The Come Follow Me curriculum with teens has taught me the power of one or two insights each week. My job is not to cover everything, but to help them identify and remember the insights that come to their minds as they read. These insights and feelings are personal revelation, or what the Lord wants them to learn individually.
I had some wooden books and rings left over from a girls camp and our family used them to make “small plates”. We found art from the Come Follow Me manual to paste on the covers. As you see, not everyone participated in this craft activity. Typical! I could have just as easily bought simple notebooks. The papers are small, just a quarter sheet. As we read a chapter of the Book of Mormon aloud, we focus our attention on a topic from the manual and write down what we learn from reading. If our sons write one insight a week, this adds up to more than 50 insights a year for each of them. 50 pieces of instruction from the Holy Ghost. 50 helps from heaven. If we each write down one insight a week, we will have over 200 lessons gained as a family. Not that I am counting, or even looking at what they write. These are their sacred, small plates.
Reading as a family is a challenge. When we finally sit down to read after all kinds of contortions to make it happen, the family seems to lose all energy, and the dog becomes extra needy, distracting, and playful. It is during these times I call the little dog Satan and wish the teen years weren’t so tricky. But when I listen to the boys pray after we read, I hear their words of thanks for the time spent as a family. The sweetest advice I have been given is to LISTEN to what your teens say in their prayers. This is how they really feel.
This year we’re keeping our study small (focused) and simple (personal, in few words), trusting that great things will come of it. (Alma 37:6)
