Blog Archives

I Can Pray Always

10/23/2014

A Simple Way to Teach Your Child When to Pray #lds #primary #prayalways

I took this idea from one my mom had forever ago...like in 1991...whoa. Anyway, she made puppets with faces on them and I gave a primary talk where I showed each face and said, "I can pray when I am happy [shows happy face on a stick]." "I can pray when I am sad [shows sad face on a stick]." You get the idea.

Here I am about to give my first primary talk...let's just not talk about how much I look like a creepy horror movie child:

I'm working on a curriculum outline for Caeden and each morning I have a devotional outlined from the Sunbeams Primary Manual. One of the lessons is about prayer. I thought to myself, "Self! Why not bring back those little face puppets?" So I made some for Caeden. And he loves them!

And I want to share them with you! Just click here to download this! You'll get a color version as well as black and white versions that your kids can color on. Or you can print them out on color card stock like I did...it just means that you'll have extras!

Instructions are in the download, but basically they go like this: download, print, color, cut out, laminate, and hot glue to a Popsicle stick. Easy peasy!

You can download these for free for a limited time! Pin this to share it with all your friends!

Download this! A Simple Way to Teach Your Child When to Pray #lds #primary #prayalways

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My Goals from #LDSCONF General Conference

10/10/2014

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I love General Conference. Like, LOVE. conference. The top conference topic was Jesus Christ, which is not really a surprise. We are the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints and all... Prayer, service, testimony, agency, and the atonement all tied for second place. Truth, love, family, prophets, and Heavenly Father were the third most talked about.

I love Christ. I don't know if I say it enough, or if my actions prove it. I had a friend post on Facebook after conference asking what everyone's goals were, how they were going to let conference change them. And I thought to myself, "Self, that is an excellent question."

Ponder the path of thy feet. Proverbs 4:26

So here are my goals:

Do better with family history. Like, way better. Like, actually do it at all. Starting with writing down my stories and stories from Leila's life. I think I've got some questions in the works that I will post later :)

Attend the temple once a month. Because I need to go more, and I don't. Am I the only one that gets anxiety before I go, or is that just me? *awkward silence*

Stop being afraid of man. I'm always super worried about offending someone with how much I care about the gospel and Jesus Christ and then after watching conference I realized that is a completely and utterly ridiculous fear. If my friends are really friends then they will respect how I live my life and the love I have for Christ. It doesn't mean I'm preaching to them when I talk about something. I'm just sharing.

Become more Christlike by studying His life more in depth. This is actually my number one, on-going goal. Because really. I just need to. And this month's Come Follow Me is perfect because it is all about becoming more Christlike. It was meant to be!

So I'm going to ask you the same thing my Facebook friend asked all of us; "What are your goals? How will you let conference change you?"

Share! Comment your little hearts out!

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MENTOR • How to make Service Message Youth Videos

10/9/2014

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Back in July we had Youth Conference. In that post I mentioned that we did service videos but couldn't share them because they weren't edited yet. Well, now they are! Our Stake had a premiere night to show them to the youth. We did a red "carpet", awards, paparazzi, and dressed up. Here are photos from that night.

DIY How to Make Service Message Youth Videos & Premiere Night

Here's how we did our backdrop.

RED CARPET • Red plastic table cloth on a roll
ROPE • Red cording by the yard, pvc pipe spray painted gold, mason jars filled with sand to hold them up
BACKDROP • (2) 4' x 8' masonite boards painted in chalkboard paint
ANGEL ICON • Cut a stencil, use yellow chalk to stencil the icon on

Here are the videos.

#LDSMakeYourMark #ShareGoodness

#LDSRealMen #ShareGoodness

#LDSTrueBeauty #ShareGoodness

#LDSMusicMovesMe #ShareGoodness

I was in charge of the overall project so I thought I'd share how we went about doing it incase you want to try. We did four for our stake but I would recommend doing one on a ward level.

1) Have a message that you want to share
2) Have some guidelines as adult leaders. These were some of ours
• to use the youth as much as possible, especially in the video
• have a point/message to it
• have the youth part of something bigger than they are
• done so it won't be lame :)
(don't have youth speak or act much, keep it simple)
3) Have some conceptual idea how you want it to video tape it. Copy other's ideas with variation. For example
• Make Your Mark was based on the video Flourish by
Dana Tanamachi-Williams
• True Beauty & Real Men were based on this video An
Experiment in Words (or 36 Smiles) from the Pleasant
Grove Utah Mount Mahogany Stake 4th Ward
• Get approval of the concept summaries
4) Make a committee
• Ours included Stake Youth (SYC youth), Stake YWYM Presidency
members, and Specialists
• Have youth go over video concepts and make changes, suggestions,
and/or other ideas
• Re-write concept summaries and get approval
5) Get Specialists. These had to be skill specific. Meaning they had to be
artistic, conceptual thinkers, or have video/editing skills. It would
have been nice to have all professionals but that's usually not the
case in the church for projects like this. This is a large project that
requires Approve and call specialists.
• Make Your Mark - construction crew (chalkboard), design,
videographer, video editor
• True Beauty - Materials, videographer, video editor
• Real Men - Props, videographer, video editor
• Music Moves Me - transportation, music, talent, videographer,
video editor
6) Meet together as a whole. There's a lot of moving parts/people here so the sooner you can meet all together the better. The truth is, this didn't happen for some groups until the morning of.
7) Video tape. We used a 3 hour block of Youth Conference to video tape. Every group (approx 220 total youth) worked at the same time. Before taping, we had a speaker for each group (except Music) talk about the topic for 15 minutes to set the tone and share the idea. Video tapping was a one shot deal so we had 2-3 videographers for each video.
8) Edit video. This is basically a one person job. This is where your conceptual idea has to have been communicated clearly since it's this person who will ultimately pick and choose what goes into the video. Some or parts of our videos didn't turn out the way the committee had intended. Communication is key but even then sometimes things just work out differently than planned. Stake YWYM leaders did an initial viewing with recommended changes.
9) Final Approval. Our Stake Presidency had final approval and recommendations before the youth viewed them.
10) Be realist, gracious, and thankful. Remember we all do this for free. Usually we don't actually know what we're doing. Being realist (for the planned and unplanned), gracious (accepting what people can/can't do), and thankful (that it came together at all) to all who help.

This video project was out of a lot of youth and leader's comfort zones. It's hard to say how things you've never done will turn out. The uncertainty adds anxiety. Hopefully these steps will help keep the stress level low. This is a project that I would do again.

I think this is a new face for service. It's not the traditional shovels and rags but a lot of work nonetheless. Which translated into 15,000 Facebook views for about the first week. Not bad for a bunch of mostly amateurs.

One last thing - CELEBRATE at a Premiere Night.

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MORALIST • Recapping General Conference

10/6/2014

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We posted a General Conference FHE last conference here. Here it is as a reminder. Included is a memory game that can use this conference's talks. It can be used anytime, maybe even become a family tradition. Maybe even include root beer floats. Yay! Click on the images for the download.

FHE General Conference RECAP lesson • LDSNEST.com

FHE General Conference Bottle Cap Memory Game • LDSNEST.com

Even if you don't have bottle caps we've got you covered. Included are paper caps. Just
Print • Cut • Write • Play

Go to the link here.

How do you recap conference with your family?

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Cute Coloring pages for General Conference

10/3/2014

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CUTE COLORING PAGES FOR GENERAL CONFERENCE from LDSNEST #ldsconf #lds

General Conference Coloring Pages

If you're looking for a last minute something for your kids to do doing General Conference here are some FREE cute coloring pages! There is also room for them to draw their own pictures of what they learn or to take notes if they are a little older.