Somehow, I missed the memo.
I knew about the 2019 start of the Come Follow Me resources for home-based Gospel learning centered on the Savior. Really, I did. When we attended church today, I was surprised to learn that we were supposed to start TODAY. Today is also my husband’s birthday, Sunday, and we’ve made plans to include a friend in our celebration of Dad. Birthdays also mean food, so there is Sunday dinner to cook, and a long winter’s nap on the couch after church too.
Not wanting to completely miss the mark, I decided to share with my family a well-researched article I had read just days before about Come Follow Me in an online publication I trust – Meridian Magazine (www.ldsmag.com). The author is a young assistant professor at BYU in the Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations, Isaac Calvert.
The whole article is worth reading (more than once) and more importantly applying. The author’s background includes a significant study of and in the Holy Land, which piqued our interest because of the time our family has had opportunities to travel throughout Israel, and both his teaching emphasis (history and philosophy of education with emphasis on religiously-influenced teaching and learning methods) and research focus (the nature of holiness and how different cultures treat teaching and learning as sacred) seemed a perfect match for this week’s theme of ‘Taking responsibility for our own learning.’
We are always fascinated by material that draws our minds and hearts back to where Jesus walked 2,000+ years ago, to the land and the people, and the events that were the backdrop of His mortal journey, and will be the scene of His foretold return. Our 2016 trip there together was life-altering for all of us.
Reading the article aloud at the dinner table started an in depth discussion about several concepts – far beyond what I thought might happen. Our teenagers were inspired and asking questions, my husband asked if I could print out the article so he could read it again on his own. More than anything else we had read, this Day One read aloud challenged us to make more of our Come Follow Me journey.
https://ldsmag.com/come-follow-me-for-sunday-school-we-are-responsible-for-our-own-learning/
Look for the following concepts in the article:
- the importance of storytelling as a method of teaching/learning, and specifically what the rabbi was trying to convey through his story
- the importance of taking action, and living out in practice what we believe and what we learn about the essential laws of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to love God and love one another
- how to ‘make place’ for learning
- how we can build a ‘palace in time’ consecrated to the Lord
- deciding how we will respond to this sacred invitation to learn
I’d love to hear what insights this article sparks in you and your journey.