Thankful For Seminary

November is a month where we focus a little more on the things we are grateful for. One of the greatest blessings in my life is my calling as a seminary teacher. Oh, how I love spending each morning studying the gospel of Jesus Christ with my amazing kids! I love when they share their insights on the readings;

how willing they are to pose for pictures for me...well, most of the time. Ali's body language is priceless!!

One of my seniors was the first to show up one morning, a first for her in the two years I'be been teaching. Of course we had to celebrate!

We all love Fridays when we get to enjoy a little breakfast as we study our scriptures!

Grace - one of my lights!

Their awesome newspaper stories for The New Testament Times!

And more breakfast, ha ha!

I wish I could post the videos they made one Friday. We had two groups perform a different parable - The Good Samaritan and the Unforgiving Servant. They were amazing! It's probably the only time a student was ever "beat up" in seminary! The two groups showing a little love after their performances.

I am so grateful when they do some of the teaching (though they might not be as thrilled...).

Pictures with the Great Shepherd who we are all truly grateful for!

The day before Thanksgiving break we had some fun. We made gratitude bracelets to help us remember the story of the ten lepers - nine brown beads to represent the nine ungrateful lepers and one cream bead for the one who went back to the Lord and thanked him.

We also had a turkey shoot!

They got to see how many Doctrinal Mastery turkeys they could shoot down!

The finished bracelets!

 

Little Moments in November

Cleo, always around, especially when I'm in the kitchen making dinner.

Subbing A LOT! Love these crazy kids...

even when they steal my phone and take about 100 selfies.

Fun times with my boys - shopping with Xander is quite the experience...

and watching the awesome movie Midway with my little history buddy.

Some theater experiences - Noah went with his 7th grade class to see Aladdin at the Hippodrome in Baltimore...

and I went to support my seminary students from Patterson Mill in their theatrical performance of The Crucible.

Some churchy things - saying goodbye to another great elder, Elder Smith...

and serving in the temple.

 

College Acceptance!

Savannah sent off her applications to Southern Utah University and Dixie State College at the beginning of November. We weren't sure how long it would take to find out whether or not she had been accepted but, a week later, Savannah received an email from SUU welcoming her to their school. Yay! We are so excited, especially since this is the school that she most wants to attend. A few days later her official acceptance letter showed up in the mail and that definitely makes for a much better picture!

Of course we had to set her up with some SUU gear!

Seminary Scavenger Hunt

What turned out to be an incredibly fun activity was our Doctrinal Mastery Scavenger Hunt!  I divided the kids into 4 groups and told them they had to go around the church building and take a picture of something that represented each of the 10 Doctrinal Mastery scriptures that we have covered so far.  Each person in the group had to be in at least one picture and they had to text the pictures to me along with the corresponding DM verse.  The pictures were awesome and some even made me laugh!

A few examples: Matthew 16:15-19: Jesus Christ promised to build His Church and confer the keys of the kingdom;

Matthew 22:36-39: Love the Lord;

John 14:15: If ye love me, keep my commandments (Harrison told me this was him pretending to be Moses with the 10 commandments tablets);

Another keeping the commandments although they were showing how NOT to keep the commandment of Thou Shalt Not Kill. Poor Spencer - this year in seminary he's been beat up and almost murdered in the kitchen.

John 17:3: Eternal life is knowing God and Jesus Christ.

Matthew 5:14-16: Let your light so shine as an example to others. 

 John 15:16: The Lord chooses and ordains apostles and prophets (This group said they were showing how they sustain the church leaders).

More keys...

Matthew 11:28-30: If we come unto Jesus Christ, He will ease our burdens and give us rest. (I think Xander enjoyed this one and might have been tempted to stay there the rest of seminary.)

John 7:17: Do God's will to know His doctrine.

Matthew 22:36-39: Love thy neighbor.

They told me this one had to do with the commandments - thou shalt not have any other gods before me.

Another one for letting your light shine!

Luke 24:36-39: Jesus Christ was resurrected with a body of flesh and bone.

More resting at seminary!

John 3:5: We must be born of water and of the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God.

Creative ways to show keeping the commandments...

knowing God's doctrine...

loving the Lord...

and loving thy neighbor.

We had the missionaries visiting us that day, much to the excitement of some of our young ladies, and they did a great job coming up with some of their own DM expressions! One advantage they had over my students - the missionaries had a key to the library!

The kids had a blast with this activity and it is definitely one I'll be doing again!