Sat down at my dining room table this afternoon and found a treasure trove! C.j. had asked me if he had a basketball game next Friday so I sat down to get out my day planner and find out. No, his game is on Thursday in case anyone wants to come! Right next to me sat the stack of mail which included the new February issues of our church magazines. The magazine called The New Era is designed for teenagers and we’ve had it delivered to our house for years (our oldest is now 21 but our youngest is 13, so we’ll have it for awhile longer yet!). The cover is catchy with an obvious ‘dating’ theme, appropriate for February – the month of Valentines Day! But what drew my attention was a little purple circle in the bottom right corner (purple naturally draws my attention anyway – everything should be purple!) that read “Support for Sunday Lessons”. Hmm…I teach Sunday school to the teenagers at out congregation. Is the Church trying to get my attention? Or the teenagers’ attention? So I started flipping through the book to find these ‘support’ topics. An hour later when I finally got up from the table, I realized the answer is ‘both’. The little bits of information sprinkled in sidebars throughout the book ask the kids to think about how this article relates to our Sunday school topic for this month, which is ‘The Plan of Salvation’. But it didn’t stop there! It talked about other things you might want to do including going online at lds.org/youth and sharing your experiences with others. Well, of course I had to go there to find out what it is! Not only is there a treasure trove of cool topics & links, but there is an online community where you can log in with a user name & password and post comments and stuff. That’s where I stopped. I’m not a teenager. The kids don’t want me on their online community. And I have work to do to get ready for my Sunday school lesson! I can’t wait for tomorrow to share some of the things I found with the youth in my Sunday school class. The magazine itself, The New Era was the first treasure trove I found today, the website and online community were the second treasure trove I uncovered, but the real treasure trove is the Gospel itself and the way the Church has provided so many ways for us to connect with Christ’s message and plan for our lives! God lives! And He wants us to be happy! He wants us to follow the teachings of His Son, Jesus Christ. And He has provided a way (okay, a lot of ways) for us to explore those teachings. We’re no longer limited to crinkly pages in a delicate little book that sits beside our bed waiting for us to remember it’s there. His teachings are everywhere we look! For youth, a great place to start is lds.org/youth. For the rest of us, mormon.org offers us adults our very own online community! I still need to create my Online Profile, so no need to search for my profile yet. I’ll have to come back later to let you know where to find me! For now, have a wonderful Saturday afternoon! See you at church tomorrow! Have you gone on lds.org or mormon.org? What’s your opinion? –Julie L. Spencer
I recently lost 42 pounds on the Take Shape for Life program! Want to check out my weight loss transition? Click here! -Julie L. Spencer
