Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Book of Mormon Challenge

On Sunday our bishop issued a challenge; that all of the members of our ward read the entire Book of Mormon in the next 4 months.

We had family night last night and discussed this challenge. We agreed that we should all accept it, and that I will make a chart to help track everyone's progress.

But wow. Four months isn't a lot of time to read a 500+ page book of scripture. It was a lot of reading in a short amount of time when President Hinckley asked us to do it a few years ago, and it will be a lot of reading in the next four months. And fast is not my preferred way to read the scriptures. On the other hand, I've completely neglected my scriptures this summer and this will be a great way to jump start my reading.

I won't be reading in the standard LDS issue Book of Mormon. I'll be reading instead in an edition called The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition".


Instead of being printed in the blocky text that we're all so familiar with, this edition is printed in paragraphs. And when the text is poetry, it's printed like poetry. It's much easier for me to follow the thoughts and ideas when they're not arbitrarily broken up into sentences. (Although I do miss the footnotes sometimes.)

This edition has 600+ pages instead of the regular 500, so I'll be reading 6 pages every day. I read my first 6 pages today, and I'm thinking about blogging about some of the thoughts I have. It's always easier for me to read the scriptures if I find something specific in my reading to think about—so maybe I'll write about that here.

I'll also be reading out loud with the little kids every morning. They're all a little overwhelmed at the thought of needing to read 5 pages every day, but I'm hoping that this will really help with Jared's reading problems and help them to begin to gain their own testimony of the the Book of Mormon as well.

Wish us luck!

5 comments:

  1. So, I can't even say how many times I've thought... I need to email Cindy so I can get access to her blog! If it was accidental that all your posts showed up in my feed reader this morning, it's an accident I appreciate!

    Funny about the Book of Mormon... our branch presidency just issued the exact same challenge. My husband is in the branch presidency, and it was HIS idea. So I blame him... and thank him all at the same time. Five pages a night is quite a bit to read with a pair of five year olds and an eight year old, but they've done well so far. You know... since it's only been three nights. :) Hopefully we'll be able to keep it up!

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  2. Mommy J--nice to see you!

    How interesting that your husband had the same idea. What is his reasoning for the challenge in such a short time span?

    Are you reading with your 3 kids together, or all separately? Good luck keeping up...I need to go do it now!

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  3. Are the kids reading in the kid BOM or the normal one?

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  4. So Eric said that he might go to the rare book room at Duke and read from one of the original copies of the BOM each day. I laughed, since he can never seem to go with the crowd- even in his obedience, he has to be just a little different. But part of me was jealous- I wonder if it would be different.

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  5. Katie--I am LOL at Eric. He always has to put his "most fundamental" spin on things, doesn't he!

    I think that for lots of people the version you read in doesn't make much difference, but it sure does for me. I'll be curious to see what he thinks of the original version, which isn't divided by sentences.

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