Sunday, February 5, 2017

Final Preparations

As is typical for me when I have to give a lesson or talk in church, I'd like to use this blog of mine as a platform to prepare a working outline for my lesson. For this lesson, I think I'll keep the children engaged by asking them questions related to the lesson. I'll try to keep most of the questions open-ended so there'll be few, if any, wrong answers.

When was a time when you had to wait for something?
This will be the icebreaker question. I'll invite the kids to share an experience, and I'll ask them how it felt to have to wait. If no one thinks of anything they want to share, perhaps I'll remind them that, since it's Fast Sunday, we all have to wait until dinner to eat anything today.

I'll try not to convey the impression that having to wait is a bad thing. I'll testify that, often, waiting is important, even necessary. Then I'll tie this all into the lesson by teaching the kids that Joseph Smith had to wait to receive the gold plates, and that he wasn't just waiting - he was preparing.

How long did Joseph Smith have to prepare to receive the gold plates?
Four years after having met Moroni, seven years after the First Vision, or 21 years.

Even numeric questions with clearly correct answers can become open-ended, if you interpret the question creatively. Plus, I'm pretty sure the kids won't know the answer to this question. Personally, I had to look it up. If I ask this question, I'll mostly just be asking for guesses.

How did Moroni help prepare Joseph?
Joseph Smith went back every year, to receive "instruction and intelligence . . . respecting what the Lord was going to do, and how and in what manner his kingdom was to be conducted in the last days."

This might be a good place for us to start looking into the scriptures, especially the one I quoted above. This class likes looking up and reading scriptures, so I'll prepare a list of scriptures we can turn to throughout the lesson. In fact, it'd be a good idea to use the scriptures in Joseph Smith - History to answer the question of how long Joseph Smith had to wait to obtain the plates. 

What are we preparing for?
Callings, Missions, Priesthood, Parenthood.

This is the practical application part of the lesson. It's one thing to know that Joseph Smith had to prepare to become a prophet; it's another thing to know that we have some preparation to do as well. If these Primary kids I'm teaching today continue in the Gospel, they'll all become leaders and teachers someday, and it wouldn't hurt if they started, now, to think about how they can prepare themselves for that.

How can we prepare ourselves, and how does God help us prepare?
There are many answers to this one, and most of them are "Sunday School" answers, like Scriptures and Church. God also prepares us by giving us experiences, like how He prepares Primary children to be leaders and teachers by having them give short lessons and leading the others in scripture recital during Sharing time. We can help the preparation process along by thinking about and learning from our experiences.

What happens when we don't prepare for important things?
We fail. Usually badly.

I might not ask this one. It's hardly a Sunday School lesson without some kind of warning, but these are just kids. I'll ask the question if I get an opportunity and it feels right. Otherwise, I'll just make do with the other questions.

 Scriptures

 JS-H 1:27 and 1:59 give the years in which Joseph Smith saw and retrieved the plates, and we could do the math from there, but they also include a good deal of information that's unnecessary (for this lesson) and could be distracting. JS-H 1:53 gives away the answer to our little math problem and emphasizes that Joseph Smith needed to wait and prepare. Perhaps I'll ask the first two questions in relatively quick succession, and then follow them up by having someone read JS-H 1:53. JS-H 1:54 tells about how Joseph Smith was prepared to receive the gold plates and what he was taught during those four years.

I'm having trouble thinking of additional scriptures, and I'm running out of time. Perhaps if I had spent more time preparing for this lesson, I'd have half a dozen scriptures by now, but there's no use thinking about that now, except to remind myself to do better next time. Maybe I'll look for more scriptures during Sacrament Meeting. Anyhow, this is probably enough of an outline to go off of. This plan will probably take up most of the time I'll be given, and if we have any time left over, we can play a few rounds of hangman, which the children enjoy about as much as looking up scriptures. Of course, scriptures would be preferable, and I'll try to find more I can share, but we'll probably end up playing a round or two of hangman as well.

Okay, I have a plan, and I have plans to improve my plan. Right now, and hoping I'm not jinxing myself, I'm feeling fairly well-prepared to give this lesson.

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