My First Relief Society Lesson

At 9:30pm Thursday night I got a call from a member of the Relief Society Presidency. She asked if I would be willing to teach on Sunday (today). I have always thought that being a relief society teacher would be fun. I told her I would teach and I immediately paused "Psych," our newest Netflix addiction, and skimmed through the lesson. (Lesson 18- Joseph Fielding Smith)

I was pleased when I saw the title of the lesson was, "Living by Every Word that Proceeds from the Mouth of God." I immediately texted my mother telling her the news. She is the go-to woman whenever you need to teach or speak. She has an entire filing cabinet full of various folders on different topics. She had just heard this lesson taught in her ward, and gave me some great ideas the teacher used.

I started the lesson with an object lesson. (What do you expect, I am an Elementary Education major.) I had a shoe box full of candy, but kept the lid on. I asked the class if they wanted what was in the box. I then let one person look in the box and tell the class if it was good or bad. We then took a vote, and I passed out the candy. I related this idea to the fact that sometimes we really like what the prophet says (the candy), but sometimes we might have a hard time with one of the commandments we have been given. (a piece of candy we don't like, or a shoebox full of rocks.) I figured I would start the class off on the right foot with candy. (Thanks mother for the idea.)

I'm not going to go into every detail of my lesson because that would probably be boring. I do want to share a few of my favorite parts though. At one point, I posed the question, "Which commandment do you think is most important?" I was surprised by the dead silence because usually about 10 hands go up for each question. After a few seconds, someone said to the love the Lord thy God. I then read the following quote by Harold B. Lee, "The most important of all the commandments of God is the one that you are having the most difficulty keeping today. If it is one of dishonesty, if it is one of unchastity, if it is one of falsifying, not telling the truth, today is the day for you to work on that until you have been able to conquer that weakness. Put that aright and then you start on the next one that is most difficult for you to keep. That's the way to sanctify yourself by keeping the commandments of God." 

At the end of the lesson, we talked about the blessings that come from keeping the commandments. I shared the story of our wedding book. A few weeks after we got married, we had an open house in Spokane. We flew there, and I brought our wedding book along with us to show some family. I made a point of keeping the wedding book in my sight at all times so I wouldn't lose it. (It cost several hundred dollars.) I made the mistake of leaving the book on the airplane. I was so sad when I realized it was gone when we got home. A few weeks later, I got a call from a flight attendant in Tennessee. She had found the book when cleaning out the plane. She looked through the book and found out we got married in the Oquirrh Mountain temple on December 28, 2012. She called the temple and got my number. She then mailed the book to me. What a blessing. The Lord has promised us all that he has when we keep his commandments.

Let me back up to last night. (Saturday night) I slept HORRIBLY. I was extremely nervous to give this lesson. I had never taught Relief Society before and didn't really know what to expect. I'm used to teaching Kindergartners, not adults. I spent most of the night tossing and turning and finally ended up just getting up before my alarm. At the beginning of the lesson, I was a little nervous, but I was surprised by how calm I felt while I taught. I am glad to have the lesson over with, but I really did enjoy preparing for it and learned a lot. Maybe they will call me as a Relief Society teacher or maybe not. One of the best parts of this whole teaching adventure is that there is a lot of leftover candy! (and one of the pieces was even a Reese's, but it didn't last long!)