Released!

Yay! I should not be so excited, but I am totally relieved to be released from my calling as Primary Teacher. I stressed every week about this little Sunbeam class. It is so hard to find good stuff to keep them entertained. My little class especially. They didn't like singing, dancing, pretending to be Noah's ark animals. I finally just started to get them to pray in class. I have not yet ever had a calling that was so difficult for me. Everyone thought I was great with them, and to be honest once I was in class, it was ok and I could fake the cheeriness much better. But before hand, I dreaded it.

I promise one of the little girls has never liked me and gives me the evil eye even to this day. She hated coming to class, always threw fits, though once she was in class she was usually ok at least if the the other little girl was there.

The other girl was adorable and chatty and sometimes shy, but once you talked about princesses and ponies, she pepped right up. There were two boys in the class as well. One who is new and just adorable. He is totally shy and doesn't talk much, but does all the activities for the most part. The other boy has some developmental problems and was probably the biggest challenge because of that.

Anyway, I am glad to be able to now go to Sunday School and Relief Society. I love that!

Young Married Couples!

What a difference this ward is compared to our branch in New Zealand. Our ward here is not overly large, but is large compared to the branch. But there exist young married couples here! People our age that we can get to know and hang out with (hopefully).

I was so excited when Jon and I were invited over to another couples home last Sunday after church for games with other couples. It was a lot of fun and we got to know some of the other couples around our age much better. Not that we are best buddies or anything, but my fear of being in primary and not getting to know anyone is fading somewhat. Granted I will have to get to know people before or after church or outside of it all together, but that's ok.

I have to say though, it is so nice that my friends from before I left are still willing to hang out and get together, especially the ones that are single. I would hate not being able to see them because there were three of us instead of just me and my friend. I have seen that happen a lot when a couple gets married, they drop off the face of the earth or their single friends hate hanging out with them or don't want to interfere or something. So thank you my friends. I love you!

Callings

At the aforementioned Ward Christmas Party, the bishop pulled Jon and I aside to see if we could come to church early the following Sunday. Well, we all know that means.... callings! They were really quick, we had only been in the ward for a week or two! I tried to talk the bishop into telling us then, because who likes the anticipation of sitting around waiting and wondering what calling you are going to get? Luckily he didn't tell us that the Sunday before where we had a whole week of waiting to find out, but still even a day can be dramatic.

So early to church we went. Jon was called to be on the activities committee, which I thought wasn't so bad. For me, well.... My only stipulation I thought was that I wasn't called to Nursery. I should have been more specific. I am not the Sunbeam Primary teacher to 3 children who were not prepared to leave Nursery the year before. I am coming to grips with not being able to go to Sunday School and Relief Society slowly. I was really looking forward to that.

I am also hating that I will not get much out of church and that it will be harder to get to know people now, but everyone tells me this is one of the best callings and it is 'SO EASY.' So I suppose we will see.

There are two girls in my class who are really cute and have an amazing ability to sit still for children their age. Then I have one boy who does not have that skill and I have to hold in my lap to keep him from escaping. Yikes. Who's idea was this?

Cluedo: The Secret Combination Edition

About a month ago, we hit secret combinations in our Book of Mormon Sunday School class. I was sparked with an idea that it would be more fun for the youth if they got to play a game. It then came to me, what better game than the game of Clue (for you Americans) or Cluedo (for you non-Americans). The game where you try to find out who committed the crime?

With Jon's help, we made a board with all the rooms being lands of the Book of Mormon - Bountiful, Manti, the Wilderness, the River Sidon, etc. We selected weapons that would have been used in those times, and Jon made small metal props of them to use for the game. We pulled Book of Mormon characters that were involved with secret combinations. The goal of the game was to find out who murdered the Chief Judge and where. His body was found on the judgement seat.

We did ofcourse talk about what secret combinations were and what really happened - that Kishkumen killed the Chief Judge on the Judgement seat and that he was a Gadiantan Robber. The youth really enjoyed the game. What do you think? Can I market this to Milton Bradley and get a game made up officially? We would ofcourse do up the board a little fancier. Put in drawn photos in each room or something....

Oh, and for you curious, the secret passage ways were secret robber tunnels that lead from the mountains or the wilderness to one of the cities.

Sunday School

Sunday School lessons for church can be hard to teach to begin with. Add onto that the plights of the youth and suddenly it becomes crazy hard to come up with something exciting and fun to capture their attention.

Jon has been teaching Primary since we moved to New Plymouth, and I am teaching youth Sunday School. I am not sure if either of us has it any easier than the other. However, we have been able to get creative with some of our lessons.

Lately we are in or getting into the war chapters of Alma in the Book of Mormon. Jon has incorporated his hobby of Warhammer into his Sunday School class. What better way to teach the kids of battle than to have them reenact the battles with little models? They get hands on fun, plus a lesson (hopefully) all in one. The most unconventional thing of these lessons for his class has been the models of the armies. Unfortunately, Jon does not have nice little army Lamanites and Nephites and has had to replace them with what he has.... a Goblin Army vs. a Dwarf Army. So far this has worked out pretty well... The Goblin Army outnumbers the Dwarf Army and the Goblin Army has no armor, just like the Lamanites. We will see how this class pans out.

Zerahemnah and Captain Moroni:

The Nephites:

The Lamanites:

The Battle:


I am looking forward to getting into the scriptures that speak of Secret Combinations. I have decided to remake the game Clue (or Cluedo) into a game for church. The Gadiantan Robbers kill the Chief Judge, so the game will be to find out who killed the Chief Judge. Instead of rooms in a house for where the murder occurred, they will be towns or lands from the Book of Mormon. The characters will be characters in the Book of Mormon or unless there are not enough names. I haven't quite gotten into the list yet, but will post more once the game is ready. Hopefully the kids will like this one.

They did seem to respond positively to Jeopardy. I am waiting for there to be enough kids to do a Book of Mormon Family/Class Feud. One thing that worked well for talking about testimonies (I used this when teaching Alma 32 instead of the whole planting seeds and nourishing them) was using the game Jenga as a object lesson. We talked about how to build a testimony, you have to first want to know something (and for this I placed one block down). Then the next step is to start looking into it (another block), and then you may start to gain a bit of a testimony about the basic things. You may gain a testimony of prayer first (another block), then perhaps of God (another block), of Christ (another block), and you keep going... the church, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the sacrament, tithing, etc. etc. And you build up the jenga tower.

The next part of the object lesson comes in once the whole tower is built. When you stop trying to nourish your testimony, when you start losing your testimony of one thing (pull out a block), it effects your whole testimony. Surely if you start losing one piece and you do nothing to repair it, another piece of your testimony disappears (take out one block at a time). And eventually, your testimony crumbles. (The tower falls down) To build it back up, you have to start from the beginning again. (Place the initial block again.) However, if you can stop losing pieces and start building back up your testimony, you can build it back up much easier than if you let it all go.