All right, you guys, it's time to get into the creative side of week seven.

This time I've decided to create an object lesson for each of the three chapters.

So we've got one from three, one from four and one from five, but I think

there's goodness in all of them.

My hope here, as always, is not to give you like some rote list.

You don't have to follow these exactly.

I just hope it inspires you to do creative things to help your kids

come closer to these doctrines.

There's some beautiful, really relatable principles in this week's

study, so I'm hoping these object lessons will help you teach it simply.

All right, let me walk you through your supplies first, and

then I'll take you to each one specifically to give you the details.

The first one I'm calling a directed light activity.

I've taken something that we did way back in 2020 and I've revamped

it to make it easier and better, but my kids still remembered it

from 2020, so I know this is one.

that lasts.

This is basically all you need.

You're going to take the printable that I give you.

It will have four components.

The printable has a holy bible picture, it has one of a book of mormon, and then

it has these key doctrines on the end.

So to create this you don't need anything other than cardstock and a little bit

of glue or tape, and then you also need a flashlight and I'll tell you why.

We're going to talk about how these incredible gifts of scripture work

together to teach truth and you do it with a simple flashlight.

You can use the one on your phone or ideally have one that your kids can hold

and that's all you need for the first one.

Okay, second one.

So this one involves a little bit of mess.

You might want to do this in your kitchen or in the kitchen at the church

if you're teaching maybe a seminary class but It packs a punch, you guys.

This is when I'm trying to help our kids understand Nephi's psalm.

His worries about his own flaws and sins and weaknesses and what he does

to lift what he, where he turns when he's feeling those low feelings.

Because I think, frankly, our teenagers And us, we feel this all the time where

we feel disconnected and low and we need to teach our kids how to find lift.

And it's really simple and really wet.

So for this object lesson, you just need a clear base, kind of like this.

It doesn't matter if it's straight or if it's fluted or if it's wide at

the bottom, it doesn't really matter.

You just want one that's clear so you can see through it.

You don't want it.

too big, I would say ideally find one that's about the size or smaller.

You could also maybe use a large mason jar.

You just want to find one that has a wide mouth if you can, because

then it'll work a little bit better.

And then you need a few supplies.

So on your kitchen counter, you're going to need a big bowl, like a mixing bowl.

You're also going to need a Cookie sheet rack.

You know the ones that you like put hot cookies onto a cooling rack?

You need one of those and then you're gonna set your vase on top.

Then you also need a pitcher full of hot water and a lot of ice.

For us I just pulled the whole ice maker out of the freezer and

it gave us plenty to work with.

That's your second one.

Third one.

This is Rome chapter 5.

This is where you see the laminites being cut off and you see very fast

the ramifications of that choice.

When they choose to rebel against God, and they break their covenants, and they

reject the prophet, they are cut off.

And I think what's powerful about Five is you see the contrast.

You see what happens to the Lamanites, and you see what

happens to those who follow Nephi.

And the way you can teach this principle is really simple.

This is a sticky one that can get hard.

The verses themselves can be hard to understand.

So I wanted some way to really get into these verses in a way that

was Softer and more understandable and do that you just need a plant.

So I went because it's Valentine's I was like, oh you could probably just go grab

a pack of cut flowers, you know They should all be on clearance by Saturday

you guys So if you're if you want to go grab a pack of like a bouquet of flowers

You could or you could just take a house plant like this You just want something

that's got life in it and something you don't mind cutting a little bit So for

me, I went to Walmart and bought one for seven dollars, but you could take

one of your houseplants like this one behind me would work just fine as well.

You just want something that's living in a pot if you can and if you can't

find that and then just get some cut flowers and I'll walk you through how

that can help you see and understand the distinction between being cut

off and being close to the lord.

Okay, get those supplies on hand you guys and then come on back and

I'll teach you how to pull them off.

The very fact that we've spent the last two years doing deep dives into the

Old Testament and the New Testament should be a testimony to your kids

about how much we revere the Bible.

It is the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly, and we treasure

it, we study it, and we learn from it.

Thankfully, we also have other scripture.

We have the Book of Mormon and revealed doctrines from the Doctrine

and Covenants and other places that we can look to, like the Pearl of

Great Price, to help us get more understanding and to fill in some gaps.

And I think what Lehi points out, or I guess more specifically what Joseph

and Egypt points out, this book that comes forth will do five big things.

So if you go in the notes or in the verses, you can see these five things.

It says, as these two books work together, they will confound false doctrines.

They will lay down contentions.

They'll establish peace, bring a knowledge of the fathers and bring

a knowledge of the covenants.

These are huge blessings that the Lord is hoping to offer all of his children, and

when they have these books of scripture in their hands, they can access those

blessings if they live according to them.

So I think it's really critical that we help our kids see this clearly.

There's a beautiful talk from Tad Callister, it might even be linked in

the Come Follow Me manual this week, I can't remember where I saw it, but it's

in the margins of my digital scriptures.

And he talks about points.

And if you draw through a dot, remember that object lesson he had, where

it's like, if you draw through a dot, you can make it go in any direction.

And if you have two points, then it only can go straight.

We're kind of creating that same object lesson, but in a more visual way.

So basically you're going to take the printable.

It looks like this.

You're going to create a holy Bible, a book of Mormon and a

doctrine card on the doctrine card.

You're going to see.

several possible doctrines about baptism that could be

understood through scripture.

You know, about whether infants need baptism, whether you need

priesthood to perform a baptism.

Those, baptism, those kind of things are laid out here in

these little circles on the end.

What your kids are trying to do is figure out Truth.

How do you figure out what is true?

Of all these doctrines, they often conflict with each other.

So which one is true?

And the way we do that is through the scriptures.

So when you first begin, you're actually only going to glue on

the Holy Bible at the beginning.

And you're going to dim the lights in the room, and you're going to let your

kids shine a light through that hole.

It's not hard, you're just going to punch a hole through that.

There's a little spot on the printable where you punch a hole, and then I

give you this base piece so that you can get these all perfectly aligned.

So once that Holy Bible and those doctrines cards are glued in place, let

your kids shine a light through the Bible.

And what they'll see is how the Bible illuminates truth.

It, it opens up so that we can see and read truth.

What's hard about using just that one checkpoint is that you can actually

see a lot of different truths as.

That's true.

You know, if I just use the Bible, I can tilt that light.

So this is when you're going to take the flashlight in your hands and

encourage your kids to like change the angle because if they change the

angle different directions, they can actually make any of those circles

about the doctrines of baptism light up.

They can adjust it and see that the one that you don't need

priesthood or that you don't need.

immersion.

Those things can light up if we only have this one gateway to go through.

So that's when you give them the second gateway.

This is when you take your Book of Mormon piece and you glue it into the center.

It has a hole in the exact same spot and now you're going to

shine your light through both.

And as you shine your light through both, you'll see that you can't get

anything else to illuminate except for the doctrine that is true.

That doctrine that's right in the center on the top that says

baptism needs to be by immersion.

illuminates and nothing else can.

Even if your kids tilt their flashlights around, they can't see anything

else because the light is traveling through both of those checkpoints.

And when it goes through both, we have an understanding of what is true.

And that's what I wanted my kids to grasp.

That we revere the Bible.

We study it intensely.

We search it.

Our prophets quote from it.

We love the Bible.

We also love the Book of Mormon and what it offers as another

testament of Jesus Christ.

That it offers clarifying doctrine, not just on baptism, but on the

atonement of Jesus Christ, on grace, on how the Lord feels about

us, and covenant relationships.

That comes from our connection with the Book of Mormon.

So we need both, and hopefully this object lesson will help you teach that.

I would tell you that if you wanted to make this ahead of time in class, you

also can glue on the Book of Mormon piece and then just sort of fold it

down as you're doing the object lesson.

You can't fold it fully or it'll push the Bible forward, but it can

kind of get tucked out of your way so that you can demonstrate it.

Over and over again if you want.

The other addition to the printable that I give you is a second

page that has empty circles.

So if you were in a seminary class or a class where you have a little

more time on your hands, you could encourage your kids to make their

own conflicting doctrine cards.

Like what are some things that other people believe by only having the Bible

and what does the Book of Mormon add to our understanding about those things?

Hopefully it gives you a chance to kind of troubleshoot that and let them

practice this effort of looking through both scripture to find out what is true.

You just want to make sure that the true one is always right here

in the center on the top because that's where the light will hit.

All right, that's it for that one you guys.

The second object lesson was inspired by Will in our family at Compalme.

They, they don't do my object lessons.

They have to come up with their own and this is one of Will's.

So I thought it deserved a place right here.

It really does apply beautifully to Nephi.

He was teaching it for a different purpose, but I

liked using it for this one.

Basically, we see with in chapter four is Nephi struggling

under the burdens of what?

is on his shoulders.

And he, he calls out to the Lord.

You know, he, he's studying the scriptures and he says, Oh, wretched man that I am.

You know that song that he sings or teaches us?

And he struggles with his own weaknesses, his own sins that easily beset him.

We don't know what those sins are, but He's mortal just like the rest of us,

and he has mistakes that are frustrating him, especially when he reads the

scriptures and sees what he wants to be.

I think he's, he's struggling with that divine discontent.

For me, the way you can demonstrate how to resolve that, you can

use Nephi's verses and use this object lesson at the same time.

So basically, first you're going to talk about some of the weights that

would have been on Nephi's shoulders.

So if you think about things, I lay out a bunch of these in the

notes, but his dad recently died.

His dad was his ally and his mentor and the leader of the people.

So now all of that weight is falling on Nephi's shoulders.

He has an abusive history with his brothers who are now, he doesn't have his

dad to get in the middle of that anymore.

And that must be incredibly hard.

He's got a history of when his dad's not around, his brothers come after him.

And that's hard.

I think he knows that his brothers now.

Don't just want to get rid of him, but want to kill him and potentially harm

his family because Nephi ends up making swords of his own patterned after Laban's

swords so that he can defend his family.

So there's big threats happening here.

I also think he's probably wrestling with insecurities about his own

Connection to God like all of us do when we have a big new calling on our

shoulders He knows how much he needs God and so he has these worries as

you're talking about all these worries And there's probably several others.

I want you to fill up your vase with ice those ice the ice cubes

represent the weights that we feel as the world fills us with doubts

and fears and Legitimate insecurities about what we have to accomplish.

So as you talk about Nephi's issues, fill up this vase with ice.

You want it as full as you can.

And then you're going to talk about how Nephi remedied this situation.

He doesn't stay in this state where he's full of ice and

cold and feeling disconnected.

He chooses to do two big things.

First, he looks back.

I love the way, I break this down in the verses in the notes if you

want to read them one by one, but I love the way he approaches things.

So if you go from like 19 to 25, you're going to hear how he looks back on how the

Lord has taken care of him all this time.

You know, he talks about the promises and the blessings and the

ways the Lord has visited him and reached out to him in hard moments.

There's something powerful about passing your mind back.

For me, this is when you take that hot pitcher of water and you

start to pour it over the ice.

You're just going to fill it up to the rim, and you'll see that

that hot water reacts to the ice, and the ice starts to melt.

It doesn't fully go away yet, but it's starting to loosen and break

up, and you can see hope, right?

You can start to see this clear glass form again.

But it's not enough just to cast our mind back.

Nephi takes it one more step forward, and this is when he makes proactive

choices to believe that with the Lord's help, he can do all things.

So this is like from 26 or so on.

This is when you see Nephi ask his soul to awake.

The verses are so good you just have to read them as you do this.

But he doesn't just remember, he also looks forward and he

starts to make steps forward.

He doesn't wait for the Lord to fix all his problems first.

He trusts that the Lord will fill him.

In fact, the verse that I love in this one is when he talks about how he is

filled with The Lord's love that the fact that the Lord's love fills him

allows him to shed all of this ice.

So this is when you're going to take your warm pitcher one more

time and you're going to dump it.

Just dump it.

You guys, the reason it's sitting on a bowl with a, you know, cookie sheet thing

underneath it is so that the water can get collected in the bowl below it, but

it's going to overflow and spill out.

It's the only way to get rid of the ice.

What I found is, in my life, this is how it works for me.

If I am struggling under insecurities or I feel like the world is beating me

up, one of the best ways I've found is first to cast my mind back on how the

Lord never abandons me and then to move forward in faith and let His love fill me.

For me, that means I turn to the scriptures, I listen to the words

of prophets that promise me things, I go to the temple, I pray, and I

ask for God's love to fill me up.

Because the promise is, you guys The more warm water you pour in

here, eventually the ice can't stay.

It either melts or it topples out because the water is heavier

and denser and it, it can last.

And so I'm hoping that as your kids see this over and over again,

maybe you do it a second time, talking about their own struggles.

You know, we use Nephi as a template.

Maybe do the exact same object lesson again and let them put their own ice

in the jar and talk about what's hard.

Talk about how looking back fills that jar up to the brim and starts

to melt the ice, and how getting a heaping dose of God's love poured into

you can take care of everything else.

And then you can have a Nephi like confidence in Christ that will give you

the strength to move forward in faith.

I'm

not gonna lie, there's some really sticky verses at the end of these

chapters where you see the curse that befalls the Lamanites because they've

made choices to rebel against God.

And that curse is a separation from God.

The sign of the curse is the skin of blackness or darkness that comes on

them and This is one of those verses that gets people all riled up, right?

It's one of the verses I think you have to take in the context of the

rest of the Book of Mormon, where the Lord says over and over again that

all men can come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female.

We get all tripped up on it, but I actually think there's a lot more depth to

this than sometimes we give it credit for.

What I like is you have a contrast.

You don't just hear about this curse of separation, being

separated from God that hits the Lamanites because of their choices.

You also hear about the blessings that come to those who stay connected to God.

And that's what chapter five is all about.

Chapter five is all about the blessings that come to Nephi's people, and the

happiness they find by staying rooted in truth, staying close to the Lord.

In fact, Nephi even says that the Lord was among them, that there's something

about his presence that is close.

And I want to make kids to understand the difference.

I was listening to a podcast this week.

It's called talking scripture.

And I liked his take on, on this, this cursing that happens, the sign of the

curse that he said, we were on the risk of seeing this, like Nicodemus

does, where he takes the words of the savior so literally that he thinks he's

supposed to go back in his mother's womb.

And I think sometimes we can do that with these verses.

Like we talked about in the past, this can't be about race, right?

This is.

Laman and Lemuel and Nephi all come from the same parents.

They are literally brothers.

In fact, we know that when people choose to come back to God later in

the Book of Mormon, that curse, the sign of that curse, falls from them.

As they come close to God, that curse goes away.

I read lots of theories out there.

There were some theories about it being a skin disease of some kind all kinds

of them But I think what's probably most Valuable and applicable for us is

to see it as a spiritual darkness that sets in and the way you can demonstrate

that is With this simple object lesson.

So basically you just want to hold up a plant you guys it's nothing fancy

Take a plant that has ideally if it has some blooms on it It's a little easier

to walk through the object lesson and you want to ask them what would happen

if I Cut off one of these blooms.

So with Violet, I brought this home from Walmart and she loved it, right?

Because she's 10 and she's in charge of a valentine's party and she loved the

roses and I was like, right We got to cut one of those off and she's like no Her

first reaction was like no, in fact, she didn't want me to cut any of the pretty

ones off She wanted them to bloom and thrive on the on the little mini bush here

And I was like, no, we've got to cut one off for this object lesson So I made her

take scissors and cut it off and I was like, okay, what's gonna happen to this?

plant, especially if we don't put it in a little vase of its own.

If we just let this rosebud As it is stay, what happens?

And she's like, well, it'll get dried out.

It'll get kind of brittle and this, the leaves will lose all their color

and the petals will lose their color.

They'll get darker.

And then it kind of crumbles in your hands.

And then I could teach her.

About being connected to the true vine because basically that's what happens

with us It happens over and over again Old Testament New Testament Book of

Mormon Even in the Doctrine and Covenants whenever we choose to cut ourselves off

from the true vine We wither because there is no way to survive just like this There

is no way to pull the nutrients and the strength and the help we need on our own.

What I love is I, particularly myself, as I, if I was teaching, especially

younger kids, I wouldn't focus so much on the curse or the sign of the curse

of separation from God, as much as I would focus on what creates happiness.

So this is when you bring the same plant back again and you talk

about what makes these buds thrive.

Where this one will shrivel and die, what allows these ones to stay strong?

And so you can talk about the soil and you can talk about the sun

and the water that they'll get.

And then you can take those same principles and apply it to what

you find from Nephi's people.

I break all this down in the notes for you, but you can see industry being

something that keeps them thriving.

You can see being connected to family and keeping covenants as

a way to pull strength from those roots and get nutrients back in.

You can see that they built temples and that they Took care of their family and

they prepared like I break this all down.

There's a great um article I think it was originally a byu devotional, but

you can find it in the enzyme from 2002 I think it's in the notes But he breaks

down a whole bunch of the things that they did to live after the manner of

happiness And then applies it to us How we can choose those same key concepts

that Nephi demonstrates to find happiness and, and sustainability in our world.

How we can stay deeply rooted in this gospel of Jesus Christ and what it

offers us long term as we stay connected.

So, hopefully this object lesson will help you teach it.

That's it for week seven, you guys.

I hope you enjoy these scriptures.

Their chapters aren't long, it's understandable, and it's rich,

especially if you're feeling any kind of struggle in your life right now.

I think seeing the examples of Lehi and Nephi and even the hard examples of Laman

and Lemuel help you know where to turn.

If you struggle, please open up the notes.

There are dozens of pages to help you.

connect these verses with the words of modern prophets and apostles,

women leaders of the church.

They are rich with guidance.

So I hope you'll open those up.

You can find those in the printables if you're members

of the course over at gather.

macmom.

com.

But if you can't get into the course or you don't want to be a

subscriber, you can also often find the printables on my Etsy shop.

So for example, this one this week, since I know it's one that a lot

of you will want to use, I'll throw this on the Etsy shop as well.

Just search MacMom on Etsy and you can find it.

But otherwise I hope you enjoyed this week of study.

If you need extra help, come join me on the live gather.

macmom.

com.

We have a live every Monday morning, 10 o'clock mountain time where we chat

through some of the doctrines I couldn't quite fit in here and answer any questions

you might have about the object lessons.

So it's a good place to.

Connect.

It's built sort of like a Zoom call.

So it's not, it's not a live like on Instagram.

It's more of like an institute class.

It's a way to, to gather and share your thoughts.

So I hope you join us.

If you want to find it, go over, become a free member and then just

click RSVP for the live and you'll get a little notification to pop

up as soon as it's available.

Otherwise enjoy your week you guys, and I'll see you next

week as we head into week eight.