notes on the other challenges

Book of Mormon: Adam just started reading the Book of Mormon a little bit ago in conjunction with stake conference. He's whipping right along so he'll definitely have it done. I'm cranking through the Old Testament and should finish by the end of the year, and the Book of Mormon was next on the list anyway because I have to read it for the Virtue value project. And, based on some things in General Conference, we decided to stop reading the Scripture Reader books for our family scripture study and switch to the regular Book of Mormon. After a month, we're on 1Nephi 17 because we're going slooooow - only as long as the girls' attention span is for that day. Sometimes we read just 3 or 4 verses, and sometimes we get through an entire page. It just depends. I actually don't know if it would be realistic for us to try to read the entire thing between now and July with the kids, with that as our operating mode. We'll see.

Family Proclamation: I will make an attempt at memorizing it. I'll let Adam speak for himself, and I think our kids are a little young for the whole thing. But I'll choose a couple of sections for them to start with, and go from there. I did want to add this, though -

About a month ago, I taught a lesson in YW about "the law of the land," and the manual was a little bit of "rah rah, go USA!" stuff. I wanted to acknowledge how the law of the US is going these days, with the gay marriage challenges in a number of courts all over the country. My outline was kind of sketchy going into it, and I wasn't sure how it was all going to come out. What ended up happening was we read the entire Family Proclamation out loud, and I said very firmly that we need to have a testimony of the Proclamation just like they have a testimony of the Book of Mormon. I was kind of surprised at myself for saying that - it was not thought out ahead of time. But given the current political and social climate, it totally makes sense.

And that's my point here - whether or not you memorize the whole thing per Tawnia's challenge, everyone needs to at least read and ponder it, and pray about it for a confirmation from the Spirit, just like with the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. The world has gone completely haywire, particularly about gender identification and sexual behaviors. But no matter what happens or is said or is popular, we can always go back to that wonderful document that is indeed the Lord's defining statement on families. This is not part of a family reunion challenge - this is genuinely how I feel about our faith and keeping ourselves spiritually strong as the world continues its merry descent to hell.