Are you ready for the creative side of week 19?

There are some very good things in store this week.

Okay.

Basically, I'm hoping to give you some connecting tools

with these object lessons.

I don't think you have to do all of these or even any of them.

I just want to, I want you to see that there are creative ways that

you can teach what's in these verses.

And I'm just going to kickstart you with some fun ideas.

I'm going to walk you through the supplies that you need for each one

first and then I'll walk you through each one individually so that you know

how to adapt them to your classrooms or your family and see what clicks.

Okay, first and foremost, I really wanted some way for us to tell

the story of the Book of Mosiah.

It is hard to follow because there are flashbacks, you've got all these

different kings, you've got different lands, you've And it's a lot.

There's some really great maps out there to kind of help you,

but I really wanted something more hands on that my kids could use.

I wanted something similar to what we created for Isaiah's writings.

Remember when we were studying Nephi's writings of Isaiah and we made those

kingdoms, the dinosaurs that swallowed each other so we could tell the story?

That's what we're going to do here as well.

But instead of dinosaurs, we're jazzing it up with totem poles.

So I created these adorable little totem poles.

They wrap around one of those mini cans of soda.

So this is a, I think it's 7.

5 ounce.

We found them at Walgreens.

You can get them almost anywhere, but you want 10 of these.

This is actually an object lesson that we're going to add to each

week we're in the book of Mosiah.

So I'll give you more totem poles next week and the one after that.

So you can tell more of the story, but I'm hoping that these printables will

help you sort through the different names.

I also give you these cool little.

Tents that represent the different lands so all lands that are mentioned that they

travel back and forth between I give you these little Tents and on the back of

each one There are descriptions to help you know what they are and help guide you

through the process the reason I created them as Soda cans is so that they could

stack like a really tall totem pole and you could show the different generations

and how they match up but I'll walk you through all that in just a second.

For this object lesson, you just need the printable for this

week and then 10 cans of soda.

If you can't grab that kind of soda or you can't find that size, you can also just

do the printable and tape them together.

It's just a little easier to maneuver things if you've got those cans inside.

Plus it gives you a free treat that you can give your kids at the end.

So bonus.

Okay, first one.

Second one.

This is much easier.

This one, I just want you to find a photo from your history

that you want to recreate.

You've probably seen this trend somewhere on social media before

where they take a photo from their childhood and then they recreate it

when they're teenagers or adults.

They put on similar clothes, sit in a similar way, and recreate a photo.

We've done this with my family before, so what hangs in my living

room is this adorable photo.

photo.

This is the one on top was taken when Violet was like one and then

this one came five years later.

That's kind of what we're trying to do here and the reason we're

doing it is because I want to talk about that idea of what a seer is.

When Lim Hai and Ammon are speaking, Ammon teaches him about seers,

because Lim Hai wants those 24 plates to be translated, that they found,

you know, among the Jaredite ruins.

And so, he's going to get some instruction from Ammon about what a seer is, and

this photo recreation challenge will help you kind of walk through that.

Third one, this is the most fun of all of them.

It's one that my kids love, no matter when we've done it, and this

is making a fire snuffing balloon.

This is to talk about the strength of the Lord.

That's our theme this week, you guys, in the Come Follow Me manual.

Come It's all about the strength of the Lord.

So you want to talk about the difference between what happened with Zenith's

people who had the strength of the Lord and what happened to the Lamanites

who were using their own strength.

And to do that, you just need balloons.

So similar like size ish balloons.

They don't have to be perfect.

Whatever you happen to have in your stash, grab some party balloons and you're going

to use some sharpies to decorate them.

And then you're going to use a candle kind of like this to light them on fire.

And I'll show you how to do that in just a second.

Gather those supplies, come on back and we'll get started.

Before you can help your kids get into the verses to understand some of the

spiritual application, they really do need to understand the story.

And that's hard in the book of Mosiah.

So I wanted to give you a teaching tool that you can use not just this

week, but over the course of many weeks as we spend some time in this

sort of complex, but awesome book.

So the printable is unique in that it is a storytelling tool.

And my hope is that it actually can teach several different things.

So when you open the printable, you're going to see 10 different totems and

they're designed to be stacked together.

That's why I made them on these soda cans so that they could easily kind

of nest inside each other and stack.

If you don't have the soda cans, of course, you could just tape things

together, but I just thought it was fun to be able to move things around.

So for example, you're going to find These ones that are labeled with the

red at the bottom that have a red base.

Those are all Nephites that live in the land of Zarahemla and

they're going to work together.

So if I was going to start this printable, what I would do is I

would make all my cans first and then I would explain just generations.

So this is where you get to teach your kids about the kingly line.

So you start out teaching them the the reign of the kings

in these two Nephite groups.

The one in Zarahemla is Mosiah, Benjamin Mosiah, and the one that's

over in this land of Nephi, you have Limhi, and then Noah, and then Zenith.

So you're going to show how those cans all stack up on top of each other, and they're

sort of, contemporaries of each other.

My hope with this is that you can see which kings are

alive at about the same time.

You can even build a second one of the Lamanite kings.

We know they're named Laman I and most people think it's Laman II

as the two kings that interact with Zenith on his journeys.

So you can stack those up and show how these kings interact with each other or

at least are alive at about the same time.

That's really valuable to help get your bearings in the Book of Mosiah, because

if you can at least know that, that, you know, Zenith is at the same time

as Mosiah the First, then your brain will be able to process it better.

So that's step one.

Teach them the kingly lines and let them build those towers.

Step two is where you teach them about the different lands.

I don't give you all the lands this week, because we're going to talk about

the waters of Mormon and Helam later, but you are going to get three of them.

These little table tents that represent the three that are mentioned this week.

The land of Zarahemla, the land of Nephi and Lehi, and also the

land of the Jaredites that they find that's covered in bones.

You're going to see those in this week's printable, and you're

going to teach them proximity.

I link you to some notes that you can, some maps in the notes that you

could go to, to kind of figure out where these are situation, situated.

Just remember all of this is sort of Guessing based on how they described

the landscape and whether they were going up or down or north or south.

But this will help you get a feel for where these cities

are in proximity to each other.

And then the third step, once they know the kingly lines and they know

where the locations are, then you actually guide them through the story.

So as you read in Family Scripture Study this week, and you hear about,

you know, the group of 16 with Ammon who leave the land of Zarahemla and go

down to the land of Nephi, you can take their cute soda can and move them down

into the land of Nephi, where they're going to find Limhi's totem, right?

His pole is there.

So hopefully you can kind of, Walk your kids through it.

There's something about touching these stories that makes it cement in your mind.

In fact, if you look at the printable on the back of each totem,

I've listed things about them.

So, for example, this totem is for Mosiah the first, the one that gets

the direction from the Lord to go to Zarahemla in the first place.

So you see some guidance about who he is on the back of the totem pole.

Same thing is the case with the cities.

I give you some guidance about what happens in these cities so that the

totem pole Even if you're coming in blind and you haven't had a chance to

really dive into the verses, you could use what's on the printable to teach

a class about the story of the Book of Mosiah and do a fantastic job with it.

So that's kind of my hope is that you'll use this as a tool as your family studies

or as your class is trying to understand things to walk through the story.

Let them see how those cans stack up and see how who moves where and when and then

they'll get a better understanding of why it's worth it to study the doctrine.

If they can get familiar with the words, the places, the people, the

time frames, then they can really get into the, the meat of the verses,

which is what we pull from the stories.

And I think this simple little printable will help them out.

There's two reasons I really liked the photo recreation

challenge for this week's study.

The first one is, like I mentioned, I think it's really sweet to see how when

Ammon comes to Limhi's people in their bondage, he talks to them about the value

of a I think especially Limhi is someone who would value having a prophet close by.

He's the one facing all the ramifications of his dad's

choices and his grandpa's choices.

And I could see where he would really want the guidance of a prophet.

And so I bet he rejoices to know that there is in fact a prophet, not just one

that can translate these 24 gold plates of the Jaredites, but one that can guide

the rest of his life and the rest of his people towards a greater happiness.

I'm sure he rejoices in that.

And the photo recreation challenge will help you.

He'll help me talk through that conversation because essentially the

idea behind the challenge is that you'll find any photo of the past that you love.

The one we did previously, we did a, we took a family photo of all six kids and

we recreated it with the same six kids, but I think five or six years later,

they're all piled on top of each other.

And I loved that one.

But since all of my kids don't live here anymore, I thought it would be more fun

to create little ones this time around.

So I gave Violet and Evie, her best friend of like the last nine years, the

challenge of finding a picture of the two of them together and recreating it.

And then the same challenge was given to Will and Sam, who have been, you know,

thick as thieves since they were born.

And so they are, they had a challenge to recreate a photo that

they found of the two of them.

The reason this applies to seers is when your kids find and recreate this

photo, put on the same kind of clothes, try to get the same setting, Evie and

Violet even must their hair the way that it looked in their original picture.

Like they tried really hard to recreate this.

You're going to talk about if you could look back in time and give

yourself advice, what would you say?

Well, what advice would you give yourself five years ago or ten years

ago when this first picture was taken?

What obstacles would you help yourself avoid?

What mistakes would you help yourself get out of?

Like, what advice would you give?

And then use that as a segue to talk about what a C year offers.

That a prophet, seer, and revelator is someone who can see both directions.

He can understand things of the past and teach them to us in our day.

He can see forward with spiritual sight to know how to avoid traps that are coming.

He is someone who essentially, is spiritually in the future and can

look back and say, let me tell you what counsel I would give you.

In fact, if you have time, I would go through President Nelson's address from

this last conference and see what he says as a seer, what guidance and warnings

is he giving us today so that we can avoid problems coming down the road.

So I love that for this piece of it.

I also love it for this week's chapters because I think you hear

this tone of regret in Zenith's voice.

You know, his record is written, I think, at the end of his life.

And you can almost hear him wishing he had known to do things differently.

You know, he talks about falling into the traps of King Laman and falling

into the hands of these wicked men who take advantage of his people.

And you almost hear this ache of regret.

And that, I think, is what you want to talk to your kids about

when, when they do this challenge.

That we don't want that feeling.

We don't want that ache and that regret.

And that's why we follow the prophet.

I think you can tie all of that together.

If you have time, if you go in the notes, there also is a little video linked

at the bottom of this little section.

And it's from the church news of Wendy Watson Nelson, the prophet's

wife, talking about what it's like to live with the prophet.

And she testifies of him being a seer.

And I think she does it in a beautiful way.

In a really beautiful, articulate, and tender way.

So, I would encourage you, if you're not in the course and you can't see

the notes, go find that video and watch it and help your kids understand

what it's like to have sight.

Like a seer.

Like I mentioned in the sparks, one of my favorite things about this week's

study is that despite the fact that Zenith's people were overzealous, and

left the land that the Lord wanted them to be in, the Lord is still with them.

And they have the strength of the Lord when they repent and they

turn to him and they seek it.

When the Lamanites are coming after them and they're afraid, they turn

to the Lord and he is right there.

Like he always is.

He is right there to give them the aid that he can give them

in these battle situations.

So I'm hoping you can kind of talk through that with this object lesson.

Because there's a big difference between the strength of the

Lord that Zenith's people have.

and the strength of men that the Lamanites have.

And you can see it in the verses.

I lay it out for you in the notes, but he actually articulates this.

He basically says that these were strong, mighty warriors.

These Lamanites came, and they have their heads shaved, and they're, you

know, fierce looking, and they're an intimidating group, but they are

reliant on the strength of the Lord.

In fact, he mentions that they have no knowledge of the strength of the Lord,

so they're relying on their own power.

And to demonstrate that, you're going to make Two different

balloons one that has the strength of the Lord and one that doesn't.

So for us We took sharpies and we decorated the balloons.

So you can see these are violets You'll see Sam's in the pictures But you want to

decorate one that looks like a Lamanite with aggressive weapons of some kind,

you know put swords shields, whatever But this one is just an air balloon.

It's just the strength of men.

There's nothing in this one The second one you want to make look like Zenith's group.

So one of the Nephites and same balloon, same kind of drawing.

The only difference is it has a little bit of water inside.

So I don't know if you can see it on this one, but it's not much.

It's maybe like a quarter cup of water, half a cup, something like that.

You just want to put it on your kitchen faucet.

Give it a splash and then fill the rest up with air.

And then you're going to show how these two balloons behave

very differently around a flame.

So when there is strain or heat or pressure, they react very differently.

When you take the Lamanite balloon that is relying on its own strength and you put

it over a flame, within a second it pops.

Like it is so fast that your kids will be shocked how fast it pops.

If you have little, little kids and you're worried about them holding something

over a flame, of course you could.

demonstrate this for them, but you're, you're pretty high up above the flame.

So there's not too much risk there.

So you want to show how fast that balloon pops when it's

reliant just on its own strength.

And then you're going to show what the strength of the Lord looks like.

And this is when you take the one that has the water inside.

The cool thing about this, you guys, is it doesn't matter what

the temperature of the water is.

It doesn't matter even how much water is really in there.

As long as you've got a decent amount, that water absorbs the heat and

makes it so the balloon doesn't pop.

Like you can hold it over the flame for five seconds and ten

seconds and Nothing happens.

It might turn black on the outside, but it will not pop.

You can even take this balloon and lower it onto the candle so that

it touches the rim of the glass and it will still hold its strength.

It, it is so powerful because it has that water inside to absorb the heat.

In fact, it's even better because it snuffs out the flame.

I think that's what the strength of the Lord really offers.

It's not just an ability to defeat this problem with this day.

It's an ability to do it long term.

If you really do have the strength of the Lord, that's something that sticks

with you and allows you to accomplish things you could never do on your own.

So if you go in the notes, you'll see some links like to Elder Bednar's talks about

grace and about the strength of the Lord and the power that it offers us, that with

his help, We can be weak, fragile people.

In this week's study, you guys, Zenev's people are, like, the people that come

to the battlefield, the first time, they have no good weapons because

they were completely unprepared.

The second time, they don't have enough people, and so they bring, like, old men

and young boys, like, this ragtag group of soldiers comes, but because they have

the strength of the Lord, they defeat this massive, intimidating Lamanite army.

That's what the Lord wants for us.

We won't fight battles on a battlefield, most likely, but we fight

some big battles in our own worlds.

And to have the same power, the same strength within us, will prevent

us from having damage as well.

I just think it's a powerful lesson to help teenagers understand and to

reinforce with little kids as well.

I hope they love it.

Week 19 is all wrapped up.

All right, you guys, hopefully you have a lot at your fingertips

to get into this week of study.

Remember, if you want more of a chapter by chapter approach, or even verse by

verse, you should go into the notes.

If you're part of the course, you can access the notes and the

printables, and you'll find 20 30 pages usually every week of notes.

My big focus with the notes is to try and take this week's study

and apply it to what our apostles have been teaching recently.

So, I try to pull hard from those talks that we've just heard and

see how they relate back to the principles that we learn in the verses.

Hopefully those will help you.

You can also come join us on the live.

So Monday morning 10 a.

m at gather.

mecmom.

com.

You have to RSVP for the live.

And it's a little bit different than what you might see on Instagram

because it has a limited space.

There's only 30 spots available each week, but you can pop on and join us and be part

of the conversation about these chapters.

We go through things more chapter by chapter on the live and I'm there

to answer questions or concerns that you might have about the insights

or about the object lessons.

So it's a good resource.

But otherwise, I hope you just enjoy this week of study.

Really, I was, I was shocked how much I loved it.

I was almost expecting to sort of like brush past this week on my way

to Abinadi and instead I loved it.

You guys, I just think you're going to enjoy digging into

these little middle stories.

The last thing I would remind you that if you're part of the course you'll have

access to the printables if you're not part Of the course and that's not a good

fit for you Please remember that you can find the printables like this one

that I'm giving you with the story of Mosiah You can find it in my Etsy shop.

So go there You can find the link below and you can find everything

you need, but otherwise enjoy this week and I'll see you on Monday