Getting ready for "Geneful" Conference

Nothing like posting twice in a year! But my family has been having some fun and success with our family home evenings lately and I wanted to share. My husband and I attended BYU's Education Week in August, and one of the many, many things that struck me during the week was a thought about modern prophets and apostles. Their words are scripture to us, and we need to learn and know the messages they give us at general conference and other times. But how can we believe their words if we don't know them? We need to know these great men. So our family is getting to know them every week until conference in October. Or as my boys call it: "Geneful Conference." (They also say Geneful Grevious from Star Wars.)

The internet is a wealth of information, and we used several ideas we found there. I made a poster like the one on the blog, We Talk of Christ.  I used the photos of the apostles from lds.org and printed them at a print shop so they would look nice, then laminated them myself and attached them with Velcro to the poster. I did the same with their names. The boys have been practicing and after conference next month we will replace the names or photos with a few words or pictures that represent the talk they gave at conference. I certainly like having this up in our foyer where we see it every day.

Another fun idea we used was a song to learn the names of the apostles. I know there are several songs out there, but we used the one on this YouTube video. I love it and get a kick out the boys singing it. Plus it keeps getting stuck in my head, in a good way, and keeps me thinking about the Lord's apostles more than I normally would.






And here's the video of my boys singing it.

 

The lesson part of our family home evenings this month is devoted to learning about these men of God. Each week we are learning about the history and background of 3 of the apostles. And my oldest, Alden, (he just turned 9!) has been taking on one every week, with my husband and I each taking another.

Last week we had my son research President Packer, while I took Elder Nelson. What Alden found out was that he and President Packer shared the same birthday, which was the next day. He was so excited to find this connection. And when I was studying the life of Elder Nelson later that day, I found that it was his birthday that very day! And these two friends and elders were born the same year - both Pres. Packer and Elder Nelson turned 89 last week. We got a kick out of all of it.

All my family is enjoying this course of study and we are looking forward to learning about the rest, and especially to hearing their words at general conference on October 5th and 6th. You can watch it all here.