the visitor’s center of the Los Angeles temple. The little boy at Christ’s feet is my oldest son who is now 15 years old. I hope I’m always doing all I can to help him and his siblings find their own place at the feet of our Savior.
I was asked to give a Relief Society lesson on Elder Bednar’s talk “In the Path of Their Duty” from October 2023 General Conference. Ok, that might not be entirely accurate… I was asked to give a lesson on a different talk and I coerced our Relief Society President into swapping teaching month’s with me so that I could teach this talk. It was my absolute favorite talk from this last conference, and will probably be one of my all time favorite talks so I’ve been looking forward to sharing this with the sisters in our ward for months. So long as I had put all the preparation into my lesson notes and making fun graphics with ChatGPT I figured I ought to share it here as well. I would love to hear your thoughts too! I’ll leave my discussion questions along the way and I’d love for you to leave a comment letting me know what you thought too!
About the time that this talk was given my mom, sister and I were discussing a relatively famous member of the church was in the news for living a life that was incongruous with the way they had presented themselves. It’s not important who it was but we will just say that it was someone who everyone thought was SO great and doing amazing charitable things… only it came out that actually… they weren’t. As we discussed this we noted that this wasn’t the only person we had seen who had gone through this pattern of fame gained for virtuous and righteous actions then seeming to go off the deep end. Somewhat reminiscent of what we learn in D&C 121:39 –
“We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”
My sister made the comment that she just wanted to get a C average in life. She didn’t want to do anything flashy she just wanted to get through this life with a passing grade. Which reminded me of the mantra that I would sometimes have in college at the end of the semester. I’m sure no one else said this because you were all much better students than I was but I would sometimes remind myself that “C’s get degrees!” Meaning that sometimes it is time to stop striving for perfection and let good enough be good enough. I could keep working and trying for extra credit and try to eke out an A+, but if I spent all the time to get an A+ in my Physical Science class and failed my American Heritage final that wasn’t really the best outcome. When applied to how we serve in the kingdom however I’ve modified that slightly to…
C’s get degrees… of glory! I think a lot of times we can get caught up in trying to find the BIG things to do that are in keeping with the gospel. Planning the big service project, serving missions, spending all of our time at the temple etc. But the reality is that’s not always what the Lord has called us to do. Most of the time the service that we give is much smaller and less noticeable, but no less valuable in the Kingdom. I felt like this was sort of the main message of the talk was that we don’t have to do anything that’s so visible and grand. The service we give in our homes and at church are what the Lord asks us to do and if we’re doing that – that’s enough! The Lord doesn’t expect us to be always going above and beyond, He just asks us to do the things that we’ve been asked to do. In 1 Samuel 15:22 we’re taught, “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.” We’re even taught in Jacob 4:14 that the Jews fell because they were “looking beyond the mark”.
I’m by no means advocating that we don’t try to magnify our callings or do the best that we can. However, I think it is important for us to learn that the best that we are called to do doesn’t mean above and beyond, it just means fulfilling our responsibilities well. Elder Bednar included this quote from President Hunter –
It can be frustrating to not see yourself in a lot of the stories that you hear in the scriptures or in conference, but the truth is that most of the most important stories are the ones that are never told. I would love to hear your thoughts on how can we find joy and fulfillment in fulfilling our responsibilities, even when they seem mundane or unnoticed by others?
When I read this I was reminded of a quote from a blog post that I read years ago. The sister who wrote the article had requested to work as a temple worker but was rejected because she had young children at home back when they had a policy that women with children at home couldn’t be temple workers. The blog seems to have been discontinued but I was able to find the full article on Archive.org and I would definitely recommend the article to anyone who is struggling with feeling like they might not be used to their full potential. Here’s an excerpt of some of the parts that struck me most –
“The fact was, the Lord didn’t want me, not to do anything eternally important, anyway. […] The Lord felt that all I was useful for was to wipe noses and bottoms and endlessly feed people. I could do so much more than that, but he didn’t want it – not from me.
[… In the years since] I’ve come to appreciate with a soulful assurance that God cares most about the details surrounding his children, and that what truly heals, what truly makes a difference, is profoundly personal. It’s a bitter pill to swallow that wiping noses and bottoms and endlessly feeding people is what he really wants from us, if we would rather do something else. Something more romantic, something more visible, something with a tangible feel of obvious service seems infinitely more appealing. But the fact is, to the person with a runny nose or a messy bum or a hungry stomach, nobody else matters.
In his own life [Jesus] repeatedly taught that the most important service was between individuals, and that if we would lead we must learn to minister as a servant: to those with metaphorical runny noses and messy bums. I’ve taught that principle for nearly three decades, but I still need to be reminded occasionally that it’s better to save one person than to impress a multitude.
[…] For a Father who loves his children, the most meaningful gift he could give them is someone who will descend below all to serve them. If that is the work to which you are called, whether it includes runny noses or quiet corners of the kingdom, whether it is in Paris or Nepal or a small house in a subdivision, know that your call perfectly illustrates just how much God needs you. […] The real power is personal, and all of us are equal to that opportunity.“
As a mom this story just hits me in the gut every time. I often feel like the skills I have are not being used to their full potential at home. Moreover, the skills that are really needed to be a successful homemaker are NOT even the ones that I have. I’m no great chef, my cleaning abilities are atrocious, and I’m certainly no hand at decorating. But this thought hit me so strongly – even if the service I’m giving isn’t glamorous, even if I can’t do it Pinterest perfect it’s also not something anyone else can truly do for my family. The line “to the person with a runny nose or a messy bum or a hungry stomach, nobody else matters” hits me so strong every time. Yes, there might be other things I could be doing that are bigger in the world, but I mean the most to my family who I spend my time caring for.
When I was pregnant with my 4th I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes – which may not be major but I have serious issues with needles and so personally it was devastating. I didn’t know what I could eat and I had 3 kids at home that weren’t going to go for any modified diet. My ministering sister took the time to research what foods I could eat without messing up my blood sugar and made me some soups that I could heat up just for me while I fed the kids chicken nuggets or whatever they wanted to eat. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me at the time, just to know that I had something I could eat without having to guess if it would hurt my baby or not. Just to know that someone had seen me and cared about what I was going through. It wasn’t newsworthy, but to me it was everything. I hope as we go about serving in less noticeable ways we remember just how much the small things we do can mean to those we serve.
As part of his talk Elder Bednar spoke about some of the unsung heroes in our past. He quoted from a talk that President J Reuben Clark gave at the centennial celebration of the pioneers arriving in Salt Lake. He noted that while we know and often honor those who led the pioneers out west we generally don’t even know the names of those who were in the last wagons of the expedition. These men and women made the same journey, although with the added discomfort of having the dust of the previous wagons in the air as they walked along. Plus, although it’s not mentioned in Elder Bednar’s talk, I would imagine that most of those who were in the last wagons were at the end of the train because they had other difficulties that made the travel extra difficult – an injury, young children, missing father etc. These people likely not only had a journey that was AS difficult, but likely even more so.
I appreciated President Clark taking the time to remember those who history might not have remembered. I would love for you to consider who has impacted your life – either in your history or personally – by their example of faithful living through difficult trials without the recognition of the world?
When I heard that it reminded me of a story that my dad told. I made him write it out for me so that I could share it more or less in his words, although I re-wrote it slightly to be in the third person so that it felt authentic to me as I read it to the class. I’m formatting it as a quote, even if it’s not his words exactly (although it almost is) –
In 1997 the Church celebrated the sesquicentennial (150 year anniversary) of the first pioneers entering the Salt Lake Valley. As part of the celebration members had the opportunity to research and document any direct ancestors that had arrived in Utah before the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10th 1869. Those who wanted could complete a “Faith in Every Footstep” form listing all their names and the evidence that they had ‘walked’ to the Salt Lake Valley to receive some sort of certificate.
One day in High Priest group meeting the guy giving the lesson mentioned this initiative and stated that he had ’22’ such ancestors (the number might have been more or less than 22, but the exact number isn’t necessarily relevant. We’re going to pretend that it was 22 for the rest of the story). He then stated that he was fairly certain that no one else in the group had more.
You may not know this but Andersons are competitive, and all of our competitiveness we get from our dad. Since he was about 40 years younger than this guy he figured that he had at least one generation on the teacher so about twice as many potential ancestors who could fit the bill.
The next Sunday the teacher asked if anyone had taken his challenge and done their own research. My dad raised my hand and told the teacher that he had ’24’ and had stopped looking once he had more than the previously proclaimed ’22’. He then threw out a caveat that actually his 4th great-grandfather, David Reeder, had died on October 1, 1856 on the plains of Wyoming somewhere west of Fort Laramie as part of the Willie Handcart Company. The brother very boldly stated “Well then, he doesn’t count.”
My dad was taken aback and said ‘What do you mean that he doesn’t count?’ David, a widower, had left his home in England with his three living children, one of which, Eliza was married and had three children of her own. When he left his home he was 4846 miles away from the Salt Lake. He ‘walked’ 4496 of those miles and my dad was definitely going to count him. In any event, that still left him with 23 ancestors which was one more than the teacher had! Which in my dad’s opinion was the most important part of the exercise 😉
Because of David Reeder’s sacrifice his daughter Eliza was able to bring her 2 year old daughter Sarah to Utah. Sarah’s son Henry was the father of my great grandmother Bonnie who I remember well – she passed away a little over a week after I had Sam. His willingness to not only cross the plains but sacrifice his life allowed me to be brought up in a family that had the gospel. He might not “count” as having made it to the Salt Lake Valley, but in my book, he counts twice. I am eternally grateful for David Reeder’s trek across the plains regardless of what anyone else thinks.
The title of Elder Bednar’s talk came from Samuel the Lamanite while talking about the righteous among his people.
I find it interesting that Samuel didn’t mention the big things that the righteous were doing – it wasn’t big projects or grand gestures, but simply the things that they were doing “in the path of their duty”. The every day things that kept their community running. What does it mean to you to be “in the path of [your] duty?”
Elder Bednar went on to discuss examples of what that might look like today. I really wanted to pull out quotes from that section of his talk, but it was nearly 10 minutes of his talk that he spent praising the often overlooked ways that many serve in the church. If you haven’t listened to the talk yet I would strongly encourage you to take the time to listen to all of the ways Elder Bednar honored the often unsung heroes of the church. I went through and with ChatGPT’s help made a condensed list of the ways that he mentioned that we can be serviceable “in the path of [our] duty”
Offering comfort and support to those in need
Supporting family members in their callings
Repenting and returning to the covenant path
Waiting on the Lord for blessings and answers
Helping others receive the gospel in their own language
Multiplying and replenishing the earth, despite challenges or unfulfilled desires.
Teaching in nursery & primary
Caring for aged parents.
Comforting and protecting your children.
Setting up and taking down chairs, and performing other tasks to support meetings and activities.
Inviting others to come and see, come and help, and come and stay in the Church.
Fasting, praying, listening, learning, caring, consoling, teaching, and testifying by the power of the Holy Ghost.
Enduring trials and challenges for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I’m sure everyone can find yourself somewhere on that list, and probably in different places on that list in different stages of life. I loved what Elder Bednar had to say about all of these different types of service.
I appreciated Elder Bednar’s words. Especially where he said that those who are serving in less visible roles inspire him to be a better disciple. He’s an apostle of the Lord, and he has lots of visibility into the BIG things that the church is doing. Humanitarian efforts, building temples, aiding refugees, scholarly efforts, large scale devotionals, the legion of full time missionaries currently serving. If he wanted to talk about the big things that are being accomplished by church members he could certainly have done it. Instead he spoke about nursery leaders, parents, and people repenting and doing their best in their own small ways.
If Elder Bednar can show that kind of appreciation to regular church members in their regular callings I would love for you to think -What are some ways we can show appreciation for those who serve in less visible roles in the Church? What are some ways we can support and sustain those who serve in different callings in the Church?
At the leadership session of our most recent stake conference one of the brothers who spoke shared some thoughts about the parable of the Vineyard as found in Matthew 20:1-16 and how we might apply it to how we serve in the church. Brief recap if you don’t remember that parable, the owner of a vineyard hires people to work for him at several different times during the day and pays them all the same amount for their service at the end of the day. The speaker mentioned those who came in the later part of the day and posited that perhaps they were called later because they couldn’t have withstood the heat of the day. He talked about the Prado principle which is that generally 80% of the work in an organization is done by 20% of the people (and annoyingly 80% of the work on a project takes 20% of the time and the other 80% is spent on a mere 20% of the work). Often in the church this holds true as well and you will see that about 20% of the membership of the church is doing 80% of the work.
Sometimes if you are part of that 20% you may be tempted to say, “hey! I’m holding up my part, why can’t other people pitch in and serve like I’m doing?” This speaker said that we should consider that others might not have the ability to serve in the same way we do. Maybe they have physical limitations that we don’t know about, or their capacity might be limited in other ways. Maybe they simply haven’t had the experiences of being blessed by service and haven’t received a testimony of how important the work can be. Perhaps they haven’t had the same opportunities to serve and don’t understand how they might be blessed for their service. Rather than begrudging others we should be grateful that we have the abilities to serve. We should be grateful that even those who cannot serve through the heat of the day receive the full reward. Sometimes we might be the person who can’t make it through the heat of the day and how grateful we are then that the Lord does not begrudge us our lack of abilities. Every person is facing different challenges and it isn’t helpful to compare one person’s abilities to another person’s.
I would love for you to consider – When have you felt grateful for the opportunity to serve or felt grateful for someone else being able to serve where you could not?
Probably the part of the talk that most spoke to me while Elder Bednar was talking about the ways that people serve “in the path of their duty” was where he spoke about the work that parents do.
Having children is not for the faint of heart and it can be frightening to consider raising them in this world. I currently have 5 children and it takes so much of my time and energy to facilitate their growth and development. I was so touched to have my experiences of wrestling kids in sacrament meetings (which definitely happens weekly) recognized. Something Dr. Shon Hopkin mentioned in the Follow Him podcast last week really struck me as well –
I loved how he categorized having children as an act of faith and a way to show the Lord that we trust Him even as He trusts us with the care of His children. I also loved the idea that every new baby born is a sign that God is with us. I thought that was a beautiful way to honor those new babies. It may be more tender to me currently as I have my own small baby in the home (although he’s getting big much faster than I authorized him to!) but as the world often considers the addition of more children as an act of insanity it is encouraging to have it honored instead as an act of faith. I would love for us to consider how can we have faith to have families despite the difficulties of the world around us? How can we support the families around us to grow in faith?
I want to share my testimony that the greatest works that we can do in this life are often those that are most likely to be overlooked. But that nothing that we do is overlooked by the Lord. You matter. All that you are doing in your calling, for your family, in your personal relationship with the Lord – it matters. I hope that we will all find ways to recognize all of the different ways that those around us are living the gospel “in the path of their duty” and that we will strive to find the ways that we can best serve, even when it’s not glamorous. I know that our Heavenly Parents love us and I’m so grateful that because of Jesus Christ all of our small and seemingly insignificant works can help us to live with Them again.
In March last year I found myself 8 months pregnant with a kidney stone. If you’ve never had a kidney stone I would strongly recommend against it. They are no fun. I’ve gone through childbirth 5 times without an epidural and the kidney stones are worse than childbirth – and instead of a cute baby you just get a stupid piece of gravel out of the ordeal.
The kidney stone was the icing on the cake after a long hard pregnancy. Nothing earth shatteringly bad, but a lot of normal pregnancy stuff. My back is terrible when I’m pregnant so I’d hardly been able to walk the whole time. I had pregnancy induced tachycardia – which meant that my heart would race for long stretches of time for no good reason. Think of the way that your heart feels after you finish running a race, except you are just sitting around doing nothing, and it won’t go back down with rest. Heartburn was a given constant regardless of how bland I kept my diet – you have to really watch out for that spicy oatmeal! My morning sickness wasn’t terrible but not fun either. I had Braxton Hicks contractions pretty constantly as well – which aren’t really painful but they are exhausting. It’s kind of like having an involuntary ab workout – even if the muscles are strong, they get tired after awhile.
On top of all of that, pregnancy means that at least twice I’m going to have to deal with needles – which I hate. I think I’m pretty tough when it comes to pain but I deal with vasovagal syncope which means that my body freaks out with needles and I tend to pass out HARD. I used to say that I was afraid of needles, but it’s less of a fear than almost an allergic reaction. I dread those needles more than I dread labor.
My postpartum recovery was actually pretty straightforward this time around – however that kidney stone never made its way out as far as I could tell. I assumed that it had just seen its way out undramatically while my attention was more focused on all the other unpleasantries of post partum recovery. Until…
The day after Christmas I found myself in downtown Salt Lake City, with just my 6 year old and 8 month old when that kidney stone reared its ugly head again. I drove myself to a place where I could charge our car and sat there writhing in pain. At one point I handed my 8 month old to my 6 year old so that I could find an empty grocery bag to throw up in. It was certainly a low point to feel surrounded by people in the middle of a city, but so very very alone at the same time and in agony, needing help. Fortunately my amazing husband raced back down the mountain to rescue me and spent that evening in the ER with me while they loaded me up with meds and fluids.
One round of Flomax and antibiotics later and… I still seem to have that kidney stone. It hasn’t been bothering me but every so often I’ll get a little stab of pain and I can tell – it’s still there just biding its time. It’s been another couple months and I’m realizing that I never got a call from the imaging department at the hospital about the CT scan the urologist ordered. I’m sure that I have surgery in my future which is not my idea of a good time. But I know that if I leave that stupid tiny piece of gravel in its place then its likely to cause an infection and I’ll be back to inordinate amounts of pain.
One night shortly after my ER adventure my husband was walking around with our son and pretending to talk on his behalf. He was being a little silly and voiced for the baby, “Mom, look how cute I am, aren’t I the cutest? I’m worth having a kidney stone for, right?” I matched the silly mood and immediately replied, “Of course you are, you’re adorable!”
He was being silly but the exchange stopped me a little abruptly. A lot of what happens to me as a result of pregnancy isn’t fun – but at the same time, I knew what was likely to happen and this baby was not a surprise. I had chosen to go through all of that for a baby that I didn’t even know yet. Pregnancy amnesia is real and there were definitely points along the way where I felt like “why did I choose to do this again?? This is the worst!”
But now my husband was asking me if I would go through all of that again for this baby that I *do* know. Only a little bit, I’ve only had him for 10 months, but knowing him like I do now, would I go through all the struggles of pregnancy, childbirth AND even kidney stones again to have him?
The answer was unequivocally – YES! Of course! There isn’t even a question in my mind that all that I endured for him was worth it. I cannot express emphatically enough how I would go through all of those things again for this cute baby. He really is the cutest, but more importantly, he’s mine and I love him beyond words.
Which then got me thinking – was there anything that I wouldn’t go through for him? I tried to think of a single thing that I would not suffer through for my baby. Cancer, loss of limbs, torture – none of it seemed worse than the idea of not having my baby. He is precious to me beyond anything I can count. While my love for him has never been (and hopefully never will be) tested to the limits, at least in the hypothetical I can’t think of a situation where I wouldn’t be willing to suffer through anything in order for him to have his life.
As I thought about that my mind turned to our Savior. I have often wondered and marveled at His sacrifice for each of us. Not just in giving up His life, but at the idea of Him suffering through all of the pains of each individual person’s life to save us. How could He possibly bear to go through all of that?
But then in my mind I pictured my Heavenly Father taking me in his arms, showing me to Christ and speaking on my behalf. “Jesus, look how cute I am, aren’t I the cutest? I’m worth atoning for, right?” I can see Jesus, who has known me for a lot longer than 10 months and who has love beyond that of a mortal mother, looking at me, smiling and saying, “Of course you are Brittny, you’re adorable.”
And he cometh into the world that he may save all men if they will hearken unto his voice; for behold, he suffereth the pains of all men, yea, the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam.
Clearly I’m nowhere near the Savior, but for a moment I could understand in some small way how Jesus could do what He did. I can imagine each one of us being presented to Him and having the same question asked of Him – “What about me? Am I worth atoning for?” If the answer was no He would not have to suffer for us, but He also would have an eternity ahead without us. As a mother I can think of nothing that would be worse than facing an eternity without my children and knowing that I could have done something that would have saved them. Perhaps that’s the way Jesus feels about us too.
In Isaiah 49:15-16 Christ says, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands;” As a mother the idea of being able to forget one of my children and not care about them seems so ludicrous. But Jesus says that even as remote as that possibility may seem, it could happen to us. But not to Him. Whenever He sees His hands He remembers us.
There’s a book by Max Lucado that I haven’t read yet but I’ve seen this quote from it as a meme and it struck me to my core – “He knew the price of those sins was death. He knew the source of those sins was you, and since he couldn’t bear the thought of eternity without you, he chose the nails.” Somehow it just hits different when you think of the atonement as being that personal. Not just some cosmic collective moment, but a sacrifice that was indescribably individual. Not something that happened to Jesus, but a choice that he made deliberately. A choice that He made for YOU.
I want to bear testimony that YOU were worth it. You are worth it. Every day Jesus is reaching out to you, trying to remind you of His love for you. You are valuable to Him beyond price, and hopefully you never forget it.
Anyone else get sick of all the candy that our kids are constantly bringing home? I don’t hate candy, but I feel like there’s a CONSTANT stream of candy with kids. Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Birthday Parties – it seems like there’s always some reason for my kids to have a stash of candy. I’m not anti-candy – I’m eyeing the stash of chocolate at the other side of my room right now – but I get tired of all the candy all the time. Plus, I grew up with brothers with severe food allergies so I’m sensitive to all the treats that kids with food restrictions bring home and then can’t eat.
So when Valentine’s Day comes around I’m always trying to come up with things my kids can give away that are fun – without giving out candy. This always results in me designing my own Valentines for my kids to hand out. I’m going through the archives of my computer today and trying to find all of those different Valentines so I can share them with you. This post might be a mess since I’m putting it together on Feb 12 and I know you all needed these yesterday – but I wanted to get the ideas out so you could use them this year. I’ll try to get it all cleaned up before 2025!
I use this cardstock from Amazon to print my cards on. I use it all the time because I would pretty much always rather design what I want rather than buy a card from somewhere else. I also bought this paper cutter from Amazon and it has been a huge lifesaver! It was something that I bought thinking, “I’m going to think later this was a waste of money” but I could not have been more wrong. The time that it has saved me when cutting out different projects – not to mention how much straighter the cutting lines are on those projects – SO worth it!
So without further ado, here are some of the Valentines I’ve designed for my kids through the years (note: some do still go with candy, but most of them have been something else.)
Sorry this picture is really old – I designed these back in 2013 and I didn’t have the best camera on my phone at the time and didn’t realize that the backlighting from the window wasn’t the best plan 🤦♀️ But I loved how these valentines turned out! I bought mini boxes of cereal and tied the cards with a plastic spoon on with a piece of ribbon.
I had 6 different designs that I made for these Valentines. I put them together in a PDF that you can print them out 12 to a page. I’ll try to go back and make a full page of each design in case you’d like just one of the designs. But for now, at least you have them!
I will go find one of these and get a picture, but I’ve loved doing these valentines with a bouncy ball. I use these little treat bags and stick in a bouncy ball, a printed card and tie it off with a bit of ribbon. Easy peasy, and what kid doesn’t love a bouncy ball?
This was the one time my son convinced me to do candy for a Valentine because he was really set on giving out Airheads. I can be fun sometimes! So I let him give out Airheads with these valentines. I think we ended up using double sided tape to attach the cards to the candies. It wasn’t the fanciest presentation, but he was happy with it and that’s what matters 🙂
One of my favorite places to get printable valentines is from my sister-in-law’s blog – JuJuBee Illustrations. She has a really cute Baby Yoda one that I’ve given out with a glow stick like it’s a lightsaber, which was a big hit.
I have a couple others that I’ll work on getting up here as quickly as I can. I’m also going to work on getting these up in a format where you can type in your child’s name to save you all the time of handwriting out your kid’s name. But for now, at least you might be able to use these this year!
![“I have described only a few selected examples of covenant-keeping and devoted disciples of Jesus Christ like you who are pressing forward “in the path of [your] duty.” Millions of additional examples of Latter-day Saints who offer their “whole souls” unto God are found in Christ-centered homes and in Church units around the world. […]
I am grateful for millions of Church members who today are coming unto the Savior and pressing forward on the covenant path in the last wagons of our contemporary wagon trains—and who truly are no less serviceable. Your strong faith in Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and your unpretentious, consecrated lives inspire me to be a better man and disciple.
I love you. I admire you. I thank you. And I commend you.”](https://i0.wp.com/www.haitechmama.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Slide14.png?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1)
![“[Many] are afraid to have families and children under the difficulties of our day and those who trust in the Lord say, "I will move forward in faith and we will have families, we will support families. If I'm an aunt or an uncle, I'm going to support my brothers and sister's family. I'm going to be a primary teacher and support families. We will not be afraid, but we will move forward.”
And I would submit every time a child is born and the spirit that comes with that childbirth is a witness of Emmanuel. God is with us. He's still sending His children to this earth.”
Dr Shon Hopkin, Follow Him Podcast, Book of Mormon Episode 9](https://i0.wp.com/www.haitechmama.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Slide19.png?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1)
