Challenge Complete!

I can't think of a better way to finish off 2017 than completing our family challenge to read the Book of Mormon every single day for the entire year!  By reading 3 columns a night, we stayed on track to read the book from cover to cover over the course of the year.  It was certainly a challenge -- most nights boiled down to Scott or I reading all three columns out loud while varying states of chaos and calamity ensued around us -- but we did it.  On New Year's Eve, we gathered 'round the table at Kristin's house and alternated between EVERYONE reading a verse until we were finished.  For as small of a moment as it was, it certainly encapsulated a gargantuan accomplishment.

I love the Book of Mormon.  I've read it at least a dozen times in my life, and its verses and messages continue to bring me peace, comfort, and hope.  And while 2017's challenge was certainly a grand step in the right direction in our family reading efforts, for 2018 we're going to try something a little different.  Rather than hurrying to finish again within the year, we're going to slow it down a bit and try to get a little more out of our reading. ;)  By reading only one verse apiece each night and then discussing the connections that we find, I'm hopeful that the experience will bring participation and cooperation to a high enough level that the kids will be able to internalize these scriptures and recognize all of the practical applications for their daily lives.  And since our theme for this school year is "We Can DO It!" I'm going to optimistically hope that this year's challenge will bring even greater rewards.  :)

To close, I want to include some of the remarks I gave in a talk earlier this year at church...

The summer before my freshman year of high school was memorable in the best and worst of ways.  During the roughly 3 months of that summer vacation, two events coincided to provide me with both the least rewarding and the most rewarding experiences of my life up to that point.  Event number one came in the form of a job.  A babysitting job.  My neighbor across the street had just had a baby and needed to go back to work much sooner than expected.  As a result, I traveled with her and her newborn to her office, where she was a periodontist, two or three times a week for the whole summer.  As a nursing mom, she wanted to have the baby right there on location to be able to feed her and see her whenever needed.  I spent my summer in the staff lounge area of her office, with nothing but a newborn and some books to keep me company.  This would not have been that big a deal if it weren’t for one thing.  My mom, with her service-minded heart, had told my neighbor that she really didn’t need to pay me that much.  $2.00 an hour would be more than enough she said.  $2.00 an hour.  Let me put that into perspective.  I was taking care of a newborn for an 8 hour work day, a few days a week at a time when the minimum wage in Louisiana was $4.25.  I got paid less than HALF the minimum wage for a whole summer’s work!  I will never forget the sinking feeling of dismay and disbelief I had when she wrote me a check at the end of the summer and I realized she had actually followed my mom’s recommendation for $2.00 an hour.  Clearly, this story goes in the LEAST rewarding category.  At least as far as financial rewards go.

At the same time, however, another story was being played out.  At the beginning of that summer, our stake Youth leaders had issued a challenge to all the Young Men and Young Women to read the Book of Mormon in 90 days.  That’s a lot of reading in not a lot of time.  Six pages a day may not sound like all that much in a REGULAR book, but when the book you’re reading is from hundreds of years ago and written in the language of the scriptures, six pages can be a lot harder to plow through.  But here is where the most rewarding part of my life came into play.  Because of that babysitting job -- where I literally sat in a room by myself with a newborn who slept most of the time -- I had PLENTY of time to take on that 90 day challenge.  I remember bringing my inexpensive, blue copy of the Book of Mormon with me every day to the office, and marking off each chapter as I read it on the chart our leaders had given us to keep track of our reading.  Before the summer was over, I had read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover -- on my own -- for the first time in my life.  This event, combined with a few other key experiences, planted in my heart a love for the Book of Mormon that has only grown as the years have gone by.

So, what IS the Book of Mormon?  The Book of Mormon is ANOTHER TESTAMENT OF JESUS CHRIST.  “It's a book of scripture full of stories about God's love for all people in all places.”  The action takes place thousands of years ago on the American continent and recounts an “epic tale of war and peace and good and evil that follows the lives of men and women who lived long ago but who believed in and even predicted the coming of Jesus Christ.  In fact, the entire story centers on Him, His birth, teachings, and appearance in ancient America after His death and Resurrection in Jerusalem.”  These people in the Americas are some of those “sheep...not of this fold” that the Savior spoke of to his disciples in Jerusalem and “the key part of the Book of Mormon chronicles His visit and ministry.”  Recorded on gold plates, abridged by the prophet Mormon, and then translated through Joseph Smith by the power of God, this book is more than just a history book of a long-gone civilization.  It is a book that contains the word of God.  Elder Tad R. Callister taught in a recent Conference address that, “Again and again, the Book of Mormon acts as a confirming, clarifying, unifying witness of the doctrines taught in the Bible so that there is only ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism.’...Together with the Bible, the Book of Mormon is an indispensable witness of the doctrines of Christ and His Divinity.”  The doctrines of the gospel and the plan of salvation are simply and clearly outlined in its pages. The Savior Jesus Christ -- His Divinity, His mission, and His mercy, along with what we must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the next -- is the central focus of the book.  The Prophet Joseph Smith has said, “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”

At the beginning of this year, I started over reading the Book of Mormon in a brand new set of scriptures.  As I’ve been reading, I have been using a yellow colored pencil to highlight every mention of the Savior along with every word spoken by the Lord to the people in the Book of Mormon.  Elder Gary E. Stevenson observed that “You will pore through the passages of this precious book and encounter your beloved Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ on nearly every page.  It is estimated that some form of His name is used an average of once every 1.7 verses.”  As I’ve read through my brand new, unmarked Book of Mormon, it has been eye-opening to recognize JUST how true this is!  I may have already had a testimony that this book is another testament of Jesus Christ, but as I’m reading with new eyes,  I have been struck with just how prevalent the Savior and the Plan of Salvation are on almost every page of the Book.

While preparing for this talk, a quote that I came across time and time again is President Ezra Taft Benson’s prophetic promise that, “There is a power in the book which will begin to flow into your lives the moment you begin a serious study of the book.  You will find greater power to resist temptation.  You will find the power to avoid deception.  You will find the power to stay on the strait and narrow path.”  Who WOULDN’T want that kind of power??  I know I do.  However, there is always a price to pay for such a privilege.  As President Benson states, this power flows once a SERIOUS STUDY of the Book of Mormon is undertaken.  In President Monson’s most recent Conference address entitled “The Power of the Book of Mormon,” he spoke of the “critical need we have as members of this church to study, ponder, and apply its teachings in our lives.”  If we want to access this power of the Book of Mormon, we must do much more than casually read our scriptures.  We must do as the prophet Nephi says, and “Feast upon the words of Christ; for behold the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do.”

In our family, we are in our second year of an ongoing effort to read the Book of Mormon every day.  Or as we often say at home, “every day, every day, every day.”  In a conference talk from Elder Kevin W. Pearson from a couple of years ago entitled “Stay by the Tree,” he teaches, “If you are struggling, confused, or spiritually lost, I urge you to do the one thing I know will get you back on track.  Begin again to prayerfully study the Book of Mormon and live its teachings every day, every day, every day!  I testify of the profound power in the Book of Mormon that will change your life and strengthen your resolve to follow Christ.”  I’d like to say that we’ve got this whole family-Book-of-Mormon-reading thing down pat, but the truth of the matter is that it’s hard.    You may find this hard to believe, but my children are not perfect.  And neither are their mom and dad.  We have set a family goal to read the Book of Mormon every single day for this entire year AND to finish it up by the end of December, and so far we are on track!  But the reality is that with a family this big and with such a large range of ages, we have to press forward on almost a daily basis through various instances of resistance, distractions, and ill-tempered moods to get our 3 columns of Book of Mormon done.   However, I am a big believer that nothing that is of great worth will ever come by an easy route.  Over the last several years, we have baby-stepped our way to get to this point of reading together as a family from the Book of Mormon every day.  I have faith and hope, that one day we’ll be able to get to the point where we not only READ together but feast together, too.

I know this Book is true.  The Book of Mormon contains the word of God and I love it. I am so grateful for its influence in my life.

{My original 90-day tracking sheet -- circa 1994}