Making a mark

I'm sorry. I've been holding out on you. I thought that I'd posted all of the bookmarks that we made, but I discovered that I haven't posted the first of the Women of Virtue series! I know, right? So here's a downloadable set of (some of) the Women of Virtue bookmarks, complete with crop marks. Use them wisely, and enjoy!

Following up

As promised, here's the second set of the Follow the Prophets Old Testament bookmarks. There's also a downloadable PDF (through Dropbox) if you're interested. Enjoy!

Keeping your place

So, with Old Testament being the curriculum this year for seminary, I remembered this set of bookmarks we made a few years ago. I think I've run a couple of them on the blog already. If you're interested, they're available for download.

There's a second set that I'll try and dig up at a later date that includes some additional prophets. We also made one of women of the Old Testament that I'll try to post as well. Stay tuned!

Women of Virtue

A few years ago, my wife and I made a series of bookmarks for our Primary class. There were two sets: Follow the Prophet and Women of Virtue. The Women of Virtue proved very popular, due in part to the fact that sometimes women don't get quite as much ink in the scriptures (to use some PR jargon). Deborah was one of the favorites among the girls as she not only was a leader, but a warrior and a prophetess as well.

Today is a special day for my own Deborah, so it seemed appropriate to run this today.

Something a little different...

Last week, being Father's Day, I was asked to speak in church about fathers; in particular, I was asked to speak about father and son relationships in the Book of Mormon.

Quite naturally, I started with Lehi and his sons and the interesting relationships there. My theory is that leaving all their stuff behind when they fled Jerusalem had a greater impact on Laman and Lemuel because they were the older brothers. It didn't bother Sam and Nephi as much because they were the little brothers who were always in the way and never got to play with the cool toys anyway. All the later problems stemmed from giving up all their cool stuff.

The Alma family (Alma, Alma the Younger, Helaman, Shiblon and Corianton) had some interesting things going on, too. Powerful men, but a bit of a rebellious streak that shows up in all three generations, ya know?

My favorite father and son team is Mormon and Moroni. They were both pretty cool in and of themselves. I think it's way cool that they both wrote in each other's books, and that it was Moroni who delivered the plates that became the Book of Mormon. Their letters to each other became scripture, they encouraged each other in troubled times. One particular point that shows the strength and depth of their relationship was after Mormon was killed in battle (along with all the rest of the Nephites), Moroni took up where Mormon left off by saying, "Behold I, Moroni, do finish the record of my father..." I think it's meaningful that he didn't say "the record of my people," but rather, "the record of my father."

Anyway, all that leads to today's piece. This is another in our series of bookmarks, this one of Moroni burying the plates.

If you want to know more about the Book of Mormon and what it's all about, I suggest starting here.

Conference time!

Way back in early Book of Mormon times, King Benjamin called his people together to give them his final admonitions. In order to speak to such a large crowd, King Benjamin had a tower erected at the temple, and the people gathered with their “tent door towards the temple, that thereby they might…hear the words which king Benjamin should speak unto them.”

This weekend, millions of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints around the world will turn their tents (or TVs or laptops or radios or what have you) toward the temple as we meet for the 178th Semiannual Conference to hear the word.

As a kid, I looked forward to conference as a time to get together with family. Grandma Erickson would cook up a great meal, and after eating we’d mess around with the Walker and Erickson cousins between sessions. Sometimes we’d take a drive in the canyon and look at the glowing leaves while we listened to the talks as they were broadcast on KSL radio. Those were good times and great memories.

Nowadays, I still look forward to conference, but for different reasons: information, inspiration, rejuvenation…and like our friends the Bybees say, not only can you have “church on TV,” you can go to church in your pajamas!

With all that in mind, these next few days on the blog I’ll have (somewhat) helpful tips to help enhance the conference experience. They should be fun.

Note: For my non-LDS friends, it can still be fun to get a glimpse of our quirks. I’ll have links to help explain stuff…and I know these really nice young men who would be happy to explain things in more detail! And we’ll be back to our regular programming next Monday.

This is what the Church Web site has to say about General Conference

Oh, yeah. This is another one of our "Follow the Prophet" bookmarks, King Benjamin.

Ruth

Ahh, Ruth! This is yet another of our bookmark series, this one Women of Virtue. What's kind of cool about this particular Ruth is that she's patterned on my mother-in-law. That's because her story is similar to Ruth's. And since today just happens to be her birthday (my mother-in-law, that is...I don't know about Ruth), I thought it would be appropriate to run this today.

The Title of Liberty

"And it came to pass that he rent his coat; and he took a piece thereof, and wrote upon it -- In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children."
Alma 46: 12

Captain Moroni was one of the coolest leaders of all time! And, just by coincidence I'm sure, the Title of Liberty is what our Primary lesson is about tomorrow.

This picture is another one from our Primary bookmarks.

To Ninevah and beyond!

Since most of the cartoons this month have been transportation-related, I was trying to think of one that would be good for Sunday as well. Then it hit me...Jonah! His story is all about transportation! This is another of the prophet series that also includes Moses (see April 8).

Totally unrelated story
One of the boys in our Primary class was having trouble finding a scripture we were supposed to be looking up, so I went over to help him.

"These aren't my scriptures," he explained. "These are my dad's."

"Oh?" I replied. "Then what is your dad doing?"

"I think he went home to watch the Yankees."

You gotta love Primary!

Moses, Moses

With the passing of Charlton Heston, photos of his movie roles are all over the media. That reminded me of a set of bookmarks we made for our Primary class: "Follow the Prophets." One of the favorites was Moses. He totally rocked the eight-year-olds.

Favorite Heston quote: "Soylent Green is people!"