Come, Follow Me Daily Study Guide for the week of January 11-17, 2021 covering Doctrine and Covenants 2 and Joseph Smith -History 1:27-65. For personal and/or family study of the scriptures, geared towards families with teenagers.  

**This is a suggested outline that coincides with the Come, Follow Me manual. There is not just one right way when it comes to studying the scriptures. Everyone should study in a way that is best for them, but I do hope that you find these outlines helpful.

**SCRIPTURE JOURNALS – I highly suggest getting a scripture journal for each person. Many times my outlines will suggest writing something down in your scripture journal. These are also great for writing down any impressions or “Aha” moments that you might have as you study the scriptures. Composition books found at the Dollar Store work great!   

**A free PDF DOWNLOAD of the Study Guide is available at the bottom of this post, making it easy for those who’d like to print out a copy. OR you can add Melanie’s Library to your mobile device home screen by following these instructions, click HERE

**SONGS – For a list of suggested songs for each day of the week, be sure and check out the blog called Music for Latter-day Life by clicking HERE

**OPENING SONG SUGGESTION FOR NON-SINGERS – We are not big singers in our family but I know how powerful music can be when it comes to inviting the Spirit. Instead of singing, we have begun listening to the song suggested on Music for Latter-day Life and as we listen we each write in our scripture journals how we have seen the hand of the Lord in our lives or something we are grateful for. It has been a wonderful way to get everyone in the right mindset and to invite the Spirit for our family scripture study.    

 

FHE DAY

Start the week off right with a Family Home Evening that is focused around the upcoming week’s Come, Follow Me. Sign up for the Teach Me FHE email group and receive an FHE outline delivered right to your inbox every Sunday morning. Sign up at the bottom of this post. 

 

MORONI’S MESSAGE

BACKGROUND/SCRIPTURE

**For today’s lesson, you’ll need a bag of small candies such as Skittles or Starbursts**

(Adapted from Scripture Study for Latter-day Saint Families)

SHOW IMAGE:

Image used for educational purposes.

This is an image of the angel Moroni when he visited Joseph.

READ: Joseph Smith – History 1:33-42

Without looking, see who can remember the most things that were said in those verses. *For each thing they remember, give them a piece of candy for it.

Now have your family read the following verses by themselves, JS-H 1:43-49, and find out how many more times Moroni appeared to Joseph. (Three more times, a total of four altogether – three during the night, and one the following day. FYI Moroni does visit him a fifth time at the Hill Cumorah in later verses.) *For each person who came up with the correct answer, give them a piece of candy.

*OPTIONAL – If you still have plenty of candy left, you may hand it out as family members answer questions and participate willingly and happily with the rest of the lesson. 🙂 

• How did Moroni’s visits compare to one another?
• Were they exactly the same with the exact same message?
• What does this repetition teach you about the importance of Moroni’s message?

MINI LESSON

STUDYING MORONI’S MESSAGE TO JOSEPH

Write the following references on a piece of paper and assign each family member one of them. 

• Malachi 3:1-4; 4:1, 5-6 with JS-H 1:37-39
• Isaiah 11 chapter heading with JS-H 1:40
• Acts 3:22-23 with JS-H 1:40
• Joel 2:28-32 with JS-H 1:41

Have each family member:

• Compare Moroni’s version with the Bible verses, noting any differences.
• Identify what main message the verses teach.

 Then share with each other what you learned. 

PONDER & DISCUSS

• Why might the Lord repeat important messages several times?
• What are some other ways the Lord teaches us through repetition?
• Why might these prophecies have been important for Joseph to know?
• Why are they important for us to know?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (optional)

CONFERENCE TALK: Fulfillment of Prophecy

 

 

THE GOLD PLATES

BACKGROUND/SCRIPTURE

ACTIVITY: Give everyone some playdough or clay *A second option is to have everyone draw in their scripture journals

(You can make salt dough with 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup salt, 1/2 cup very warm water, food coloring, and 2 TBL vegetable oil. Mix the flour and salt, add the water and stir well. Add the food coloring and oil. Knead for 5 minutes. Store in a sealed container.)

READ: Joseph Smith-History 1:51-52 and have them select one of the objects listed in those verses to mold out of dough. (The stone box, the plates, the Urim and Thummim, or the breastplate.)

While they are creating these objects (or drawing them), read the following descriptions which might be helpful for those creating the Urim and Thummin or the breastplate. You may also scroll down and show the images.

(JOSEPH’S MOTHER) LUCY MACK SMITH STATED: “[On the morning of September 22, 1827, after Joseph had returned from the hill, he placed] the article [the Nephite interpreters] of which he spoke into my hands, and, upon examination, [I] found that it consisted of two smooth three-cornered diamonds set in glass, and the glasses were set in silver bows, which were connected with each other in much the same way as old fashioned spectacles…[H]e [Joseph Smith] handed me the breastplate spoken of in his history. It was wrapped in a then muslin handkerchief, so thin that I could feel its proportions without any difficulty. It was concave on one side and convex on the other, and extended from the neck downwards, as far as the center of the stomach of a man of extraordinary size. It had four straps of the same material, for the purpose of fastening it to the breast.”

(JOSEPH’S BROTHER) WILLIAM SMITH STATED:“…A double silver bow was twisted into the shape of the figure eight, and the two stones were placed literally between the two rims of a bow. At one end was attached a rod which was connected with the outer edge of the right shoulder of the breast-plate. By pressing the head a little forward, the rod held the Urim and Thummim before the eyes much like a pair of spectacles. A pocket was prepared in the breastplate on the left side, immediately over the heart. When not in use the Urim and Thummim was placed in this pocket, the rod being of just the right length to allow it to be so deposited.” (Reported by J.W. Peterson and W. S. Pender who interviewed Joseph Smith’s brother, William Smith, in 1891)

SHOW IMAGES:  

The first image is a replica made by David A. Baird, click HERE. The second image of the Urim and Thummin was found HERE.  

MINI LESSON

(Activity taken from Scripture Study for Latter-day Saint Families)

ACTIVITY: Ask a family member to raise his or her arms up and down five times. Have him or her do it again, only this time put your hands on the person’s arms and provide some resistance to make it more difficult. 

• If resistance makes something harder to do, is resistance a good thing or a bad thing? 
• What will resistance do for your muscles?
• Read 2 Nephi 2:11, what does it teach about this principle?

Many years ago, Isaiah prophesied of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and although Joseph Smith met with much opposition, the Book of Mormon still came forth.

VIDEO: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder (5:46), click HERE or for YouTube click HERE  (Covers JS-H 1:60-65)

PONDER & DISCUSS

Have you ever received an answer or a prompting from God to do something but were then met with opposition? How did you feel? Did it test your faith? 

*An excellent video to check out that goes along with doing something you feel called to do but are met with opposition, is to watch the Fireside with Brad Barton listed below under Additional Resources.

SHARE QUOTE BY ELDER HOLLAND:

This church, the great institutional body of Christ, is a marvelous work and a wonder not only because of what it does for the faithful but also because of what the faithful do for it. Your lives are at the very heart of that marvel. You are evidence of the wonder of it all. (Miracles of the Restoration, Oct 1994)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (optional)

CONFERENCE TALK: Miracles of the Restoration
BIBLE DICTIONARY: Urim and Thummim
LDS LIVING: 10 Things We Know About the Urim and Thummim
VIDEO: Fireside with Brad Barton – World Record Runner, click HERE (about 8 min long; watch from 52:20 mark to 1:07:55)

 

 

ELIJAH CAME TO TURN MY HEART TO MY ANCESTORS

BACKGROUND

Just for fun, see how well your family knows baseball by asking them some baseball trivia questions.

BASEBALL TRIVIA: 

1.On average, how many hotdogs and sausages are sold every year during Major League Baseball games?

ANSWER: During MLB games, about 25,500,000 hotdogs and 5,508,900 sausages are sold every year. These hotdogs are enough to stretch from Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. (Source)

2. How many baseballs do MLB teams use each game?

ANSWER: According to a MLB equipment manager, an average of 8 to 10 dozen baseballs are used each game.  Baseballs cost about six dollars each including shipping.  So, ten dozen baseballs cost about 720 dollars per home game per team.  Do some additional math and that means major league baseball spends five to five and a half million dollars each season on baseballs alone. (Source)

3. How many innings were played in the longest MLB game in history?

ANSWER: 26 innings on May 1, 1920, Brooklyn Robins at Boston Braves. The Robins – later called the Dodgers – and the Braves played to a 1-1 tie. Umpires called the game because of darkness. (Source)

4. To hit a baseball lightly so that the ball rolls for a short distance is called a what?

ANSWER: Bunt

5. A __________ is a batter who bats first in the lineup.

ANSWER: Leadoff hitter

SHARE INSIGHT BY DAVIDE BUTLER:

In a baseball lineup, you put one of your strongest batters first. That person is sometimes called the “leadoff hitter.” As the earliest section, as far as dates go, for the whole Doctrine and Covenants, section 2 becomes the leadoff message for the book. It was written after the first of Joseph Smith’s many encounters with an angel. Joseph’s prayer was for forgiveness of his sins. In answer, the angel Moroni came with a message. Moroni stayed through the night, giving instruction and quoting ancient scripture. One of those scriptures came from Malachi – the last of the Hebrew prophets in ancient times. The words, in fact, are the last recorded words of the Old Testament – a book that ends on a cliff-hanger, with a promise waiting to be fulfilled.  

SCRIPTURE/MINI LESSON

READ: D&C 2 and compare it with Malachi 4:5-6

DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING

1.What differences do you notice?

One of the big differences you may have noticed is that to a Bible reader, all they know is that the Lord would send Elijah some time before the Second Coming, but to do what? Moroni specifies that Elijah will reveal priesthood powerful enough to unite families forever. 

2. What does “the promises made to the fathers” in D&C 2:2 mean?

SHARE QUOTE BY JOSEPH FIELDING SMITH

“This expression [the promises made to the fathers] has reference to certain promises made to those who died without a knowledge of the Gospel, and without the opportunity of receiving the sealing ordinances of the Priesthood in matters pertaining to their exaltation. According to these promises, the children in the latter days are to perform all such ordinances in behalf of the dead.” (Improvement Era, July 1922)

3. What does it mean in D&C 2:3  when it says the whole earth would be utterly wasted at his coming?

SHARE INSIGHT FROM DAVID J RIDGES: (Taken from Doctrine and Covenants Made Easier)

In Moses 1:39, the Lord tells us that His whole purpose is to “bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

“Immortality” means living forever as a resurrected being…”Eternal life” means exaltation in the highest degree of glory in the celestial kingdom, which means living in the family unit forever…Without the sealing power…we could not be sealed together as families forever, therefore, we could not attain eternal life, which is exaltation. Thus, the “work and …glory” of God (Moses 1:39) would be frustrated, and the earth would fail to fulfill its purposes. In other words, as far as uniting families together eternally, the earth would be “wasted.” 

4. Why does the Lord want us to learn about our family members and perform temple ordinances for them? How are we blessed when we participate in family history and temple work?

VIDEO: The Promised Blessings of Family History (3:12), click HERE

PONDER & DISCUSS

Invite one or more family members to learn about an ancestor and share what they learn with the rest of the family.  **This can be something they report back on, or you can ask them before today’s lesson and then have them share it now, or you can learn about your ancestors right now as a family by looking through old family photos or family history books. 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (optional)

CONFERENCE TALK: Let This House Be Built unto My Name
CONFERENCE TALK: Hearts Bound Together
CONFERENCE TALK: Family History and Temple Work: Sealing and Healing
VIDEO: Special Witnesses of Christ—President Russell M. Nelson (3:27)

 

 

GENERAL CONFERENCE DAY

Study a recent General Conference talk. A great way to study a conference talk is to read along and highlight the parts that stand out to you. Then after the talk, review and discuss what you have highlighted.    

THIS WEEK’S TALK: Moving Forward (click HERE) and A New Normal (click HERE) – Both are short talks By President Russell M. Nelson

 

 

CATCH UP DAYS

Do one of the days that you missed OR any of the additional resources listed.

Yours Truly,

P.S. For more Come, Follow Me resources, check out my post Your Ultimate Guide to Come, Follow Me. It lists over 100 Come, Follow Me resources that are available online starting with the church’s resources at the top. You can find it by clicking HERE. 

P.P.S. Sign up here for the Teach Me FHE email group and receive FHE outlines delivered right to your inbox every Sunday morning. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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