CES Day 1

It has been a ton of fun to run into Elders Jake South (going to Torleone, Mexico) and Preston Ruff (going to Frankfurt, Germany) as we go from classes to meals while here in the MTC.  We all four lived in the Field Crescent Ward, in the Herriman Stake before leaving for our missions.  We have watched these two great young men grow physically and spiritually as they have prepared for, and now left home for their missions. 

We have begun our three days of Church Education in-service.  Our instructors are Elder Pope (an Aussie seminary teacher now working as a trainer of CES missionaries, and Elder Udy from Idaho, and an Elder Hart (Elder Hart lives in the Rose Canyon Stake).  The instruction today was teaching us how to prepare a meaningful lesson.  We are being taught to outline the scriptures being studied with a different approach than I have used up to this point in my life.  We take the information between the pi symbols on the verse numbers.  We capsulate that information, or; we summarise it in a column.  After that we identify the relevant principles and doctrines in that block. The summary is in an adjacent column.  Tomorrow we will learn where to go from there.  But in looking at the planning chart we have been given, and having seen the videos on effective teaching during the past month, I believe I know what is coming.  We will decide how far into depth we want to approach each block.  We will decide how much time we want to spend on that principle or doctrine and we will search further into the doctrine depending on the time we will spend.  Finally we will try to figure out how we can apply that principle in our lives. 

To you that may sound tedious or laborious.  I find it very exciting and I am anxious to use these things with the young single adults that we will be meeting.  Above all, we are constantly reminded that we aren't the teachers in this process.  We are the guides.  As we take our students on this scriptural journey, it is the Holy Ghost that will do the teaching.  I really like that principle.  It is taught in the 50th section of the Doctrine and Covenants.  It is a true.