Elder Stevenson recently said…

“The more I thought about our [Easter] celebrations, the more I found myself wondering if we are inadvertently shortchanging the true meaning of this holiday, so central to all believers in Jesus Christ.

“During December, we somehow manage to incorporate the fun of “Jingle Bells,” Christmas stockings, and gifts alongside other, more thoughtful traditions… Our family celebrations at Easter, however, have been somewhat different. I feel our family has relied more on “going to church” to provide the meaningful, Christ-centered part of Easter; and then, as a family, we have gathered to share in other Easter-related traditions…. But the First Presidency letter was a wake-up call. Not only did they invite all of us to make sure our celebration of the most important event to ever happen on this earth—the Atonement and Resurrection of Jesus Christ—includes the reverence and respect the Lord deserves, but they also gave us more time with our families and friends on Easter Sunday to do so.” – Gary E. Stevenson

So… do you have a plan for this year? I’m here to help! Easter is coming up soon on April 20th! Whether you already have great ways to remember Christ and make Easter a “big deal”, or whether you’re hoping to get started this year, I’ve compiled a list of resources that I know will help.

First, I’m sharing resources to help you and your family PREPARE for or celebrate Easter in a meaningful, Christ-centered way. (Skip to RESOURCES now.)

Second, I’m sharing Christ-centered (or faith-building) GIFTS you can give to kids, family members, or friends for Easter time. (Skip to GIFTS now.)

So whether you’re filling a kid’s Easter basket, or buying for in-laws, ministering sisters, friends, a spouse, or even yourself (hey – you deserve it!) there’s something for everyone on this list!

One note: since some of these gifts are from some incredible, talented small businesses, order soon to make sure you have them in time for your Easter celebration.

(Some of the links bellow may be affiliate links, meaning I get a small payment for each purchase with no extra cost to you! But all of these opinions are truly my own– I’ve really used and love them all!)

 

Resources for Celebrating a More Christ-Centered Easter

He is Risen: Lessons from Holy Week

 

This will become an Easter tradition in your family that you’ll wish you started sooner! Each day during Holy Week, your kids (of any age!) will love setting up the “scene” and reading the accompanying page in the “He is Risen” book. This has been our go-to ZERO PREP Holy Week guide for the past couple years because I love how interactive it is while also starting meaningful conversations with my kids! Use code CALIBLACK for 20% off your order (using this link will automatically apply the code).

He is Risen: Lessons from Holy Week – from New Tradition Crafts

 

Holy Week Flip Book

 

This page-a-day flip book is seriously gorgeous. I’m a big fan of whatever Olivet Designs produces, and her new book includes a page for each day of Holy Week, each with inspiring artwork and information. You learn, you celebrate, and you are focused on the Savior. It doubles as both a decoration and a new family tradition you can pull out year after year. Plus, it is filled with tons of activity ideas– some are perfect when I really want to go “all out”, and others are perfect when I want to do something during Holy Week that is simple. 

Holy Week Flip Book- Olivet Designs 

 

Christ is Risen Easter Advent Set

 

One of my favorite Christmas traditions I’ve loved including in my Easter celebrations is having beautiful decorations that help tell the story of Easter. This set is GORGEOUS and is made of steel that can have a white, black, unfinished, or silver finish. Our family has the white finish, and I got comments on how beautiful it was every time we had a visitor the past couple years. I love that it feels both classic and modern in design, and my kids love that it can help in telling the story of Easter in a more interactive way! Buy this for your own family, or as a gift to brighten someone else’s Easter. 

Christ is Risen Easter Advent – Rusted Orange

 

Come Follow Me Through Holy Week

 

IMAGE COMING SOON

This brand new digital download from my personal fav Kristen Walker Smith is everything you want in an Easter pack! You get SO much stuff in this download. For each day of Holy Week, you’ll get a full on study guide so that you or your family can dive into the scriptures surrounding that day’s events with purpose. You’ll also get step by step directions for setting up a simple Passover celebration, and a calendar with options of activities you can do each day of Holy Week. Use the special link below for $6.00 off this download!

“Come Follow Me Through Holy Week” by Kristen Walker Smith

 

 

From Jericho to Jerusalem by Tamara Uzelac Hall

 

This book is basically your tour guide as you examine the final week of Christ’s life. It is a book by the amazing Tamara Uzelac Hall, and she takes you day by day through Holy Week to help you understand important historical context and spiritual applications. It is short and sweet, and will enhance anyone’s Holy Week as you come to know more about the Savior’s final days on earth.

“From Jericho to Jerusalem”

 

 

The Easter Connection by Kerry Muhlestein

 

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein is one of the world’s top experts on ancient scripture and Egyptology, and yet his writing is so applicable and down-to-earth! I am truly one of his biggest fans and have many of his other books, and his latest book, The Easter Connection, is a powerful but quick read to ponder on this Easter season. This is definitely intended for adults to read, but I can’t help think of how your entire family’s perspective on Easter could change if just one adult really studied this short book. You’ll learn how we can be more unified with Jesus Christ, and you’ll study themes of unification and wholeness that are woven throughout the final week of Christ’s life.

“The Easter Connection”

 

Easter Gifts

Easter Gifts for Adults (Kids ideas below!)

One Minute Scripture Study in the Doctrine and Covenants

 

Not to toot my own horn but… This book is a MUST-BUY if you don’t already have it! My fabulous co-host of the One Minute Scripture Study podcast, Kristen Walker Smith, and I wrote an engaging and simple daily devotional book for the Doctrine and Covenants! While we may officially be a few months into studying the D&C, this devotional book can be used for years to come whenever your family (or just you!) read(s) this book of scripture again. Plus, this book includes special entries at the back of the book for Holy Week (and Christmas week!). This is absolutely the perfect gift for everyone, from teenagers to families to any individual looking to boost their scripture study.

One Minutes Scripture Study in the Doctrine and Covenants

 

Book of Mormon Adult Coloring Book

 

Coloring isn’t just for kids anymore! I honestly pay attention better when I am able to doodle on something, and this is a fun book to focus my scribbles on! This GORGEOUS adult coloring book features inspiring quotes from the Book of Mormon and is a great way to relax while listening to Conference, a podcast, or even watching a comfort TV show.

Scriptures in Color Book of Mormon Adult Coloring Book

 

Amber Oil Vial

 

When was the last time the men in your life got a new oil vial? Well, let me tell you why this one is a big upgrade! First, it’s made of amber, which means no more rancid-smelling oil when giving a blessing. Second, it actually has a dropper, which means you can’t accidentally pour too much oil! Plus, you can add a little sleeve with a keychain attachment when purchasing so that he can always be prepared to minister to others. Use code CALIB at checkout for 10% off your order.

One by 1 Amber Oil Vial Link

 

It is Well with My Soul Gratitude Journal

 

Easter is such a nice time of the year to focus a little bit more on gratitude. I love this beautiful gratitude journal that includes quotes, stories, and words of encouragement as you record things you’re grateful for. The journal provides 100 prompts to help you think of things to write – but I love that it doesn’t dictate which prompts you answer when. I can just go to the list if I need a little inspiration. The journal is really good quality, so it would make a meaningful gift for a friend, ministering sister, or family member in your life.

It is Well with My Soul Gratitude Journal

 

A New Approach to Studying the Book of Mormon

 

I’ve been singing this book’s praises for years now! It’s the unchanged text of the Book of Mormon, but split up by events and paragraphs instead of chapters and verses. It highlights who is speaking and at what dates these events take place, and even has extra wide margins for easy note-taking. Trust me – this is a great purchase for yourself or someone in your life. 

A New Approach to Studying The Book of Mormon by the Rosenvalls

 

Hearing Him: The Savior’s Voice in the Book of Mormon

 

If there’s anyone in your life that would benefit from learning more about recognizing God’s voice, get them this book! It’s from best-selling authors Diony and Trent Heppler and focuses on the patterns of how God speaks in the Book of Mormon, and how we can better hear Him today. It’s a longer book with lots of short stories– so you could treat it like a little devotional book and take it day by day!

Hearing Him: The Savior’s Voice in the Book of Mormon

 

Words from Heaven Blessing Journal

 

Have you ever received a priesthood blessing or setting apart and thought, “Oooh I want to remember that part of the blessing” or “I wish I could write that down!”. Well that’s exactly the purpose of this beautiful journal! Its pages are meant to record parts of sacred blessings after you receive them, so you can go back and remind yourself of the things that have been promised to you. This would make the most thoughtful gift for anyone in your life, including those going on missions soon, or even for a new baby to record important things from their baby blessing and keep with them throughout their life. This is on major sale right now!

Words from Heaven: A Blessing Journal – by Kara Murri

 

Easter Gifts for Kids

“Seek And Ye Shall Find” Church History Search Book

 

It’s like Where’s Waldo… but with beautiful artwork from different scenes in Church history! My kids love looking through the pictures, and it always inevitably leads to some great discussions about what’s going on in the pictures. It’s also the perfect companion for studying the Doctrine and Covenants! 

“Seek and Ye Shall Find”

 

 

Aquabrush Reusable Activity Books

 

IF YOU HAVE LITTLE KIDS, BUY THESE RIGHT NOW. I seriously have sold all my friends on these, because they are our lifesavers during Sacrament meeting. My 6, 4, and 2 year-old ids all reach for these in our church bag as soon as it starts and it keeps them focused and occupied on scripture stories while Dad is sitting on the stand, so I call that a win! If you aren’t familiar with Aqua Brush books, they are completely reusable, and kids LOVE “painting” with the water brush. I love these ones from Kanga Toys so much because my kids are becoming familiar with scripture stories as they “reveal” the colorful picture on each page. I can’t overstate how much I love these! Use code CFM20 for 20% off your order.

Aquabrush Reusable Activity Books – Kanga Toys

 

“Jesus Felt it Too”- Bible Stories of His Emotions

 

I guess I have all the emotions, too, because I CRIED when I first read this book. Each page showcases a different emotion that Jesus felt and tells the story around how He dealt with His emotions. My kids love the beautiful artwork and it has led to so many great discussions about how Jesus is the perfect example for dealing with even the most complicated emotions.

“Jesus Felt it Too”

 

 

Scripture Song Books from Latter Day Kids

 

Okay it’s honestly a little hard to explain these without experiencing them, so if you want to learn more, click on the link and you can watch and listen to some examples. But I LOVE this set of scripture song books along with the audio tracks. I have one kid in particular who connects with music really well, and ever since we played the soundtrack through a few times, he will randomly start singing scriptures because they get “stuck in his head”. The kids LOVE the interactive narration telling them when to turn each page, and I LOVE that they are learning scriptures through song. If you’ve got musical bones in your family, this is for you! I would say all Primary age kids would love this, but I could even see younger teens enjoying it, too. 

Scripture Songs Books – Latter Day Kids

 

 

Easter Dot Marker Activity Book

 

Are your kids as obsessed with dot art as mine are?? My kids absolutely love using dot markers, and this Easter activity book has been such an easy activity I can pull out on Sundays (or any day!) to incorporate the Easter story into their fun art time. It includes tons of pictures your kids can fill in using dot markers, including the tomb, a lamb, and a Bible. And if you don’t have dot markers yet, I’ve included a link to a great set of the 8 colors. But beware – your kids may want to use them ALL the time!

Easter Bible Story Dot Art Book

 

Christ Picture Books from Palm and Fig

 

If you are looking for picture books for your littles that both teach simple spiritual truths AND are absolutely gorgeous, look no further! These beautiful Christ-centered board books Palm and Fig, an awesome small business, would make the perfect Easter gift for the kids in your life. Use code CFM10 for 10% off your order!

Jesus Christ Picture Books – Palm and Fig Link

 

 

Salt Lake Temple Brick Building Kit

 

My 7 year old recently got into Lego kits, and so when we got this “building brick” set of the Salt Lake Temple, she got right to work! This set is 45 pieces and it was pretty easy for my daughter to assemble, but she loved it and now we have a great model of the temple for them to use while they play. And yes, it’s totally compatible with any other traditional building bricks you may have. I also think this would make a PERFECT baptism gift! 

Salt Lake Temple Brick Building Kit

 

 

 

Giant Easter Resurrection Coloring Page

 

My kids have absolutely LOVED using this giant coloring page. It depicts the Savior’s Resurrection with lots of fun details your kids will love adding color to. It would make the perfect Easter activity, or a fun way to keep little ones entertained during General Conference! And when it says giant – it means giant at 30 inches by 72 inches! Use code CFM20 for 20% off your order!

Giant Coloring Page – Kanga Toys

 

 

 

My Favorite Scripture Marking Pencil

 

It might sound silly, but this pencil will make your kids excited to read the scriptures! It has 8 colors packed into one pencil, allowing you to color-code your markings, or just make it more fun and exciting to write notes and highlight verses. Plus, it’s something that will last years, so it can be used as a kid, missionary, young adult, and beyond!

Scripture Marking Pencil

 

 

 

My First Scriptures – Set of 3

 

These are the CUTEST first little scripture books, perfect for babies and young toddlers. Inside, you’ll find fluffy pages filled with beautiful artwork and simple words that represent the best stories from the book of scripture. The pages are wipeable and perfect for diaper bags! This set of 3 includes the Book of Mormon, the New Testament, and the Old Testament.  

My First Scriptures – Set of 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Divine Daughter: Inspiring Women in Latter-Day Scripture

 

This inspiring book focuses on the women of faith in Latter-Day Scripture (the Book of Mormon, D&C, and the Pearl of Great Price). It’s written as a story-book, so it’s easy and fun to read. You can read stories about 27 incredible faithful women, including the mothers of the stripling warriors, Polly Knight, the Queen of the Lamanites, and Vienna Jacque. This is such a fun and unique book that would be a great gift for any faithful woman in your life AND it’s great for young kids!

Dear Divine Daughter: Inspiring Women in Latter-Day Scripture

 

Easter Scene Sticker and Mat Sets

 

If you want little kids to really listen and learn about the story of Christ’s Resurrection, add stickers! This cute set of mats and stickers allows kids to create their very own Easter scenes. This product comes with 12 sets, each with one mat and one page of stickers, so it’s perfect if you have multiple children or grandchildren you want to gift these to, or if you want to use this as an activity or gift in your Primary class!

Easter Scene Sticker and Mat Sets

 

Norman Books

 

These books are a staple in our household. My favorite thing about these books is that Norman, the mouse-y main character, is really a normal kid. In the Sabbath Day book, he’s complaining about not being able to go to the circus with a friend on Sunday; in the Holy Ghost book, he’s concerned that he can’t actually feel the Holy Ghost, even after receiving the gift; in the Temple Marriage book, his friend tells him all about weddings, only for Norman to learn that temple weddings don’t match what we see on TV… I could go on and on! Each topic is covered in doctrinally sound ways, and they are the perfect way to start important conversations with your kids! And try the board books for younger kiddos – Norman learns about everything from going to nursery to taking the sacrament! Use the code CFMS10 for 10% off of your picture book bundle purchase on Etsy! (Or you can find these books in English OR SPANISH sold separately, too!) 

Norman the Latter-Day Saint Books – Etsy Shop

 

 

Did I miss anything that you LOVE using to celebrate Easter, or to gift for Easter? Drop a comment below and let me know, and maybe I’ll add it to my list!

The post Christ-Centered Easter Gift Guide 2025 first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

And my favorite part? Each one of these gifts comes from a small business! AND each one will build faith in some way.

So whether you’re buying for kids, in-laws, ministering sisters, friends, a spouse, or even yourself (hey – you deserve it!) there’s something for everyone on this list!

One note: since these gifts are from some incredible, talented small businesses, order soon to make sure you have them in time for your Christmas celebration.

(Some of the links bellow may be affiliate links, meaning I get a small payment for each purchase with no extra cost to you! But all of these opinions are truly my own– I’ve really used and love them all!)

Before Christmas Gifts

25 Days of Christ Ornament Advent Calendar

This is one of those things that will become a Christmas tradition you’ll wish you started sooner. My family got one a few years ago and it is FANTASTIC! There are 25 unique, wooden ornaments that each tell a little bit about Christ’s life story. We used our small 4-foot-tall Christmas tree and turned this into a nightly devotional and scripture study each night throughout December. Truly a highlight of the spiritual season, and a simple way to bring the real spirit of Christmas into each day of the month! Use code CALIBLACK for 20% off your order (using this link will automatically apply the code).

Christ-Centered Christmas Advent Calendar

This simple but elegant advent calendar from Christ Was Love is one we’ve had for a few years now! Each day, we turn a card over to see the beautiful new Christ-centered artwork for the day, as well as a scripture to read. And since the backs of each card are so festive (there are a few different design options you can pick from, but the one in the photo here is the one we chose!), this really doubles as another Christmas decoration! I also appreciate that the kit is all ready to go, with the twine and the clothespins included– I didn’t have to buy a thing to make it work. Use the code CFMSTUDY10 for 10% off your order!

Think Celestial Ornament

What better reminder of what our prophet has asked us to do than with this adorable ornament hanging on your tree? This would make such a cute gift for ministering sisters, members of your Relief Society, or other people you serve with in the church. And I have a HUGE discount for you guys! Use the code CFMCELESTIAL for 30% off your order!

Church-y Christmas Gifts

One Minute Scripture Study in the Book of Mormon

Not to toot my own horn but… This book is a MUST BUY this year! My fabulous co-host of the One Minute Scripture Study podcast, Kristen Walker Smith, and I wrote an engaging and simple daily devotional book for the Book of Mormon! For 365 days, you’ll have a daily devotional focused on a scripture from the Book of Mormon that also includes lots of personal stories and easy-to-digest commentary. And of course, every entry includes our signature TAKEAWAY OF THE DAY in 5 words or less! This is absolutely the perfect gift for everyone, from teenagers to families to any individual looking to boost their scripture study next year.

Hymn Necklaces and More Faith-Centered Jewelry

This incredible small businesses makes the most BEAUTIFUL and meaningful jewelry. This is seriously one of my favorite gifts of all time. My personal favorite are the reversible hymn necklaces (hymns have so much power!), but there are so many simple, beautiful pieces of faith-centered jewelry on this Etsy shop. Whether you’re shopping for someone who loves music or just loves the Savior, there’s something for any woman of faith. But hurry! She closes up shop in December, so get those orders in this month. Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order!

Dear Divine Daughter: Inspiring Women in Latter-Day Scripture

This inspiring book focuses on the women of faith in Latter-Day Scripture (the Book of Mormon, D&C, and the Pearl of Great Price). It’s written as a story-book, so it’s easy and fun to read. You can read stories about 27 incredible faithful women, including the mothers of the stripling warriors, Polly Knight, the Queen of the Lamanites, and Vienna Jacque. This is such a fun and unique book that would be a great gift for any faithful woman in your life AND it’s great for young kids!

Amber Oil Vial

When was the last time the men in your life got a new oil vial? Well, let me tell you why this one is a big upgrade! First, it’s made of amber, which means no more rancid-smelling oil when giving a blessing. Second, it actually has a dropper, which means you can’t accidentally pour too much oil! Plus, you can add a little sleeve with a keychain attachment when purchasing so that he can always be prepared to minister to others. Use code CALIB at checkout for 10% off your order.

How I Became Friends with God by Becky Childs

I’m not kidding when I say the first time I read this book, tears were streaming down my face. This is the SWEETEST picture book with the most gorgeous illustrations and heart-warming story. It tells the story of a mother teaching her children about how she began noticing God’s hand in the world, and became friends with Him. Reading this with your kids or grandkids can help prompt discussions with them about your own relationship with God, and how they can notice God more in their lives.

Aquabrush Reusable Activity Books

IF YOU HAVE LITTLE KIDS, BUY THESE RIGHT NOW. I seriously have sold all my friends on these, because they are our lifesavers during Sacrament meeting. My 5, 3, and 1 year olds all reach for these in our church bag as soon as it starts and it keeps them focused and occupied on scripture stories while Dad is sitting on the stand, so I call that a win! If you aren’t familiar with Aqua Brush books, they are completely reusable, and kids LOVE “painting” with the water brush. I love these ones from Kanga Toys so much because my kids are becoming familiar with scripture stories as they “reveal” the colorful picture on each page. I can’t overstate how much I love these! 

Come Follow Me Co

This is a fun way to keep each week’s Come, Follow Me lesson at the front of your mind all year long! (Which makes it the PERFECT gift for friends, neighbors, or even members of a church class!) Each week, you’ll change to the next card, which has a featured scripture (with the cutest designs!). You can spend the week memorizing or pondering on the scripture, and it can remind the whole family to stay focused on Christ. It even comes with a wooden block to display the pictures anywhere you’d like! Plus, there’s both an English and Spanish version! Use the code CFMStudy2024 for 15% off your entire order.

2024 Book of Mormon Come Follow Me Calendar

This calendar features gorgeous photography by Scot Facer Proctor from real-life locations related to events we’ll be studying in the Book of Mormon. It makes a FANTASTIC gift for neighbors and friends because 1) EVERYONE needs a new calendar for 2024, and 2) It has images from the Book of Mormon and reminds you to follow along with the CFM curriculum for next year! Let’s be honest, you’ll probably want to grab one for yourself, too… 

Nephi and the Broken Bow Stacker Set

Scripture story LEGOs?! Yes, please! If you’ve got LEGO-loving kids, these perfectly attach onto any pre-existing sets you have. This set can be used to tell the story of Nephi and the Broken Bow, so it’s perfect for the upcoming Come, Follow Me content in the Book of Mormon. Plus, there’s an adorable little Liahona included! While you’re on the site, check out the adorable diamond nativity art that your creative kids can do as a fun Christ-centered craft this Christmas season. Use code CFMSTICKERS to receive a FREE set of diamond nativity art with any purchase!

A New Approach to Studying the Book of Mormon

I’ve been singing this book’s praises for years now! It’s the unchanged text of the Book of Mormon, but split up by events and paragraphs instead of chapters and verses. It highlights who is speaking and at what dates these events take place, and even has extra wide margins for easy note-taking. Trust me – this is a great purchase for yourself or someone in your life for the coming year.

Norman Books

These books are going to be the new staple in your household! My favorite thing about these books is that Norman, the mouse-y main character, is really a normal kid. In the Sabbath Day book, he’s complaining about not being able to go to the circus with a friend on Sunday; in the Holy Ghost book, he’s concerned that he can’t actually feel the Holy Ghost, even after receiving the gift; in the Temple Marriage book, his friend tells him all about weddings, only for Norman to learn that temple weddings don’t match what we see on TV… I could go on and on! Each topic is covered in doctrinally sound ways, and they are the perfect way to start important conversations with your kids! And try the board books for younger kiddos – Norman learns about everything from going to nursery to taking the sacrament! Use the code CFMS10 for 10% off of your picture book bundle purchase on Etsy! (Or you can find these books in English OR SPANISH sold separately, too!) 

The post Church-y Christmas Gift Guide 2023 first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

Here at Come Follow Me Study, I love being able to showcase church-related and other uplifting products that will add some special meaning to the gifts you give this year for Christmas. There are some ridiculously talented and driven members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are working to make your homes and lives a little more Christlike in some fun and unique ways!

Scroll through and see what will make it under your tree this year!

One more note– if any of these products look perfect for you, I would recommend ordering right away! In addition to all the supply chain scares, small businesses usually have a bit of a longer turnaround for getting gifts to you in time for the big holiday.

(Some of the links bellow may be affiliate links, meaning I get a small payment for each purchase with no extra cost to you!)

Before Christmas Gifts

JMPorium Felt Board Kit

This Nativity felt board kit is AMAZING and HUGE. My kids have been obsessed with it ever since it arrived, and my daughter in particular really enjoys creating the nativity scene, taking it down, and putting it back up over and over! You also could tooootally use this as an advent calendar and put up a new piece of the felt Nativity story each day. But we are just loving the whole thing. I have to say, the quality of this is impeccable. This is a felt board you will use for years and years to come, plus it rolls up nicely for easy storage! Use the code CFMSTUDY25 for 25% off your entire order!

25 Days of Christ Ornament Advent Calendar

We tried this last year for the first time, and it was FANTASTIC! No matter the ages of your kids, they will love finding the new ornament for each day. There are 25 unique, wooden ornaments that each tell a little bit of Christ’s life story. We used our small 4-foot-tall Christmas tree and turned this into a nightly devotional and scripture study each night throughout December. Truly a highlight of the spiritual season, and a simple way to bring the real spirit of Christmas into each day of the month! Use the code CFM15 for 15% off your entire order!

Jackman Music Nativity Kit

Does your family act out the Nativity on Christmas Eve, too?! You NEED to grab this Nativity Kit from Jackman Music. Our extended family totally loved using this last year, and it’s going to become a staple for us. First, this music book includes a planning page to make sure everyone gets their character assignment. There is a full and complete script too, so that you don’t have to try to figure out where each of the important Nativity stories are in the scriptures. AND THEN, because this is from the fabulous folks at Jackman Music, there is a BACKGROUND TRACK to play while reading the script, as well as some music for other Christmas hymns. I don’t want to go on and on about this book, but there are also activities and quizzes and recipes in this book, too… basically order it NOW so that you can help your Christmas Eve run super smoothly! Use the code CFM2021 for 20% off your purchase!

Little People Nativity Set

After telling our daughter that she couldn’t play with our nice Nativity set about a million times, I realized she needed something that she COULD play with. Luckily, her grandma was one step ahead of us! She loved playing with it so much last year, that I don’t think we put it away until February. This is a gift you might want to grab and give NOW so that kids have all season to enjoy it!

Christ Centered Christmas Advent Calendar

This simple but elegant advent calendar from Christ Was Love is a new addition to our home this year! Each day, we turn a card over to see the beautiful new Christ-centered artwork for the day, as well as a scripture to read. And since the backs of each card are so festive (there are a few different design options you can pick from, but the one in the photo here is the one we chose!), this really doubles as another Christmas decoration! I also appreciate that the kit is all ready to go, with the twine and the clothespins included– I didn’t have to buy a thing to make it work. Use the code CFMSTUDY10 for 10% off your order!

Nativity Diamond Art

If you need an activity to keep your artistic kids focused and excited this season, diamond art is the perfect answer! Have you tried diamond art before?! You use a little tool to match up diamond dots and glue them onto the image. It’s like color-by-number but with diamond dots! My friends at Our Picnic Tree have a couple options– either create a larger framed Nativity scene (perfect for displaying afterwards!), or create 9 smaller stickers of Nativity characters that could be used for anything! (I would recommend kids be at least 5 years old to tackle this one!) Use the code CFM15 for 15% off anything!

Activities for Kids

Aquabrush Reusable Activity Books

IF YOU HAVE LITTLE KIDS, BUY THESE RIGHT NOW. I seriously have sold all my friends on these, because they are our lifesavers during Sacrament meeting. My 3 and 1 year old both reach for these in our church bag as soon as it starts and it keeps them focused and occupied on scripture stories while Dad is sitting on the stand, so I call that a win! If you aren’t familiar with Aqua Brush books, they are completely reusable, and kids LOVE “painting” with the water brush. I love these ones from Kanga Toys so much because my kids are becoming familiar with New Testament AND Book of Mormon stories as they “reveal” the colorful picture on each page. I can’t overstate how much I love these! Use the code CFM15 for 15% off your entire order! CODE VALID THROUGH NOVEMBER 22ND.

Scripture Stackers

Scripture story LEGOs?! Yes, please! If you’ve got LEGO-loving kids, these perfectly attach onto any pre-existing sets you have. This set can be used to tell the story of Nephi and the Broken Bow, but there’s also a Nativity set if you’d rather have a Christmas-themed one! Use the code CFM15 for 15% off anything!

Wooden Temple Puzzle

I made the mistake of thinking that our Gilbert temple wooden puzzle would be super easy. I mean, it’s pretty small. How hard could it be?! Well, it’s no 1,000 piece puzzle, but it still took me a good 10 minutes or so to figure out how all of the intricate wooden pieces fit together! And the best part? My toddler daughter has now figured it out and can complete it faster than I can. This is a really fun puzzle because it IS challenging, without taking hours on end. Honestly, I’d recommend it for any age! And you can choose from ANY temple for your puzzle! Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order!

Reusable Drawing Tablet

I just have to share my other favorite Sacrament meeting activity for young kids. These reusable drawing tablets are a total win! They are great for creative minds and busy hands, but I’ve also started having my daughter try to draw different scripture characters or stories so that I can guess them. Plus, they are super cheap! Put these in your Sunday bag, for sure! 

Baptism Cookie Cutter Set

This is quite literally one of the sweetest gifts you could give a 7 year old! If you have a loved one who will be baptized within the upcoming year, get them excited by giving them the opportunity to bake – while also creating fun and natural opportunities to talk about their upcoming ordinance! But this isn’t just for 7 year olds – the CTR and temple cookie cutters can be purchased separately. I love that for the temple cookie cutter, you can pick any temple to add to your set! Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order! 

Reverent Gifts for Kids

CTR Choose the Right reversible necklace

Instead of traditional CTR rings, many young girls are starting to prefer the personal reminder on necklaces – and I can see why! This sweet necklace has CTR on one side and the written out “Choose the Right” on the other side. My three year old honestly loves wearing necklaces now, so any uplifting message that I can put on her, I am down for! Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order!

Norman Book Bundles

This bundle of TEN books are going to be the new staple in your household! My favorite thing about these books is that Norman, the mouse-y main character, is really a normal kid. In the Sabbath Day book, he’s complaining about not being able to go to the circus with a friend on Sunday; in the Holy Ghost book, he’s concerned that he can’t actually feel the Holy Ghost, even after receiving the gift; in the Temple Marriage book, his friend tells him all about weddings, only for Norman to learn that temple weddings don’t match what we see on TV… I could go on and on! Each topic is covered in doctrinally sound ways, and they are the perfect way to start important conversations with your kids! Quin brings these out EVERY. SINGLE. SUNDAY! Use the code CFMS20 for 20% off of your picture book bundle purchase on Etsy! (Or you can find these books in English OR SPANISH sold separately, too!) These books are also sold on Amazon, but unfortunately the discount code does not work there. Click here to find the Amazon links if you are still interested, though!

If you’ve got younger kiddos, I totally recommend this bundle of three board books. Norman is a cute little mouse who is learning what it means to take the sacrament, choose the right, and go to nursery! They are the perfect addition to any church bag, plus my youngest has started showing more and more interest in reading these! Use the code CFMS20 for 20% off the bundle (or you can grab them individually on the Etsy shop, too!). You can also buy these board books as ebooks individually on Amazon, but unfortunately the discount codes don’t work there. Click here to find those Amazon links, though!

Temple Music Light

Imagine your kids experiencing the awe of turning on this temple light, and hearing their favorite Primary song being played! My daughter is quite literally entranced by ours. We have the Gilbert temple one, and she loves turning both the light and the music on and off, plus she always sings along to “I Love to See the Temple”. This is such a sweet addition to any kid’s room, and I love that you can choose which song you want when you order, in addition to, of course, picking from any temple. Your kids are going to love staring and listening to this one – cuz mine does! Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order!

I am a Child of God Print

There are a few different versions of these adorably sweet “I am a Child of God” prints, so click over to check all of them out! We currently have the pink background print in my daughter’s room, and the rainbow letters one in my son’s room. My toddler was SO excited to get this and hang it up in her room, and I loved that it was shipped and printed on high quality paper. Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order! (If you don’t have any 8×10 frames at your house, we like this white one or this black one!)

Quiet Book

This has been a life-saver for helping my kids stay reverent and quiet during church! I hide it away during the week so that it seems extra special when I pull it out when we get to our pew. There are enough tactile activities to keep both my 3 and 1-year-old’s energy focused on this little book. (I also found a specific Bible Quiet Book that looks really cute, too!)

Christus LED Night Light

I mean, if you need a light to help keep your kid from getting scared in the dark, this LED Christus statue night light is perfect! I love that you can choose between toooons of colors for the Christus light to switch between, but the symbolism of Christ being the light is definitely going to lead to some great gospel discussions. And I am all for that! Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order!

My First Old Testament Stories

This is such a fun way to make the scriptures accessible to young kids! We’ve used the Book of Mormon one and Church History ones, but we are excited to break this one out this upcoming year as we study the Old Testament! The pictures are fantastic, and my daughter loves the summarized scripture stories. And I love that it’s so durable as a large board book! 

Jewelry

Beloved Daughter of Heavenly Parents Necklace

The new Young Women’s theme starts with: “I am a beloved daughter of Heavenly Parents…” Which I LOVE. In this small but powerful nod to our Heavenly Mother, this necklace is the perfect gift to remind a young woman, leader, or daughter of any age that their divine nature comes from Heavenly Parents!

Hymn Reversible Necklace

Okay, this is truly one of my favorite gifts of all time and on this list. Music is powerful, and the Spirit that comes from the hymns continues to impact my life every day. That’s probably why I am obsessed with these necklaces and wear them all of the time. On one side, there is a beautifully written phrase from a hymn, and on the other side, the musical notation for that phrase! I always wear it with the musical notation side facing out, but I love that the words are there, too. If you are giving gifts to people who have been shaped by music, or who have a favorite hymn on this list, then this necklace is honestly a must-give! Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order!

Through Cloud and Sunshine Necklace

Hymn texts are some of my favorite scriptures of all time, and I love this brand new necklace that showcases a powerful line: “Through cloud and sunshine, Lord”. That little phrase means a lot to me, and it’s just a bonus that this necklace looks so elegant and beautiful, too. This is the perfect gift for anyone who might be touched by this hopeful phrase! Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order! 

Hymn Bracelets

Are bracelets coming back?! Did they never leave? I may have been out of the bracelet look for a while, but I started noticing that all the Young Women wear them now, which means I should hop back on that fashion train again! HAHA. But really, just as much as I love the reversible hymn necklaces that I mentioned earlier, these reversible hymn bracelets are the perfect gift for someone who’d rather have the beautiful reminder on their wrist. I have one of these, which makes me fashionable now, and it always becomes a conversation piece! Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order!

Gifts for Men

Oil Vial

When was the last time the men in your life got a new oil vial?! I discovered this special amber oil vial last year and my husband loved getting it in his stocking. Here is why this oil vial is SUPERIOR (I know, I never thought I’d get so passionate about oil vials!). First, the vial is made of amber, which means your oil isn’t going to spoil or go rancid. Second, it is actually a dropper! No need to worry about pouring out too much when this needs to be used. And lastly, this little company is actually being run by a high school student named Trace who is saving for his mission! This is a quick and easy must-buy for all the guys!

More Fit 4 the Kingdom

If you want a kick in the pants to get going on some goals, READ THIS BOOK! Seriously, Skye Fagrell is an expert on goal-setting, fitness, and spirituality and ties it all together in a fun, powerful, and motivational read. I read this book in January and it lit a fire under me! It’s a great book for all ages (and honestly, all genders), but teenage boys and their dads would love all of the sports references and how concrete Skye makes goal-setting seem. With the new Youth program, this book is on point!

Tie Bar

Tie accessories are totally in right now! I got my husband a couple of these for Father’s Day, and he wears one on his tie pretty much every week to church. Since these are made by the fabulous Nichelle Lora, you can choose to get her signature musical notations of favorite hymns on the tie bar, or you can choose from other meaningful phrases. Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order!

A Temple Replica

These temple replicas are a fun but important addition to any home office or desk! We have the “small” sized replica of our Gilbert temple (like 4 inches wide), and it is a perfect little reminder of the Lord’s house. If you are wanting to go big, though, you can get much larger replicas! (Also, my daughter totally plays with ours all of the time, and this 3D printed plastic holds up to… well, let’s just say, these are very durable haha!) Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order!

Tie Pin

Tie pins are another fun way to add some personality to a classic suit and tie! And I have to say– they really are a conversation piece! You can choose from two inspirational phrases. Use the code CFM20 for 20% off the entire order!

Home

Christus, Christ Definition, Hear Him trio

Okay, this gift is on the pricier side, so it would make a great gift for a spouse or a parent who is really looking to add some beautiful Christ-centered pieces to their home. (Plus, it comes in 2 sizes and 4 different styles of wood, so check out the smaller size if that fits your budget better!) We have the large set with the “Weathered Grey” wood, and it has been in our front room for almost an entire year! I have to say, pretty much anytime anyone new walks into our home, they talk about how beautiful this trio is and ask me where I got it! The wood-cut letters and Christus are truly as stunning in person as you would hope! I HIGHLY recommend these! Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order!

Print of Jesus Christ

There are a few you can choose from so look through the options to find the right Christ artwork! I love how simple and peaceful these renditions are. They are perfect for bedrooms, dorm rooms, or smaller areas of the wall – we have one in our upstairs hallway that fits perfectly! It’s just a beautiful way to have more of the Savior in our home without breaking the budget. Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order!

The Family Proclamation/Living Christ/Articles of Faith sign

Okay, full disclosure, I don’t have this set… yet. But whenever we are ready to upgrade our “church document” signs, these are hands down the ones we are getting. The borders and the title words are wood that pop off the sign, plus there are a bunch of different wood colors and even sizes to pick from. Honestly, I just love how unique these are! They are a bit of an investment, so this would be a great gift for your spouse or for your parents (or yourself!). And heads up – you don’t have to get all 3 at once, so if there is just 1 sign that you’d like, you can check that out! Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order!

Temple Themed Wall Decor

This is the PERFECT gift for newlyweds, or someone nearing an important anniversary! I gave one with the Oakland temple on it to my sister and brother-in-law earlier this year when they got sealed in the temple, and it had their name and anniversary date on it, too. These signs are BEAUTIFUL, and I love how the 3D facade of the temple adds dimension. Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order!

The Restoration Proclamation

Do you have a copy of The Restoration: A Proclamation hanging up in your home yet? It’s been a little over a year since this new document was presented by President Nelson, and I wanted to make sure it had space on my wall along with the other church proclamations. This is the perfect gift for anyone on a budget, especially for those decorating small spaces or dorm rooms. There are a couple different color options, and you could even grab all of the essential church documents in this same style if you want to gift someone the whole set! Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order!

Round Christus Sign

Simplicity is powerful! I love the unique round shape for this Christus sign. I feel like so many people are wanting to make sure their home is representative of the Savior, and this is a great way to add that in. Plus, if you choose the smaller sign size, this is actually a really affordable gift for anyone on your list! Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order!

Scripture Study

Old Testament BP/LP Study Guide

Coming December 2021! Even though you can’t grab it quiiiiite yet (finishing touches happening right now!) it needs to be on your Christmas list! Did you know that the new Come, Follow Me for the Old Testament starts on December 27?! That’s just 2 days after Christmas, which means you’ll definitely want to use Christmas as an opportunity to stock up on the resources you need as we dive into the strange but fascinating world of the Old Testament. If you aren’t familiar with my Big Picture/Little Picture Study Guides, they have been used by THOUSANDS of people to help supplement their Come Follow Me study in 2 ways: 1) I give quick and easy but thorough context for each section of scripture so that you actually “get” what’s happening without spending hours researching history. And 2) I help guide you on the most essential step of how to actually APPLY these scriptures to your life right now. Like yes, the Old Testament can change who you are today. I pride myself with finding what I believe is the perfect balance between giving you all the info you need (so you can make comments in Sunday School and teach your family with confidence), but not overwhelming you with too much stuff that isn’t necessary, because let’s face it, you’ve got enough going on! Stay tuned to my email list (sign up at comefollowmestudy.com) to make sure you get access as soon as I launch this on Amazon AND via digital copies in December. (If you are trying to budget, there will be multiple price options based on different formats, but plan for between $15-$25)

Journal Edition of the Old Testament

This is my other MUST HAVE for Old Testament next year! (Besides my Big Picture/Little Picture Study Guide and the regular Come, Follow Me manual.) This book is a bit massive because, hey, the Old Testament is large, but it doesn’t seem too big. But the best part? There are lines for journaling around the outside margins of each page! As an avid scripture note-taker, this has been perfect for me. I have this exact blue one, but there are also other design covers available. This is also sold via Deseret Book, so if you live close to a physical store, you can head there, too!

Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament

Okay, if you are the type of person who loves learning about the big historical and cultural context for everything that’s happening in the Old Testament, this is a great gift. I would not necessarily recommend this for a reader who likes to keep things simple, if that makes sense. But I have been fascinated by all the information I’ve learned while studying this book! Plus, there are TONS of pictures, so it’s a great book to look through. Now head’s up, I’m linking to the Amazon listing, but the copies are usually “unavailable” so I suggest scrolling down a bit on the Amazon listing to “See all buying options”. You can see other people who are selling this book secondhand, which is actually how I got mine. I found one in “good” condition, and it has worked perfectly!

The Pearl of Great Price Made Easier

For the first month and a half of our study this next year, we will be studying the Book of Genesis along with the Pearl of Great Price! If you want some assistance understanding what is going on in the Pearl of Great Price books (Moses and Abraham), this is a fantastic book. If you’ve never read one of David Ridge’s books before, he pretty much goes through verse by verse and adds his own commentary and pulls out gospel lessons! (I especially recommend this if you are a Sunday School teacher!)

A New Approach to Studying the Covenants of our Fathers

Do you remember the Book of Mormon I used to talk about all the time that split the book up into events and paragraphs, instead of chapters and verses? Although the authors have unfortunately not done the entire Old Testament (that would be nearly impossible and/or take their entire lifetime!), they HAVE synthesized the books of Genesis (in the OT), Moses (Pearl of Great Price) and Abraham (Pearl of Great Price). They all cover similar events, and so they have been organized into events, with notations for speakers, and any other relevant info! You’ll only use this for the first month and a half of study, but I still think it’s a worthwhile investment to make things more clear!

2022 Kirtland Diary for Thoughts and Personal Revelation

I am actually NOT a planner person, but I got the 2021 version of this planner a year ago, and I have LOVED IT! I still use it every week to keep track of the million things that I have to get done, plus the photography is just beautiful. This next year, the 2022 version has pictures from Kirtland, and I’m so excited to get mine! As for actual features for the planner, I love that there are monthly pages to help me see what’s going on at a glance, as well as in-depth weekly pages with lots of space to plan out each day. But my favorite part is that there are actually TONS of random lines and even full empty notebook pages interspersed. Whether I need to plan out some Instagram posts, write a grocery list, or do a brain dump, there is ALWAYS room close by in this diary/planner!

Family/Neighbor

OMSS in the Old Testament

This book is a MUST BUY this year! Kristen Walker Smith, who is my fabulous co-host of the One Minute Scripture Study podcast, wrote a fantastic, engaging, and simple daily devotional book for the Old Testament! And… you’ll even see some devotionals written by yours truly as a contributing author! (Eek, so excited!) For 365 days, you’ll have a daily devotional focused on a scripture from the Old Testament that also includes lots of personal stories and easy-to-digest commentary. And of course, every entry includes our signature TAKEAWAY OF THE DAY in 5 words or less! This is absolutely the perfect gift for everyone, from teenagers to families to any individual looking to boost their scripture study next year.

Blue Lobster Puzzles

I LOVE puzzles, and hands down, Blue Lobster has the best artwork. The cartoon-y style is so fun, and the unique colors make the puzzles a good challenge, but still totally do-able. I may or may not have 7 of their puzzles… #truestory. Plus, I think most families enjoy doing puzzles at least once in a while, so this makes puzzles a super fun but safe gift to give neighbors or extended relatives! If you want a church-y gift, I would recommend getting the “Temples of the United States” one (this is the one pictured), but there are also specific ones for Utah, California, Italy, or tons of other fun art options! Use the code FOLLOW for 20% off your entire order! CODE VALID THROUGH END OF NOVEMBER 30TH.

2022 Old Testament Come Follow Me Calendar

This calendar is also a FANTASTIC gift for neighbors and friends because 1) EVERYONE needs a new calendar for 2022, and 2) It has images from the Old Testament and reminds you to follow along with the CFM curriculum for next year! Let’s be honest, you’ll probably want to grab one for yourself, too… 

Come Follow Me Co

This is a fun way to keep each week’s Come, Follow Me lesson at the front of your mind all year long! (Which makes it the PERFECT gift for friends, neighbors, or even members of a church class!) Each week, you’ll change to the next card, which has a featured scripture (that also looks great!). You can spend the week memorizing or pondering on the scripture, and it can remind the whole family to stay focused on Christ. It even comes with a wooden block to display the pictures anywhere you’d like! Use the code CFM15 for 15% off your entire order!

Temple Ornaments

What better gift for friends and neighbors than to give a gorgeous reminder of the temple hanging from their tree?! Choose your local temple, your neighbor’s hometown temple, a temple from their mission… the options are endless! AND this is a gift that will be used year after year. Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire order! (If you want to order 10 or more, use the code ORNAMENTS for 25% off!)

Wooden Temple Christmas Ornaments

This is another cool style of temple ornament, if you like the wood-engraved feel! Ornaments that are meaningful and beautiful are always a safe gift to give to neighbors and friends, and they will be used year after year. Use the code CFMSTUDY for 20% off your entire purchase!

Stocking Stuffers

Quotes and Magnets

The perfect addition to any fridge or organizational board, these fresh and bright designs are the best simple gift that people will 100% use. My fridge is actually covered with these right now – I think my favorite ones are the “Charity Never Faileth” (PERFECT with the Relief Society motto, right?!) and the picture of Jesus Christ holding a little lamb. P.S. Youth leaders: There is a “Trust” sticker and a magnet for Proverbs 3:4-5, which is the youth theme for next year! This would make a fantastic gift!  Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order!

Scripture Marking Pencil

When I turned 8 years old, I was given this exact brand and kind of marking pencil – and I STILL use the same one! I love it because 1) 8 colors gives me the versatility to color-code however I want, 2) These are actual pencil leads, so they don’t bleed through thin scripture pages, and 3) I only have to keep track of one pencil instead of a whole pencil pack! It’s such a fun and useful little pencil.

Inspirational Stickers

If you’ve got a big metal water bottle, then you’ve GOT to have it covered in stickers, right?! Why not add some inspirational and beautifully designed stickers to help you stay motivated? P.S. Youth leaders: There is a “Trust” sticker and a magnet for Proverbs 3:4-5, which is the youth theme for next year! These would make great gifts for your youth! Use the code CFM20 for 20% off your entire order!

Papermate Gel Pens

If you have scriptures with regular paper thickness (like the Old Testament Journal Edition I mentioned above) then THESE are the pens you want! When I taught middle school, these were the only pens that I would use to grade papers. They had every color available, and I love how bright and thick the ink was, without smearing. Like truly, I have never met any kind of colored pens that work even close to as well, and I think I’ve tried them all.

The post Your Ultimate “Church-y” Christmas Gift Guide 2021 first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

To LISTEN to this podcast episode, CLICK HERE!

To purchase Ben’s book, “A Walk in My Shoes”, CLICK HERE! (affiliate link)

Cali Black:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our special guest episode today. Kristen and I are beyond excited for our guest today. We have Ben Schilaty here, and he recently wrote a book called, A Walk in My Shoes, if you’re watching here, A Walk in My Shoes: Questions I’m Often Asked as a Gay Latter-day Saint.

Cali Black:

And I have kind of followed Ben’s story for a little bit, and when I saw this book, I’m like, “I have to read this.” And when I read it, I’m like, “Kristen, we have to have him on the podcast.”

Cali Black:

And I just have to make a comment about Kristen, you guys. She is feeling under the weather right now, so I will probably be doing most of this interview on my own. She will pop in, if she’s feeling up to it. But I do want to give her my condolences and hope she feels better.

Cali Black:

Anyway, without further ado, Ben, welcome, and thank you so much for being here. Would you mind introducing yourself a bit for those who aren’t familiar with you?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah, I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. So I was born and raised in the Seattle area. My parents are converts of the church. I have three degrees from BYU, which I call my three degrees of glory.

Ben Schilaty:

I earned my PhD at the University of Arizona, in second language acquisition and teaching. So I used to be a Spanish teacher. I taught Spanish for 10 years. Then I became a therapist. I did that for a little bit. And now I work full time at BYU in the Honor Code office, and I also adjunct a couple classes.

Cali Black:

So Ben, I have been talking with a lot of my followers, and I know that there is a big confusion on to why you say that you can be a gay Latter-day Saint. For a lot of members, there’s kind of this dissonance of, “Wait, isn’t that against our religion? I don’t really understand that.” So I’d love for you to take a minute if you wouldn’t mind, and explain for you at least how these two titles work together in harmony?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah, that’s a great question. So I just want to start out by quoting something that President Ballard said at BYU back in 2017. He said this to BYU students. “We need to listen to and understand what our LGBT brothers and sisters are feeling and experiencing. Certainly, we must do better than we have done in the past, so that all members feel they have a spiritual home, where their brothers and sisters love them and where they have a place to worship and serve the Lord.”

Ben Schilaty:

So Elder Ballard is clear. We have LGBT brothers and sisters, I am one of them, and we need to be listening to and understanding our stories. And I also love his acknowledgement that we need to do better than we’ve done in the past. And that is for sure.

Ben Schilaty:

So there are a lot of people in the church who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer, who are active, faithful and hold temple recommends, just like I do.

Ben Schilaty:

And there are also a lot of people who are part of the LGBTQ community and attend church, who might not be living church teachings fully, but they should be welcomed and understood just as anyone else.

Cali Black:

Yeah.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Can I pop in with a question real quick?

Cali Black:

Yeah.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I think most of us understand the LGB part of LGBTQ. Would you explain really quickly, what the T and the Q, the transgender and the queer, what are those about?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. So someone who identifies as transgender, is someone who was identified as one gender at birth, but identifies as a different gender than what they were assigned at birth.

Ben Schilaty:

So someone who was assigned male at birth, might later identify as female, or vice versa, or might identify as non-binary, they don’t feel like they have a gender or a gender.

Ben Schilaty:

And the Q stands for queer. And queer is just an umbrella term for anyone in the LGBTQ community. So anyone who isn’t heteronormative who… So queer just means not straight. And that can mean a wide variety of things.

Cali Black:

Yeah. Thanks for clarifying that. Ben, tell me if you agree or not, but that’s where some of the confusion comes from, is some people identify with these labels and are worthy temple recommend holders, and some people identify these labels and leave the church, and some people identify these labels, and they still are participants of the church, but make their own decisions as well.

Cali Black:

And I feel like that kind of leads to this confusion of, we feel like this one word, should have all of this meaning attached, and it doesn’t always have that meaning attached.

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. When I say the word gay, some people say, “Well, you shouldn’t call yourself gay, because that means that you are, “Acting on it.”” And honestly, I think the phrase, “Acting on it,” is problematic just to begin with.

Ben Schilaty:

So if you’re in the majority in society, if you identify as straight, it’s not something you usually have to think about or even disclose, because you’re just the default.

Ben Schilaty:

But I want you to imagine if you signed up for a cruise, and actually signed up for a gay cruise, how long would it take you to start telling people that you were straight. And so in this world where straight is the default, there’s a part of me that doesn’t fit that mold.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I use a term to help people understand me and my realities, and that term that I choose to use is gay. And for some people, the word gay means having sex with same sex partners. That is not what it means to me or to most people.

Cali Black:

Awesome. Thank you for clarifying that. So going off of that, why did you feel like you wanted to share your story, your personal experience as a gay Latter-day Saint? Why did you feel prompted to write the book and share it so publicly?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I first came out publicly, seven years ago, when I was 30. I came out on my blog, and that wasn’t something I ever planned on doing. I’m the only Ben Schilaty on the internet, so I’m really googleble.

Ben Schilaty:

And I worried that by putting that information out there, coming out publicly, I couldn’t take it back. I just felt so prompted to do it. And I remember having my coming out post, ready to post and sitting in my parents resting room over Christmas break, and just wondering if I should hit publish.

Ben Schilaty:

And I said, this really fervent prayer. You know that feeling you get when you’re supposed to bear your testimony, like a nervous, courageous sort of feeling. I got that feeling tensed. And I just knew I was supposed to do that, and so I posted it.

Ben Schilaty:

Ever since then, my life has changed for the better. Just me personally… The weight of having to hide who I was, and pretend to be something I wasn’t, has just totally gone. I am a better, happier person.

Ben Schilaty:

But also, I have found that my orientation is so tied to my understanding of the gospel and the things I’ve learned, that the main vehicle through which I share my testimony is by talking about my orientation.

Ben Schilaty:

And so part of the reason I think God wanted me to come out, was because I can use my experiences to build his kingdom. And so that’s when I first came out.

Ben Schilaty:

The reason I wrote the book is… I was blogging about being gay for a long time, but blogs have really short shelf lives. People care for a day or two, then they stop reading them, but a book lasts for a while.

Ben Schilaty:

And I just had some important principles I wanted to teach, and I saw a large gap in understanding. People kept asking me the same questions again, and again and again.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I thought, “Well, I’m just going to write a book that discusses the questions I often get asked. And then that way, people don’t always have to ask me personally, they can just read the book and get them themselves.”

Ben Schilaty:

Sorry, you asked me why I wrote the book. I have a couple of reasons. One of the reasons that was so important to me was, I’m active in the church, I work at BYU, I’m currently a high councilor in my stake.

Ben Schilaty:

I have a really easy story for people to understand and digest, because I’ve lived the Latter-day Saint norm. But a lot of people don’t. And almost everyone has an LGBTQ person in their life who has stepped away from the church.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I wanted to write my story, so that people could understand a little bit about what it was like for me to be gay in the church, and then reach out to their LGBTQ loved one, and ask them to tell their story, because that’s really what’s going to make the difference, when people get to know the people they already love, and already care about in their lives.

Kristen Walker Smith:

And I think that’s so powerful. And just as you were saying that, and as I read the book, and you experienced so much love and acceptance, when you came out. I love how you said it was so liberating for you to actually share all of you with people.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I know this is not on the same level, I either have obsessive compulsive disorder, and for me, there was so much shame in hiding it from people. And as soon as I shared it, it was very empowering, and people were very accepting.

Kristen Walker Smith:

So I can relate to that idea of sharing all of yourself feels great. But do you have any advice for someone who shares all of themselves, and they don’t get that great reception from people, who don’t have wonderful church leaders and friends like you did, and family that turn on them? What’s your advice for those people?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I just want to say I have a lot of privilege in this area. I was dealt the easiest hand of cards. Everyone I came out to responded very positively and remarkably well.

Ben Schilaty:

When someone comes out to someone, or someone important, and that isn’t well received, you got to be with people who are going to have your back. So I have a lot of friends who are afraid to come out to their parents, and I would say, “After you talk to them, come talk to me. I will be with you.”

Ben Schilaty:

Just recently, this LGBTQ magazine in the U.S. wrote a really inaccurate and not kind article about me. It really hurts to just be so misrepresented.

Ben Schilaty:

And then later that day, I had a meeting with the staff I work with at BYU. They’re my co-workers, but they’re my friends. I told them what happened, they just rallied around me. I had felt attacked, but with them I felt protected.

Ben Schilaty:

And so when someone comes out, and that’s not well received, it can feel like an attack. And so I would say make sure you have people in your life who can be a protection to you, and who you know will be with you no matter what.

Ben Schilaty:

And before I came out, I was listening. I knew what people were saying about LGBTQ people, so I knew who I could trust and who I couldn’t. And so make sure you’ve got some people in your corner that you can trust, and then just give those people who aren’t always so kind and loving, give them grace, give them patience and give them time to grow.

Cali Black:

Yeah, I think that’s great advice. One thing you touched on a little bit earlier, and you mentioned in your book is that this book is not meant to be, here is how to be a gay Latter-day Saint and be perfect, and do exactly what Ben does. That’s not why…

Ben Schilaty:

Exactly.

Cali Black:

… you wrote it, but really to inspire us to listen to other people’s stories. So I’m just curious, I know you have a great podcast, I was just listening to an episode this morning, where you with Charlie Bird, called, Questions from the Closet, you talk about…

Cali Black:

You talk to a lot of guests. You just learn their stories. There’s not an agenda where you’re trying to make a clear point, it’s just sharing people’s stories. So what have you learned from listening to other people’s stories?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I have just learned to love people where they are. A story I share in the book that isn’t even about being gay, when I was in high school, my older brother was dating someone that my sister and I didn’t like, and we were worried one day they were going to come home engaged.

Ben Schilaty:

And my sister asked my dad what we should do if they came home, and said they were getting married. And my dad said, “We will cheer for them, and they will be happy. They’re going to do what they want to do, whether we like it or not, but we get to choose how much we will be in their lives.”

Ben Schilaty:

And so, one thing that I’ve learned is, it doesn’t really matter what opinion I have about someone’s life. It doesn’t matter what advice I give them. Ultimately, they’re going to do what they want to do, whether I like it or not.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I just want to look for the good in people’s lives, and cheer on all the good that’s happening with them. Everyone that we interact with is a beloved spirit, son, or daughter or child of heavenly parents.

Ben Schilaty:

And it is such a gift to get to know another soul, and to connect with another spirit. And so even if someone’s life is radically different from mine, I just want to see what goodness they have, what I can learn from them, and how they can be a blessing in my life, because everyone that we interact with can be a blessing in our lives if we let them.

Cali Black:

That’s powerful. Thank you. So you lived in Tucson for a bit. I’m an Arizona girl, not Tucson, but…

Ben Schilaty:

Tucson is the best city in the world by the way.

Cali Black:

Okay, we’ll agree to disagree on that one. I did go to the BYU game when they had that there, and that was a good one for BYU. Anyways, one thing I loved that you talked about in your book is you were in Tucson, that’s when you came out and had a lot of those growing experiences.

Cali Black:

But you started the Ally Nights, where you had support from church leaders, you had support from ward members, from family members who maybe had not been as supportive of their kids beforehand. I was just wondering, could you tell us a bit about that, and what you’ve learned about the importance of bringing people together?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. That’s a great question. Tucson is Zion to me. It was the first place that I was able to be myself, and where people just love me how I was. Came out in a ward setting.

Ben Schilaty:

I was in a singles ward. It was not something I was expecting to do, but I just felt so prompted to do it. And it was while I was teaching an Elders Quorum lesson. And when I sat down, I just felt so relieved.

Ben Schilaty:

And a bishopric member told me later, that he saw that experience, saw me sit down, and saw this weight come off of me. Being able to be open in my congregation was just such a gift.

Ben Schilaty:

Then shortly after that, I moved to a family ward, because I graduated without honors from the singles war because I didn’t get married. That ward just enveloped me too.

Ben Schilaty:

I asked the bishop if I could come out in the first talk I was asked to give, which was just shortly after I moved in, and he said, “I don’t see why that would be a problem.”

Ben Schilaty:

So I came out in my talk, and it wasn’t just to come out, but it was I was telling a story about a gospel principle that was related to me being gay. And after the meeting, there was a receiving line of half a dozen people who just welcomed me in the ward, said they wanted to get to know me, and just hugged me.

Ben Schilaty:

These strangers who I didn’t even know, just invited me into their families immediately, and it was just so wonderful. And so I started a support group for LGBTQ Latter-day Saint while I was in Tucson, and the group quickly grew to a couple dozen people, and those people became my family.

Ben Schilaty:

And some people experienced some fairly homophobic things at church. Some really terrible things were said. And my friend Paul said, “Well, we’ve got to do something about this. What are we going to do to stop these homophobic things?”

Ben Schilaty:

He said, “Well, can I just share my story at your house on Sunday?” And I said, “Sure.” So we invited eight people over, we all sat in a circle, and he shared his story about being a bisexual Latter-day Saint for 20 minutes.

Ben Schilaty:

And then he let people ask him questions for another 40 minutes. And then we went around the circle, and everyone shared a takeaway from the night. It was beautiful. And a lot of the takeaways had nothing to do with what he said, but what the Spirit had taught them.

Ben Schilaty:

And so we said, “That was awesome. Can we do it again next week?” So we did the exact same thing. And after that he said, “You know Ben, you should tell your story too.”

Ben Schilaty:

So we invited a different group of people over, he’d talk for 10 minutes, I’d talk for 10 minutes, and then we let people ask us questions, and then we went around the room and we did takeaways.

Ben Schilaty:

And then as more people joined the group, we’d rotate who would do it. We started calling these nights, Ally Nights, because we’re teaching people how to be LGBTQ+ allies.

Ben Schilaty:

And we did dozens and dozens of these all over the city. Bishops hosted them, my stake president came to one, and hundreds of people came to hear our stories, and it was just so beautiful.

Ben Schilaty:

A bishop of one of the singles wards invited us over to his house, hosted an Ally Night, he invited a bunch of ward members over there, 30 people. One of the women who was there who I’d never met before said this, and I just want to read this quote from my book.

Ben Schilaty:

I’d never met her before, and almost everyone in the support group I started was YSA age. And so she said this, “I want to thank you two for being so open and honest tonight. I want you to know that I’m going to be an LGBTQ ally, and I will support you no matter which path you choose.”

Ben Schilaty:

“I know many of you don’t have families in town, and I will be your Tucson mom, if you need one. Call me anytime, day or night, and I will be there for you. The doors to my home are always open to you, and you are part of my family now.”

Ben Schilaty:

And so it was just beautiful as we shared our hearts and our stories, people just opened up their hearts to us. There are literally dozens of places I could stay in Tucson if I needed a place to stay, because people just loved us that much.

Kristen Walker Smith:

And Ben, as I finished the book, the main takeaway for me was like, “I want to be an ally. I want so bad to be an ally.” But I live in an area where I don’t think that people feel very safe to be open about their sexuality.

Kristen Walker Smith:

And so, I don’t know of anyone who is in the LGBTQ community. I’ve even asked bishops like, “Hey, is there anyone that need support?” And there’s just not a lot of openness around it where I am. How can you be an ally, when no one around you is telling their stories?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. So my friend Diana is the hero of the book. I end the book talking about her. She was one of my closest friends in Tucson, we’re still incredibly close. She knew nothing about the LGBTQ experience when I came out to her, and she honestly wasn’t prepared for it.

Ben Schilaty:

And so when I came out, she was pretty shocked. But then she wanted to learn. She heard my story, she listened to my story, and then I went to this conference in Mesa, Arizona, for LGBTQ members of the church, and I just told her I was going to go.

Ben Schilaty:

It’s a two hour drive from Tucson, and she said, “I want to go. Can I go with you?” That was such an incredibly kind thing for her to say that she would come with me to this place where I knew no one, and she was going to be there with me.

Ben Schilaty:

When I started the support group, she was one of the founding members, one of our designated allies who came and helped. She was there the whole journey. And after I moved away from Tucson, she was still in her singles ward.

Ben Schilaty:

In Relief Society, they asked everyone to stand up, say their name and introduce themselves, and share something interesting about themselves. She stood up and said, “My name is Diana, and I’m an LGBTQ ally. And if anyone wants to talk, I’m always willing to listen.”

Ben Schilaty:

And so sometimes it just takes people starting the conversation. I think having Fifth Sunday lessons, firesides, that’s helpful. I think we should do those things.

Ben Schilaty:

But the most important thing is just organically talking about LGBTQ people. Just bringing them up in everyday conversations, because that’s how we know that we belong. When it’s not some big thing or some big event, but just people are gay and they belong.

Ben Schilaty:

And that just means so much to me. I think Elder Holland really model this in General Conference back in April 2017. It was that talk about how there’s room for everyone in God’s choir. And he said, “There’s room for the single, there’s room for the married, there’s room for large families, and the childless.”

Ben Schilaty:

And then he said, “And there’s room for people with different sexual orientations.” We can do that kind of stuff all the time. Just talk about LGBTQ people in kind, loving and organic ways.

Ben Schilaty:

If the conversation isn’t starting in your area, maybe you’re the one to start the conversation. Read the book in a book club, or something. I don’t know. But there’s a lot that you can do to start a conversation that hasn’t started yet.

Cali Black:

Those are great, solid pieces of advice. Thank you Ben. In your story, you talked a lot about agency. That’s been something that’s been on my heart a lot recently, about how God has given us so much power. I can’t imagine how scary that is for him to be like, “Here’s a trillion different choices you can make and how you can live your life. Hope you find a good path.”

Cali Black:

And obviously he gives us more direction than that, but still we have so much agency, and you talked a lot about, you chose to stay in the church, you chose to come out to certain friends, you chose what relationships you would or wouldn’t have, and how they would go forward. I’m just curious, what are some of your thoughts about agency, and how it’s played a role in your life?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. One of the things I’ve learned is that I’m not a perfect person, and I’m not going to be perfect, and I’m going to use my agency unwisely, and I’m going to use it wrong, and that’s the whole point of mortality.

Ben Schilaty:

That’s why Heavenly Father loved us so much that He sent His son, so that we could have those learning experiences when we made mistakes that we shouldn’t have made. And then as we use our agency in ways that don’t reflect God’s will, that’s how we really learn and grow, and can take advantage daily of the gift of repentance.

Ben Schilaty:

But the most powerful gift of agency I received was from my parents. And I remember when I was 30, just unloading on them. I’d come out to them when I was 23, but we didn’t really talk about it much, and then when I was 30, it felt like I just couldn’t hold on anymore.

Ben Schilaty:

When we talk about the Iron Rod, and all the images of the Iron Rod, the Iron Rods is at waist level. You even hold on to it easily. For me, it felt like the Iron Rod was 10 feet in the air, and I was just clinging to it. My arms were sore, and my hands hurt, and I just felt I just couldn’t hold on anymore.

Ben Schilaty:

It just was physically impossible to stay in the church. And I just explained all this to my parents. And as I did that, my mom said, “You know Ben, we’re not just on your side, we’re with you on 100%. If you need to leave the church and marry a man, you and he will always be part of our family.”

Ben Schilaty:

My parents, they honored my agency so explicitly, and so clearly and so lovingly. They told me that there was nothing I could do that would take them outside of the family.

Ben Schilaty:

I have a quote in the book from David O. McKay, who said that, “The greatest gift God has given us next to life itself, is the power to direct that life.” I think of my parents who gave me life, and then made sure that I had the freedom to live the life that I want to live.

Ben Schilaty:

And by having that freedom… I was at my parents house for a couple of weeks when we had that conversation. And I just spent tons of time just praying and pondering to try and figure out what it was that I was supposed to do.

Ben Schilaty:

And as I pointed my life to Christ, I felt him point me to his church, and I felt compelled to move forward in the church. And during that time, one of the most miraculous things I realized was, as I was reading in Matthew 26, just trying to figure out what to do with my life.

Ben Schilaty:

That’s where Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he prays. He says, “Oh, my Father, if thou be willing to let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.”

Ben Schilaty:

And then something that I had never noticed before, is he gave that prayer two more times. Three times he said, “God, I don’t want to do this, but I want to do your will.” And it occurred to me it’s a very Christ like thing, to not want to do something hard and painful.

Ben Schilaty:

But to be like Christ, we need to do the Father’s will and do that thing anyway. And so that’s what I’ve learned about agency. Agency is all about honoring the choices people are going to make, even if we don’t agree with them, acknowledging that some of those choices are really tough and painful, and then really seeking to do God’s will, and then when we don’t, repenting.

Cali Black:

I love that. Well, Ben, your parents sound amazing from reading your book.

Ben Schilaty:

Oh, they are. They’re amazing.

Cali Black:

I fully believe it. Do you have any advice? There are lots of parents who listen to this podcast. If they have a child who comes out to them, or maybe it’s their child’s friend or someone in a youth group at church, what would be your advice on how to react or approach that conversation in order to produce the most loving result?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. Honestly, the things that have mattered most to me aren’t things that people have told me, but things I have said to myself. And so I think the most important thing is to create an environment in which someone can talk openly, and then the Spirit can teach them.

Ben Schilaty:

And so, when my mom said that I could leave the church, and I’d always be part of the family, that was an incredibly kind thing to say, but I didn’t immediately say, “Oh, I’m going to stay in the church.”

Ben Schilaty:

It was over the next weeks as I prayed and pondered and read the scriptures, and had conversations with my family, then that’s when I decided that I was going to stay, and I said the things I needed to say.

Ben Schilaty:

So if a child or a loved one comes out to you, I would say the most important thing is to say, “Thank you. Thank you for trusting me with this information. Thank you for letting me into this part of your heart.”

Ben Schilaty:

I’d go ahead and even say, “I’m sorry you’ve been dealing with this on your own. I’m sorry that it’s been hard, and I’m here with you on your journey, no matter where it leads.”

Ben Schilaty:

And then I would ask what I would call a grand tour question. Like, “What is it like to be gay? What is it like to be a lesbian and be in a church? What does it mean to you to be transgender?” And then let them talk and then listen, and then ask follow up questions.

Ben Schilaty:

Just really let them dig into their experience. And as you listen and as they talk, they’re most likely going to figure out on their own what it is that they need to do.

Ben Schilaty:

I think the most important thing is to help people figure out through The Holy Ghost specific and personalized direction on their path, because none of us know where our paths are going to lead, but God does.

Ben Schilaty:

And so that’s what I would say. Just get people talking and keep the conversation going. I would, after someone comes out, bring it up again a week later, like, “Thank you so much for telling me, was there anything else you wanted to say that you didn’t get to say?” And just keep an ongoing conversation.

Ben Schilaty:

And also be prepared for some tough things, because when someone comes out to you, they’ve been thinking about this for years, and you’re just starting to think about it.

Ben Schilaty:

And so they’ve progressed and gone through a lot of stages that you haven’t gone through. And it might be a painful process for you to go through similar stages that they went through, as well.

Cali Black:

Yeah. I feel like that takes the pressure off of like, “Oh, I have to say the right thing.” Instead, it’s just approaching it with the mindset of, “Let’s make sure they know they’re loved and that I appreciate them, and then let them do most of the talking.” Because coming out doesn’t even just mean one thing, it opens up the door to their whole story.

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I just want to add something to that, because people are so often worried about saying the wrong thing, and that often leads to inaction and a lack of conversation.

Ben Schilaty:

Like, “Well, I don’t want to say the wrong thing, so we’re just not going to have the conversation.” And a lot of families end up with what I call, a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Like, “We know you’re gay, we’re just not going to talk about it.” That is so hard on so many families.

Ben Schilaty:

Well, after I had this conversation with my parents, where I was really considering leaving the church, I had a similar conversation with one of my brothers, and I told him I’d recently kissed a guy.

Ben Schilaty:

This was his response. He said, “Sorry to make light of this, but yuck. I mean, if that works, you great, but I just don’t get it.” Now, that is such a rude thing to say. To react with disgust when someone tells you about their love life.

Ben Schilaty:

But you know what, that night I wrote in my journal, I wrote, I love my family, and I’m so glad I was able to be open with them. Because my brother, did he say the wrong thing? Yes. But he said an honest thing.

Ben Schilaty:

And it was couched in a conversation in which he’d already demonstrated that he was willing to be with me on my journey, wherever it led. So if we say something that might not be the best thing, if we say it out of sincere love and kindness, it’s just going to help move the conversation forward.

Kristen Walker Smith:

That is such a… When I read that story I was like, “Oh, goodness.” Brothers are just so wonderful. I do have a question that… I hadn’t planned on asking this, but this is something that has actually come up repeatedly, I’ve been telling people about this book. And I’m like, “You’ve got to buy it.” My sister is buying it for all of her kids, because she’s like, “They don’t understand this well enough.”

Ben Schilaty:

You’re so kind.

Kristen Walker Smith:

No, it’s amazing. It’s amazing.

Cali Black:

We’ll get our commission check later.

Kristen Walker Smith:

But one of the questions that keeps coming up from people that I talked to about this book, is how is this fair? How is it fair that God has created you the way you are, and then asks you to live a life in direct opposition to the life you naturally want to live? How is it fair that God is asking this of so many of his children? And I just wondered if you had thoughts on that?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I do have a couple thoughts. So there is a beautiful story in Acts chapter 10, where… I’ll just summarize really quickly, but it’s where Cornelius is Gentiles, sees an angel, and the angel tells him to go find Peter.

Ben Schilaty:

So he sends these men to go find Peter. And while the men are going to find Peter, Peter has this vision of these unclean animals in a sheet, and God says, “Go kill and eat,” and then Peter is like, “I can’t eat these unclean animals.”

Ben Schilaty:

Then God says, “What I have made, clean, call thou not unclean.” And Peter’s like, “What does this mean?” And then Cornelius men show up, and then they take him to Cornelius.

Ben Schilaty:

And he’s like, “Oh, this is what it means. Gentiles can now join the church, and they’ve received the Holy Ghost and it’s beautiful.” So that happens, and then it Acts chapter 15, all these Gentiles are joining the church, and they’re not sure what to do with them.

Ben Schilaty:

Like, “What do we do with all these Gentiles?” And so they have this argument at this big council in Jerusalem. These churches are arguing like, “Do the new Gentiles have to live the law of Moses? Do we have to circumcise these men? What do we do?”

Ben Schilaty:

And finally, in the midst of all this arguing, Peter stands up, and he says, “Why tempt ye God, to put a yoke on our brethren, that neither we nor our fathers could bear?” I just love that acknowledgement by the prophet who said, “Why are we asking these people to live the law of Moses when we couldn’t do it?”

Ben Schilaty:

So I think it’s very important when we talk to our friends and our loved ones, so often people tell me, “Ben, I couldn’t do what you’re doing.” And then my response when people say that is like, “Well, why are you expecting me to do it?”

Ben Schilaty:

So we need to be careful to not ask people to do things that we ourselves wouldn’t do. But what is God asking me to do? I think that’s what’s important. Like, “What is God asking me of my life?”

Ben Schilaty:

I don’t want to pretend to know what anyone else in their life should do, but there have been a number of times where I was ready to just leave the church, because I thought it just didn’t have place for me. The culture and doctrine didn’t have room for a gay Latter-day Saint like me, but I just felt called and compelled to stay again and again and again.

Ben Schilaty:

There’s this line from Preach My Gospel that says, “All that is unfair about life will be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.” And so, is what’s being asked of us unfair? 100%. It is unfair.

Ben Schilaty:

And so I think that there’s a problem that can happen. Two problems. We can say, “Well, this is unfair, therefore, it’s wrong, and I’m just going to throw the whole restoration away.” People do that and that happens. The other thing is, “Well, everything will be made right, so I’m not going to worry about it.” I think both of those answers are not the correct answer.

Ben Schilaty:

I think the correct answer is, “Well, if this is unfair, what are we going to do? How can we be the hands of God? What is he calling us to do to make things right now?”

Ben Schilaty:

I don’t know what that’s going to look like in everyone’s life, but I think the principle is, we can trust that God will make unfair things fair, and what is our role in making that happen?

Cali Black:

Ben, I know you didn’t ask to become a poster boy for it, but I just picture you as someone who’s helping to make life easier for so many youth, especially of our youth that are LGBTQ that are able to look at you not as, here’s exactly what I want to be, but just as someone who’s willing to speak up and to advocate, and then is inspiring other straight people to become bigger allies and to speak up. What a difference you are making in making it hopefully a little easier to bear, when we all come together for that.

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. And Cali, that’s really kind. I just want to acknowledge, I stand on the shoulders of giants. So many people did things. They laid some pavers behind me, that I was able to walk.

Ben Schilaty:

I hope I’m just laying the next couple stones and the next couple of bricks, so that people can walk a little farther than I made it. I’m able to do things, because so many people did things before me, and I just want to help people along the way.

Ben Schilaty:

When I started my podcast, Questions from the Closet with Charlie Bird, my ideal idea… Not ideal, but my target audience is a 21 year old, who just got home from his mission, who is attending BYU, who is worrying about his sexual orientation, doesn’t know what to do.

Ben Schilaty:

I work at BYU, and I meet these kids. Then they come to my office and talk to me, and they just tell me how much my sharing my stories, help them to share theirs.

Ben Schilaty:

Perhaps it’s not appropriate for an administrator to hug a student, but I was like, “Give me a hug. Thank you for sharing this.” We’re all in this together to quote High School Musical.

Cali Black:

Of course.

Ben Schilaty:

I don’t want anyone to look at me as an example, and to try and live my life, but I hope that my sharing my story just encourages and helps people to have the courage to share their own.

Cali Black:

Yeah. And I see that already, just taking that next step. Ben, as we’re kind of finishing up, there’s this big question that I feel so many people are like, “Yes, I’m loving and kind, and I want to love everyone, no matter what their sexual orientation is.”

Cali Black:

But as you mentioned earlier, there have been homophobic things that are said in church, whether overtly or covertly, but sometimes it can be really hard for people to know, how do I show love, when what they’re doing is not in line with my religious beliefs?

Cali Black:

I feel like there’s just this barrier between this ideal of loving everyone, and then we get down to the nitty gritty, and so many people are like, “Wait, but I don’t know how to for that. This makes me a little uncomfortable.”

Cali Black:

I don’t know if I’m explaining the difference here. But how can you suggest that we become more welcoming, even if we feel that uncomfortableness along the way?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. That’s a good question. Let me tell you about my relatives, my aunt and uncle. So my parents are both converts of the church. Their siblings and most my relatives aren’t members of the church.

Ben Schilaty:

My aunt and uncle think it’s stupid that I’m a Latter-day Saint. They think I should just live my life and stop being part of this phony church. They think it’s just ridiculous.

Ben Schilaty:

But you know what, when I went on a mission, they came to my farewell. And then they wrote me every week. And then when my siblings got married in the temple, they stood outside the temple, and were there for pictures.

Ben Schilaty:

Then when I wrote my book, my aunt said, “Do you want me to buy a copy?” And she read it. My life makes no sense to my aunt and uncle, and yet they are going to support me in every part of it.

Ben Schilaty:

And so if I’m supported that way, what does that look like to support an LGBTQ person that I love? If my beliefs are abhorrent to my aunt, and yet she supports me in them, if someone has beliefs that I don’t agree with, or they go against my deeply held beliefs, how am I going to love them?

Ben Schilaty:

So if I have a friend who has decided to leave the church, I want to hear their story. If I have a friend who’s going to be marring a same sex partner, and they want me to be part of that day, I want to be part of that day too. I want to celebrate that with them.

Ben Schilaty:

I just want to cheer on all the good that is happening in everyone’s life. Loving and including people as a principle, I don’t know what that’s going to look like in everyone’s life.

Ben Schilaty:

And if you’re feeling uncomfortable about including someone in your life, that disagrees or lives a life different than what you believe, I think that’s something that you should go to the Lord and prayer about, and really figure out, “Well, okay, there’s this principle of loving everyone. How do I put that principle into practice?”

Ben Schilaty:

So I’m hesitant to tell people exactly what to do, because that’s an individual thing. But you know there’s this phrase that I don’t really like called, “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin.” And I heard someone rephrase that as, “Love the sinner, invite them to dinner.”

Ben Schilaty:

Because that’s what Jesus did. He literally had dinner with sinners. And I think that we can do the same thing. Not to plug my podcast too much, but we have an episode about this called, How can I be an LGBTQ ally and support church teachings?

Ben Schilaty:

I don’t know what the episode number, but you can find it. We interviewed Ally Isom, and she’s amazing. So pray, find out how God wants you to love the people in your life, and you’ll know what to do.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Ben, I think one of the most powerful things I came away with from your book, was the power of just listening, and not stepping in and trying to fix anyone’s problems or change anyone. You don’t really have to take action.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I think the biggest action that I understood from your book, the biggest action we can take is just listening to people and letting them be who they are, and loving them, no matter what your thoughts or beliefs are.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I think that is such a beautiful part of your book, and for anyone who’s considering… He didn’t pay me to say this, but anyone who’s considering buying the book, if you have a gay person in your life, or someone in the LGBTQ community, he says specifically, “This isn’t hand it to them, and this is how they should live their life.”

Kristen Walker Smith:

But there are so many lessons in there that I think everyone, whether you’re straight, whether you’re LGBTQ, can learn about listening and allowing people to use their agency. And that is such a powerful lesson for absolutely everyone. So I loved it. And five stars, five stars, everyone buy it.

Ben Schilaty:

Thank you. What would a paid endorsement look like if that was an unpaid one? My goodness.

Kristen Walker Smith:

We can work on that Ben.

Cali Black:

For reals. All right. Well, Ben, is there anything else that you want to share about your story in particular, or advice to anyone who’s listening?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. I just want to say, when I wrote my book, I’ve tried really hard not to write a gay book. I mean, it’s a story about me, and my life as a gay Latter-day Saint, but I really tried to teach principles.

Ben Schilaty:

And the best feedback I’ve gotten from people is, “I am dealing with this, or this, or this is going on my life, and I found principles in your book that really helped me.” So I just really hope that I can teach principles.

Ben Schilaty:

It’s been an honor to hear how much people are learning from my life and experiences, and I hope to learn from other people, the lives and experiences of those around me as well too.

Cali Black:

Yeah, for sure. And yeah, to your point, when I was looking at all the questions that you’re going to answer, I’m like, “Whoa, this is a very…” Yes. The question, set it up I was like, “Oh, we’re diving into everything about his gay life.”

Cali Black:

But as I read the book, I realized exactly what you’re saying, I had all of these spiritual connections where I’m learning about, “Oh, agency and the power of gathering people together.”

Cali Black:

All right, Ben, we’re at the end here. We always like to end our interviews with going back to President Nelson’s big thing. How do you #HearHim in your life?

Ben Schilaty:

Yeah. That’s such a beautiful question. There are lots of ways that I hear God, through music, through kindness, just through people in their words. But I am a very extroverted person. I am always with people.

Ben Schilaty:

And the one time every day, where I take time, slow down and be by myself, is when I write in my journal. And when I write in my journal and reflect on my day, I try to write about two things every day.

Ben Schilaty:

I try to write about some spiritual experience I had, like how I saw God’s hand in my life that day, and then something funny that happened. And then when I reread my journals, I’m entertained and uplifted.

Ben Schilaty:

But when I take time to just slow down and think about my day, I see the hand of the Lord in my life all the time. And so it’s through making a daily record of my life that I have seen God’s hand work in my life, and that’s one of the ways that I most often hear him.

Cali Black:

I love it. Thank you for sharing that. All right, thank you so much, everyone for listening and again to Ben Schilaty, for being our guest today and sharing a little bit about his life, his experiences, his thoughts.

Cali Black:

And just as a plug again, his book, A Walk in My Shoes, is available wherever you can buy books or does sell a book, and we highly recommend it. Thank you so much for being here Ben. And for everyone else, thanks for listening and coming closer to Christ with us a few minutes at a time.

The post One Minute Scripture Study podcast episode with special guest Ben Schilaty first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

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More resources from Kerry Muhlestein, including a free quick and easy guide to the Blessings Promised to Israel in the Abrahamic Covenant, can be found at his website: http://outofthedust.byu.edu/

This podcast episode is about to blow your mind when it comes to the House of Israel and blessings that have been promised to us. Like really, this is good stuff!

Podcasts of this length are always much better to listen to, but if you have the need to read it for any reason, we wanted to make this available to you!

Here is the transcript for Episode 292, an interview with Kerry Muhlestein.

Cali Black: 

Hello, everyone. We are so excited today to welcome you  to our guest episode. I am here with Kristen Walker Smith. Kristen, are you excited for today? 

Kristen Walker Smith:

I’m so excited. I told you earlier, I’m ready to have my mind blown today. I am SO excited. 

Cali Black:

Well, perfect. We are going to get started. We have our special guest, which is Dr. Kerry Muhlestein, and he is a professor at BYU and we are beyond honored to have him on our podcast because he kind of knows a lot about a lot of things. He’s written books, he teaches at BYU, which of course I attended (the best university in the world. Not that I’m biased).  But we’re really excited today to tackle a topic that we know so many of you are curious about because we get questions on it all the time and that is the House of Israel and the promises that are given to covenant Israel. We know President Nelson has asked us to study that recently. So we’re going to talk to Dr. Muhlestein today about some ideas on this, but first I just want to welcome you, Dr. Muhlestein. Thank you so much for being here. Would you mind introducing yourself a bit for those who may not know you? 

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Thanks for having me. And I’m just excited to be with you both. This is a great opportunity, so thank you. And yeah, I’d be happy to introduce myself. Like you said, I teach at BYU, I have degrees in Hebrew, Bible, and Egyptology and I just have a fascination and a love for the ancient world, but I just can’t get enough. I get drawn into it. I can’t stop. I direct an excavation in Egypt, so I’m there, well, not lately because of COVID, but before then I was there at least annually and often more than that, I’ve taught a couple of times in the Jerusalem Center and studied there in Jerusalem. And so I’m just drawn to the ancient world and ancient texts, especially in symbols, they captivate me and I can’t get enough of it.

Kristen Walker Smith:

That is absolutely wonderful. I mean, I cannot wait to hear what you have to say on this because you are someone that actually knows what’s going on. Like I can read about the subject, but you’re living it. I’m so excited. So the first thing that we want to find out from you is President Nelson has really been emphasizing the House of Israel and the gathering of Israel. And I feel like as soon as you say the word Israel, people’s spiritual eyelids go down and they start falling asleep because it’s not something that we know very well. And I feel like you do.  President Nelson has even encouraged us to make lists of the promises for covenant Israel, which we’re part of. So why do you think it’s important enough that the prophet is telling us to study this subject if it’s not something that everyone is naturally interested in? What’s the importance? 

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Well, that’s, that’s a great question. And, I have to tell you that President Nelson is part of the reason I got interested in this. He’s been talking about this for a long time. And, uh, I remember as an undergraduate at BYU going to a talk he gave about the promises to the house of Israel. And, uh, I guess I was a little interested before that because as I’d studied the Book of Mormon and I just have this kind of mind that likes to take themes and not only look at them literarily, but quantify them. And I kind of am counting, “How much is this theme mentioned, and that theme?”, and I figured that after the topic of Christ and the atonement, the Book of Mormon talks about the promises of the House of Israel, more than any other thing, it’s the, I think the second, most common theme in the book of Mormon.

So that interested me, but, but I think you’re right, most of the time we kind of skip over those aspects in the Book of Mormon even though it’s in the title page.  It’s in the last couple verses, it’s in the last thing that Mormon says, it’s what Christ talks about more than anything else when he’s with the Nephites, we still kind of skip over it. But when President Nelson, when at that point he was Elder Nelson, gave this talk, it really kind of caught my interest and that’s when I started to really want to get more. And I was just starting to get into ancient studies at the time. That’s when I thought “I really want to get more into those ancient topics.” And especially that of the Abrahamic Covenant and the promises of the House of Israel. But what I’ve noticed is that over time, it seems to me that the frequency that he mentions it has really intensified.

And that has especially happened since he’s become the president of the Church. I mean, he talks about it frequently and to be honest, like I thought I’d kept a pretty good list of all of his conference talks and BYU addresses and how much he talked about it. And then when he, in this general conference talk he had mentioned hundreds of times.  Like I had listed about 35 talks and I thought that’s pretty good. And then he mentioned he’d talked about it hundreds of times. So I’m guessing that’s in like regional conferences that we don’t do anymore, but you know, all these different kinds of things that we didn’t have access to, but it tells me he’s been talking about this a lot, but even so once he became president, I mean, it’s the first, the first thing he did is that Face to Face and it was the highlight of that. It’s the highlight of his first talk to the Relief Society. It’s just everywhere. When he talks about it at Roots Tech, he’s talking about it everywhere. He goes, he hits on this theme. Again, I haven’t tried to quantify it, but I would guess since he’s become president of the church, he’s talked about that theme more than any other theme. And so I can’t read his or the Lord’s mind as to why maybe but I really have the feeling that he’s been impressed that this is what we need. And the “why” he’s told us is because, and he said this several times, this is the most important thing happening in the world today. And I think when a prophet tells us, this is the most important thing, and he says it several times, we probably ought to pay attention.  I think that might be a good idea. 

Cali Black:

And I remember that Face to Face when he talked about the gathering of Israel, and I feel like something clicked, right. I realized like, wait, this isn’t some obscure abstract topic that like, you know, someone just does a deep dive into, it’s something that I can understand. It just means bringing people closer to Christ and kind of going through that. So I’m curious for, for many of us who feel this way, like they’re still feeling a little overwhelmed, even though we know the prophet has asked us, do you have any advice on where we can start? Like how we can feel more confident when it comes to tackling this subject that we probably have not been exposed to very much just in normal church meetings.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Yeah. I have probably like five hours worth of advice. So we’ll, we’ll try and boil it down to just a couple minutes. But, um, I would say a couple of things, one thing is that we need to recognize that the gathering of Israel and the blessings promised to Israel are part of the Abrahamic Covenant or the new and everlasting covenant. And this is where I find, well, let’s just say in general members of the Church feel like, “Okay, new and everlasting covenant, or Abrahamic covenant, those are important things and I kind of get what they are, but mostly not. So let’s move on.” And I’ve been in lots of experiences, I mean, I teach the Old Testament and I teach Pearl of Great Price they come up in those and I give lectures all the time. I’ve been in lots of, settings where I just have that experience with people, “Okay. I know that’s important, but I don’t get it. So another topic.”  Right?  Next. And in fact, what I found is that most people don’t realize that the new and everlasting covenant, the Abrahamic covenant are really the same thing, that there are two different names for the same thing. We think marriage is the new and everlasting covenant, but we have had several church leaders who’ve made it clear that is a new and everlasting covenant.  Baptism is a new and everlasting covenant, but they’re all part of the new and everlasting covenant, which we enter into a baptism– both President Nelson, Brigham Young, and others have made that very clear– we enter into baptism and then we enter into it more fully in the temple, more fully in the temple marriage and so on and so on. But that’s the new and everlasting covenant made even before the world was between Joseph Smith tells us this, between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost initially; that God will save us and that the Son and the Holy Ghost will do their roles in making it possible for Him to save us.  And then established with Adam and then every now and then it has to be re-established, which is how it gets that name “new,” right?

So it’s everlasting because it’s been around before the creation of the world and we’ll be around after it, but it’s new because it keeps getting re-established. But one of the times it’s re-established is with Abraham. When it’s reestablished with Abraham, there’s a significant thing that happens. And that is Abraham is promised that anyone who is ever going to become part of this covenant from then on out will become part of his seed. And you get that just a little bit more funneled with Jacob where they’ll be part of the house of Israel, right? So from that time forward, Abraham’s descendants primarily through Jacob will be the stewards of the covenant. That doesn’t mean that it’s exclusive or anything and we can talk about that in a minute if we want, but the covenant will be funneled through that family. And that’s why the most frequent way we refer to it as the Abraham covenant, which is immensely important in scriptures, but we often miss it.

We don’t really recognize it. So I’d say that’s the first step is to recognize that those are the covenants, everything else, every covenant and ordinance you enter into is a step or an element of that covenant. But that’s the overarching covenant, which is God’s promise to save us. 

So once we realize that, then we need to start to recognize how it’s referred to in the scriptures. And this is what I find, especially for this challenge that President Nelson just gave us where he said between last conference and next conference study the lessons promised to Israel and the gathering of the House of Israel . . .  that’s where it gets tricky for people, right? 

There are a few places, especially in the Book of Mormon where that’s explicit, right?  Like I said, Mormon, Moroni, Nephi, Jacob and Christ talk about it pretty explicitly, but even then sometimes it’s hard to figure out what’s going on. And, and we miss things about this. So maybe I’ll digress just a little bit, because this is also part of the tools that will help us study this. And 1 Nephi 19:23, probably everyone listening has heard that verse where Nephi says that they likened the scriptures unto themselves. Right. And we typically hear that and we say, “Oh yeah. So that means that whatever is happening in other people, I kind of put myself in that situation and then it applies to me in some way.”  Which is true. That’s a fantastic secondary interpretation of that verse or application of it.

But if you read the context carefully, what Nephi’s talking about before it, and especially the verse he says, right after it in verse 24, what he is saying to Laman and Lemuel is this, the scriptures are about the Abrahamic covenant, or the House of Israel. You are of the House of Israel, therefore– and take the time to read verse 24 there– therefore what Isaiah and other prophets say, because they are speaking about the House of Israel and the covenant with Israel, they are about you. And so you can liken them to yourselves. And that is as true for us as it is for Laman and Lemuel. And hopefully we do a better job of it than they do. But the point is that really from Genesis 12 on the scriptures are about the Abrahamic covenant and the House of Israel, all scriptures are, and they presuppose tha, you know that and understand it.  And so if you don’t get it, then you’re going to miss a lot of things.  

But what’s more, they really are about how God works with the covenant people. And as covenant people, when we recognize that  then that’s what they’re teaching us– how God deals with us in the same way he’s dealt with our covenant ancestors. Then the scripture is applied to us in a new and powerful way. And they’re much more personal and much more applicable. Then they become family history, right? As much as when you read about Grandma Joanne or whoever, and you read her story and it’s wonderful. And it tells you something of who you are, and it gives you power. When you’re reading about Grandma Sarah and Grandma Rachel you should get something from that. That’s your family history and it’s equally applicable to you.

And in some ways, even more so, because these are the ones that God preserved for all of us to learn something from. So I’d say first, we have to understand what the covenants are. As we said, that you know that this is the covenant we’re all in. Then we have to recognize how applicable they are to us. And then we have to start to recognize covenant phrases. Because most of the time the scriptures talk about the covenant they don’t have a great big highlighted in red sign that says covenant. They just assume you know the covenant well enough that when they refer to it, you say, “Oh, they’re talking about the old covenant. Okay, I’ve got that here.” So I’ll just give you a couple of examples and then if we want to talk about some of those a little bit more, they’ll lead us into what I think is the heart of the covenant.

But for example, well, the heart of the covenant is the promise that God says, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” That’s the very core of the covenant. And we can talk about that later, but I’ll just tell you now that those phrases are used frequently in scripture. And if you don’t realize that that’s God and the prophets’ way of saying, “I’m talking about the covenant,” you just pass over them, but it’s everywhere in the scriptures. So that when God says “my people” automatically as soon as you recognize that you should be saying “Oh, He’s talking about covenant and He’s about to talk about blessings promised or what He will do for covenant people, because He said my people.”  Or when He says, “Then I will be your God,” or,  “I am your God,” and you say, “Oh, he’s talking about the blessings from this covenant relationship that we have with each other.” 

So phrases like that, or anytime He talks about prosperity or numerous posterity or protection or a guidance, or promised lands, those are all elements of the Abrahamic covenant. So once you recognize that, you’ll start to realize that He’s talking about the covenant and our covenant. So maybe I’ll just give you, and then I really will pause for a second, but maybe I’ll just give you two examples of scriptures you’re probably familiar with that you may not have recognized as being part of the Abrahamic covenant. 

One of those is in the 10 commandments. You’re probably familiar with the commandment to honor your father and your mother that thy days may be long in the land, which the Lord thy God has given thee. As soon as you read “land which God gave you,” you know, you’re talking about the Abrahamic covenant, and it’s a shorthand phrase for saying “honor your parents, so that I can give you all the blessings of the covenant,” right?

That commandment really has a covenant connotation attached to it. But we don’t recognize that if we don’t stop and think, “Oh, promise land He gave us, that’s a covenant phrase,” right? Or here’s another one that we quote all the time in the church that is powerful for us, but can be more powerful. Malachi says that Elijah will come to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children. Well, if in Malakai’s audience, this Jewish group, when they hear “fathers,” they think Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, right. That’s who he’s referring to. So he is going to hear what his audience will hear– he’s talking about that Elijah will come to help us remember the covenant right now. Here’s a really interesting thing. His audience would understand that. So what, when Christ quotes that in the book of Mormon, so what his audience, their understanding, right?

They’re all very covenant tuned to him. So Malachi says it that way, Christ quotes Malachi the exact same way, they all get covenant reference. By the time you get to Joseph Smith’s day, people aren’t getting Abrahamic covenant references so well anymore. So when Moroni quotes that he changes it just a little bit, and he says, “Elijah will turn your hearts to the promises made to the fathers,” so that we can’t miss– but we still do– but so you can’t miss that what he’s talking about is if it’s promises made to the father, that’s gotta be the Abrahamic covenant right there. There’s no other option there. So we usually think of this as about family history and it is, but not in the smaller version we think of it. It’s about the covenant God has made with all of mankind and that he wants us to be tuned into that covenant.

And part of doing that is getting our families to be part of that covenant, but also getting our ancestors to be part of that covenant and sealed to them so that we all become sealed together, part of this covenant all the way back to Abraham who tells us in Abraham chapter 1, that his covenant is going all the way back to Adam. So as soon as you recognize that you recognize, and this is what President Nelson has been talking about, that when you tune into the vast majestic sweeping story of the Abrahamic covenant, you realize every little thing you’re doing in family history or missionary work is part of that covenant. When you go to the temple and do work for someone, you’re helping them be part of the Abrahamic covenant, which is the gathering of Israel, you’re helping to gather Israel.

When you get someone to go to the temple and gets sealed, when you get someone to join the church and enter into baptism, you’re getting them to enter into the Abrahamic covenant, which is gathering Israel. And so that’s, I think what President Nelson is trying to get us to tune to, which is what Malachi and Christ and Elijah and Moroni were trying to get us to tune into as well. Right? And President Nelson is another in this great line of prophets that is getting us to turn our hearts to the fathers. So those are just a couple of examples of how we can start to find those promises in the scripture once we tune into those things.

Cali Black:

I love that because I feel like, kind of the example you said, I’m trying to take President Nelson’s challenge and so I’m looking for, “Where does it say these are promises to the house of Israel?” Like those references are few and far between but that’s just beautiful. Like there are those phrases we can learn that are clearly referring to these covenant people that can clue us in like, “okay, wait, this is what we’re talking about.” And also in general the whole scriptures are about it. We don’t have to be so picky and choosy instead it’s, “Hey, this is why I’m giving you these records is to learn about this beautiful covenant that I’ve made with all of your forefathers and here, keep it going.” I love that.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I was taking notes and looking at my scriptures and I think that I work on a lower level. My brain works on a lower level, so I need to, if we could just back up and restate what you said because I think it’s so powerful, but I want to make sure that anyone who’s working at my level can understand it. So I think what you were saying, and I want you to correct me if I’m wrong, is that the Abrahamic covenant is really just God’s covenant that He made in the premortal existence, that He was going to be our God and He was going to help us get back to Him. And that has been the covenant He’s made dispensation after dispensation. Is that right?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

That is really well said. That’s really well said. That’s the essence of the covenant. And then it has lots of little subsets each time it’s given, it’s given in a similar way, but with different things tailored to the group and the individual as it’s new again, it’s reestablishing. And you know after we get to Abraham and Jacob, then a key component of that is that He will gather Israel and we can talk about why He would do that in a minute if you want. But the essence of it is this is God’s promise that He will bring us back home. So you nailed it.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Oh, good. I’m so glad I was feeling like I wasn’t nailing it. So then from there, if we’re part of covenant Israel, that just means that we’re part of God’s true church that has access to the covenants that make it possible to return to Him. And that then the gathering Israel is trying to help people to come to the church where they can make covenants that will bring them back to God and help us keep our part of the covenant.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Very good. I would reverse the order just a little bit. Maybe not everyone will agree with me honestly, but I would reverse it this way. . . so you said that we’re gathering Israel, which is just joining the church. I would put it this way. The first step is to get people to make a covenant. So they join the church but the point of joining the church is to become part of the House of Israel and I would put it in this way. God is going to save families only. So the unit that He works with and He saves families, and that’s why He asked a family to do this work. It’s not exclusive. Everyone not only can be part of the House of Israel. We beg, plead and do everything we can to get people to be part of the House of Israel in this life or the next.

We want you dead or alive. 

We’re doing everything we can to get everyone to join the House of Israel. But that’s the family that He asked to do the work, and that’s the family that He’s going to save. So everyone’s welcome. But you have to make the choice to be part of that family. So the Church is an organization and this is something that, so President Nelson’s initiatives may seem separate, but they’re really all part of the same thing. This focus on we’re home centered church supported is the same thing as saying we’re Israel centered and all the rest of us are trying to get people to join the house of Israel. So it starts with your little family and it gets to a bigger family, bigger until finally you get to the House of Israel and that’s where we’re trying to get everyone to be. So I would just have changed it that way a little bit.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Okay. I told you, I expected to have my mind blown and it’s happened. I just want you to know my mind is blown.  As you’re talking about families, that brings up a question for me about finding out in your patriarchal blessing that you are part of the family of Israel, and it tells you your specific lineage within the House of Israel. And I remember getting my patriarchal blessing and that was the most boring part. I’ve got to be honest, the rest of it, I’m like, “Tell me who my husband will be!” You know everything else was super exciting. And then I hear that and I’m like, “Oh, okay.”  Not exciting. So why is that actually an exciting part? Why does our lineage within the House of Israel even matter?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Great, great question. And I think your reaction is what most people have. Although President Nelson has talked about this a little bit and if we understood better– and we typically don’t when we’re like 14 or whatever and getting our patriarchal blessing– if we understood better instead, that should be maybe the most exciting part.  Because what it does is it takes you and the rest of your patriarchal blessing– which is your individual life and how it will affect some other people– and it fits you into the grandest story in the history of the earth.  And what President Nelson talks about, he says that the Abrahamic covenant is of transcendent significance; it puts you in that story. So it takes your individual part of the tapestry, your individual little corner, and it puts it into this beautiful tapestry and allows you then to do exactly what He’s asking us to do: to take your blessings and fit them into these big blessings– this huge story and all of these blessings, all throughout the scripture, so that you know how you fit in.  This is God telling you personally where you fit into the covenant, and that’s a big deal.

I think that means something to us. Now, we also have these things, you know, the different tribes have different blessings, and that can be a little bit tricky to figure out, especially because most of the blessings are really kind of obscure and hard to understand. Recently as I was writing a book about the Abrahamic covenant, I recently tried to go through all the places where it talked about each blessing for each tribe and make some sense of that. And I think that can be helpful, but what we have to remember is that it will play out for each person individually, but it’s worthwhile to try and understand. So I want to be clear that in that book, I’m not trying to tell everyone what their life is going to be like, but I am trying to say, these are the historical blessings for those tribes. And then you can try and take what’s going on in your life and see how it attaches there, but then attach it back to Jacob and then to Abraham and then to Adam. Right. So it fits you in a wonderful way.

Cali Black:

So what, what blessings do you see as we study the Abrahamic covenant, the new and everlasting covenant, as we’re learning about the House of Israel, what blessings do you see, coming to your life specifically, or just members to members of the Church in general? Why do you feel that this is an important thing to study?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

We really don’t have time to go through all of that. So maybe let me just spend a moment on the biggest, most important one.

So I had an interesting experience– I’ve been teaching for about 27 years now at BYU, for a while at BYU-Hawaii, in different places, I did Institute for a little while– but mostly BYU.  I taught Old Testament courses and Pearl of Great Price courses. And so we go through the Abrahamic covenant in there, and I’ve done lectures really all over the world on this. And I typically would go through a bullet point early on, I think back in 1994, when I first taught Old Testament, I tried to go all through all the scriptures and find all the places where I could say here’s the blessing of the Abrahamic covenant and make a list of them. And then I just put that up on PowerPoints in bullet point fashion. And that served well in the classroom; bullet points were great.

But when I wrote this book that I was talking about, I’ll just say that for the last six years I’ve felt the need to really intensively study the Abraham covenant; now I’ve casually studied it for a long time, but really, really intensively studied it for the last six years. And so I’ve had several articles come out on it in the last couple of years, a couple more about to come out, but I felt like I needed to try and put all of it together. So I wrote a book about it which I just feel blessed in the timing that I just submitted this book when President Nelson asked us to do that. And this book is about how to recognize the blessings of Abrahamic covenant in your life and what the gathering of Israel is about.  It’s called “God Will Prevail.”  It’s coming out in mid-February and the whole point behind it, Covenant Book really rushed it because they felt like this will help people better be able to understand the Abrahamic covenant. So everything we’ve talked about here is in much greater detail there. But when I wrote this book, I thought, “Well, bullet point’s not fantastic for a book. So I want to write about it, not just give them a bullet point. I want to say something about each of these.”  So that forced me to say, “Okay, well, how do I group these things together?” And as I tried to figure out, “okay, these ones seem to go together,” suddenly it made sense to me in a way that I wish I’d done twenty-five years ago.

I understand the covenant so much better just in the last six to eight months, I guess it was about a year ago that I was actually putting these groupings together that I understand them so much better as a result of this. I also came to realize what the key element of the covenant is. And it is encapsulated in what we already said in this phrase, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” But we often say, so what does that mean? Well, this is what it means. God wants to have a deeper relationship with you, which in the end, the point of the whole plan of salvation until we can become more like Him, we can’t have the full kind of relationship he would like to have with us.

Like we are just too distant, too unlike him to have the capacity to have that relationship. The point of the covenant is to deepen our relationship with Him. And when you make that covenant with Him, it changes your nature.  So think about it: you enter into the covenant of baptism, that’s when you’re cleansed and also you received the Holy Ghost, you’re sanctified, you become holy. You become a different person. 

And that’s exactly the description that God gives to covenant Israel. You will be a peculiar people, meaning different than everyone else, a nation of priests and priestesses, a Holy nation.  All of those, every single one of those, what they mean is “different”, “no longer worldly,
but “more godly.” That’s the root meaning of holy or sacred means “different or set apart from the normal, the profane, the mundane.”  

You’re no longer normal. You are different. 

In fact, you are more like God and being more like God you can have a different relationship with Him. You can be closer to Him. And this is part of why, for example, in my opinion, when Christ is on the earth, He says, “I’m not sent to the Gentiles. I’m just sent to the house of Israel.” Because we’re so cut off from God’s presence that God doesn’t interact with us directly. He interacts with us through his mediator, which is His Son, but for the most part, His son doesn’t interact with all mankind directly. He interacts with those who have entered into a relationship with Him and the Father and have their nature changed enough that He interacts with them. And then He sends them to go get everyone else to make that same covenant so that they can interact with Him so that He can bring them to the Father.

So we have these degrees of holiness, which is represented in the temple, in the tabernacle and all sorts of other place.  Degrees of holiness that allow us to come closer and closer to the Son and then the Father so that we can interact with Them. So what He’s trying to do with the covenant that will change you so that you can have a closer relationship with Him. And when you do have that closer relationship, you’ll have access to greater power. So for example, the Holy Ghost, right? Parts of the promises of the covenant are that God will guide you and protect you.  Well a lot of that happens through the Holy Ghost, but it happens through a whole bunch of other ways, but probably the biggest difference– and this is one that’s not easily detectable– is you have access to something that is a Hebrew word that is difficult to translate.

So most often in the scriptures is, well, there’s no good English equivalent for it. The word that’s used most often is “loving kindness,” but sometimes it’s just “mercy.”  And I think– I haven’t double checked this– but I think every time you read “loving kindness,” it’s “chesed”– but sometimes there are other words that are used for it– “chesed” literally means “covenantal love and mercy,” a mercy and a love available only to those who are in the covenant. Well, let me put it this way. It means “everlasting, unbreakable, covenantal, love and mercy”. So that’s a kind of love and mercy available only to those who are in a covenant with God that are not available to anyone else. And what it means is He will never, ever stop working with you and never give up on you.

So first of all, when we hear about a special kind of love with God, well wait, does He love everyone? Yes, He does. So maybe, and I talk about this in the book a little bit more than we can do here, but an example I used there is like my wife. I think she loves everybody, but I hope she loves me differently than she loves everybody else. Because we’re in a covenant together. And that has created a bond between us, which also created a common cause, common goals, common experiences, and all of that has just created a different kind of love. As much as we would like to love everyone else that way it’s impossible without that kind of a connection; that just can’t happen. And it’s the same thing with God; when we are in that covenant relationship with Him, which changes our nature, we agreed to do His work and His will it creates a different level of love and mercy and willingness for Him to forgive and work with us again and again and again.

Another way you’ll read it is when it talks about His everlasting mercies, that it’s everlasting, it’s never going to stop.  This in fact is why God will gather Israel, no matter how many times they mess up. And this is the great message of the scriptures. And I’ll tell you just personally . . .  so one of the books I wrote was about seeing God’s mercy, especially through the Old Testament, because I see, and I know I’m weird in this, but I see the Old Testament speaking of God’s mercy and patience more than any other book of scripture.  And what you have in there is a group of people who mess up again and again, and again, and in crazy incessant ways. And they never stop messing up. And in the midst of that, God never stops working with them.

Sometimes He can work with them easy, and sometimes He has to work with them hard, but He never stops working with them.  Including– and think of it in this way– the scattering of Israel, which starts in 732 BC is God humbling Israel. And we’re now in what a 2,500 year cycle of Him still working, right? That’s a process. He started to humble Israel to bring them back to Him. And He’s patient enough to take 2,500 years to gather them back to Him. By the time the Restoration starts and the gathering of Israel begins, that’s 2,500 years. And that’s when He’s finally saying, “Okay, I’ve humbled you enough that I’m bringing you back now.”  And that’s the reason there will be a gathering of Israel is because once He made that covenant He said, “I don’t care how long it takes.  I don’t care what you do. It’s never over. I’ll do whatever it takes to bring you back.”

 And the beauty is that somewhere in the middle of there, Israel, God scattered throughout all the earth. So that now, as He brings Israel black, they can bring everybody with them. They can bring the whole world with them as He brings them back. So that’s powerful to see us as part of that big story, but then let’s remember not only is that covenant with all of Israel, that’s a covenant He made with you individually. You have “chesed” with God now, and it doesn’t matter how stupid you are and how many times you mess up, He’s not done with you. He’s not going to give up. And you’re never so far removed from Him that He won’t keep trying to bring you back to Him. And that understanding of that relationship with God has changed my understanding of who I am and of what my purpose is in life and of my relationship with God in a way that is so tremendously comforting and beautiful, that it really is transformative. And I think it is for anyone in life. I think it is, especially for people who are struggling say, with depression or anxiety and often struggle with feeling the spirit in those instances. But hopefully they can know that if God will take 2,500 years with Israel, however long it is with them, it’s going to be less than that. And He will bring you back. And that’s a beautiful, beautiful thing to understand.

Kristen Walker Smith: 

My mind was blown again. I so appreciate everything you just said. And actually one of my favorite phrases in the Old Testament is about how his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. It says it so many times, and I love that testimony of yours that He will not give up on us. 

Now I want to bring it down to Kristen level, because again, I think what you said was so beautiful, but I want to make sure that I’m understanding right and that everyone that listens is understanding. 

So what I heard– and I freaked out in the middle there was because something suddenly clicked and it made sense– is that God is working through Jesus, who is talking to His covenant children and that God and Jesus want us to bring the others who are outside of the covenant, into the covenant so they then can have Jesus as their mediator with the Father to bring them to Him.

 Is that right? 

So it’s like these layers of mediators, and we’re actually a mediator between Christ and the people who don’t know Him yet, and we’re bringing them to Him so they can then get to God, is that right?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein: 

You have a way of saying things perfectly– you nailed that and I think you’re right. You just described it. How, in some ways we are symbols or types or figures of Christ, right? That’s why we’re saviors on Mount Zion because we are mediators to help others to Christ so He can bring them to the Father. Now I do want to add in there lest we be misunderstood I don’t think that that means that anyone who’s not part of the covenant never has an experience with Jesus. I don’t think that.  Lots of people do, they have experiences with Jesus, but not the kinds and the consistency that they can within a covenant context.

Cali Black:

Yeah, that’s awesome. And one of the things that made the biggest impression that you said is it’s really all about love; it’s that love. I love that analogy of your love with your spouse. Like it’s a different, stronger kind of love that binds together. You’re on the same page, you’re creating life, you have these common goals together, and then you’re trying to do as much good as you have. That just really clicked for me– this is all about love. And of course He loves everyone, but it’s this special everlasting love and kindness that we are seeking that we can’t fully reciprocate yet. We’re never going to be able to reciprocate that until we have become even more perfected, but we can at least do our best to covenant and try and become a little better. And He is doing more than His fair share of, of showing that love to us right now. Yes.

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

And of course, as a parent, He wants to have that kind of loving relationship with all of His children, but His children are going to have to make some choices to be able to have that relationship. And that’s what He’s asked us to do. That’s why President Nelson is saying– I think. . .  I can’t read President Nelson’s mind– but I that’s why I think President Nelson is saying this is the most important work. This is a transcendent work because it’s what God wants more than anything else is to get all of His children into that kind of a relationship with Him.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Kerry, this has been beautiful. I have to be honest, I don’t think many people are excited to talk about the House of Israel and I am now pumped.  I’m pumped and I cannot wait to share this with everyone because I think everyone needs a Kerry in their back pocket just reminding them repeatedly that this is what it’s about. So thank you so so much. 

As we finish us we always like to ask our guests on the podcast– kind of in the spirit of what President Nelson has been inviting us to do, where we recognize the spirit more in our life– so we would love to ask you, how do you #HearHim?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

What a profound question. I’m glad you asked. I always ask that question. I would say that the primary way is of course through the Holy Ghost; but for me primarily, as I study the scriptures, or as I have time or make time– I shouldn’t say “have” but “make” time– to stop and think, and then either try and talk about it with others or write things down. That’s when the ideas come. And then I just have to recognize that those ideas when suddenly you understand, it suddenly it’s delicious, or something along those lines, that that’s the spirit. It’s honestly part of why I write or teach, because that’s when I learn; it’s a little bit of that idea of, “open your mouth and it shall be filled.” I can’t tell you how many times, either in a classroom or a lecture, or as I’m writing, I suddenly say something that I didn’t fully get how it all went together before, but as I say it I’m learning and I know it’s true. And so it’s the study, the pondering, and then the doing something with it is how I hear him.

Cali Black: 

I love that. And I feel like I relate to that a lot too. There’s something powerful in trying to teach or put concepts into words that the spirit fills in those missing gaps. Thank you so much for being here today. Um, what’s the name of your book that’s coming out again?

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

God Will Prevail: Ancient Covenants, Modern Blessings, and the Gathering of the House of Israel– I can’t remember other people come up with these titles.  My original title was the Abrahamic Covenant Path, which is also a good title, but I liked this one even better. So I don’t remember it exactly

Cali Black: 

Whatever it’s called. I am excited to get it myself. 

Dr. Kerry Muhlestein:

Honestly the whole point behind it, the whole reason I wrote it, and the reason that they’re pushing it is because we want to help people be able to recognize the covenant and the blessings that are available in the covenant and do what President Nelson asked them to do. And so I’m thrilled if this podcast or any of the different things I’ve written and anything that helps anyone find the beauty and power of the blessings of the covenant, the way it’s affected me, that’s what this is all about.

Cali Black: 

Thank you again so much for your time and for those listening, thank you for coming closer to Christ with us a few minutes at a time. We’ll see you next time.

The post One Minute Scripture Study podcast episode with special guest Kerry Muhlestein first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

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We also had a great number of requests for a transcript of this conversation! So without further ado, here is the transcript for Episode 266, and interview with Elaine Dalton.

Kristen Walker Smith:

All right. Welcome friends. We are so excited. We’ve got a special, special guest here on the podcast today. The wonderful Elaine Dalton. And if you are in your twenties or older, you know exactly who she is, but for our younger audience, would you mind introducing yourself?

Elaine Dalton:

Oh, I’d love to. And thank you for having me on this podcast. I get lonely. I love to talk. So I’m Elaine Dalton and I served in the church on the general level as the general young woman president from 2008 to 2013. So I have an ongoing interest and passion and desire to help all young women. And I consider myself a young woman. So there you go. There’s no age differentiation there.

Cali Black:

I have to say I graduated high school in 2010. So sister Dalton, you are my young women’s general president that I think of. I just imagine going to the church, listening to your general messages and yeah, you have a special place in my heart.

Elaine Dalton:

Well, do you know, I call all of you my girls. You’re just my girls. I just claim you.

Cali Black:

Absolutely.

Elaine Dalton:

At one of the firesides I spoke at, it was with young men and young women, and one of the young men came up afterwards and he said, “I’ve heard you speak three times now.” And he says, “Sister Dalton, I think that you were assigned in the premortal world to just follow our generation through.” And I thought, “Well, I hope so. I hope that’s the case,” and maybe that’s why I have such a love for all of you.

Cali Black:

I will claim you.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I love that. We’ve got you on specifically today, not only because we’re … I guess you don’t really have fans in the church, but we’re fans. If you can have spiritual fans, we are, but also specifically to talk about your awesome book, No Ordinary Women. And I have to put in a plug for it. This book, I mean, if you’re watching the video, you can see. I have a million post-it notes in it and it is just phenomenal in that you can pick it up and read it in one day and it can change you. It can absolutely change you.

Kristen Walker Smith:

So we wanted to ask you some questions about things that you wrote in the book to help our audience understand a little bit more about how they are not ordinary women no matter how ordinary they feel. Would that be okay?

Elaine Dalton:

That’d be awesome.

Kristen Walker Smith:

All right, Cali, go ahead and start us off.

Cali Black:

Sure. So one thing that I love that I feel like you always made me feel important. Like I had something to share. And so I’ve tried to carry that with me. I can influence my family, my neighborhood, my community, I can change the world and I try and keep that with me. But I also have two kids right now, three and one years old.

Cali Black:

And sometimes my days are make a meal, change a diaper, clean up a mess and repeat times a million. So I’m just wondering what advice do you have for women who are trying to make a difference, but it seems like we’re kind of limited by maybe the circumstances we’re in right now?

Elaine Dalton:

Oh that’s such a good question. And here’s what I’m going to tell you. You are making a difference every day, every hour. And I think so much of the focus is on what we can do out in the world we say. What we can do as far as our earning power goes, as far as a career and so on and so forth. But I don’t think there could be any greater contribution that a woman can make than to raise happy, well adjusted, righteous, contributing children into adults.

Elaine Dalton:

And the effect of that has ripple effects that just go on for the eternities. So say I raised six children. I changed diapers. I did the same thing. I cried about the laundry. I thought, “Oh, I could be doing something meaningful.” And I looked beyond the mark because I was doing the most meaningful thing I could’ve ever done. That my five sons serve missions, the people they converted, the families they changed. And so you set that solid firm foundation in your family and you do that and you change the world.

Elaine Dalton:

But then here’s the giant secret. After your children are raised and out of the house, your house stays so clean, it’s boring. And you have so much time to make a contribution. Look what I’ve been doing. And right now I’m the president of the Stella Oaks foundation, which is raising money to provide scholarships for young single mothers. So there’s just tons of time to make any kind of contribution you want aside from the gigantic world changing one, which is being a mother. A good mother. And so can make your home a temple, just keep changing those diapers and just have fun doing it.

Cali Black:

Oh, man I love that.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Oh. I don’t know about having fun changing diapers, but I love that insight.

Elaine Dalton:

No, but it’s funny because now I’m a grandmother and I have my little grandkids come here and I I think it’s the do-over. When you’re a grandmother, then you get to do what you probably should have done all the time as a mom. So they’ll say, “Can I have this?” And I’ll say, “Sure.” Can I go do this? Oh, sure.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Oh, you’re a true grandma. That is awesome. Well, kind of in line with that, another thing you talked about in the book is that the world tries to put women into this mold and it tries to make you think that you don’t have influence and you don’t have power in this world unless you fit into this mold. And I’m wondering if you could describe that mold. What do you feel like it is the world is trying to make us feel like we have to become to be worthwhile?

Elaine Dalton:

Well, I think what’s happening in the world is that we are being put in a position, not so much a mold, but more in a position to compare. To compare ourselves with other people. And when we’re put in that position to compare, sometimes we have a tendency to say, “I want to be like that. I want to have that home. I want to have her hair. I want to even know the color of her lipstick, because if I have the lipstick on, I’ll be her.”

Elaine Dalton:

And I think, again, that takes the focus off the amazing thing that it is that we are individual. That we were created unique and individual. One by one with, with the exact things that we need to perform our unique divine mission here on the earth. Even the color of our eyes, the color of our hair, how tall we are, our personality. We’re custom made to do a very unique theme thing here on the earth.

Elaine Dalton:

And so as we focus on trying to be someone else, we’re totally taken off the mark, which is to focus on being the best us we can be and the best unique, gifted, talented, guided, inspired woman that we can be. Does that make any sense?

Kristen Walker Smith:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. And I think that’s one thing I’ve learned so much as I’ve worked with young women, is that Satan, if he can’t get them through sin, he’ll get them through distraction. And I think you’re so right. You’re so right. That-

Elaine Dalton:

[crosstalk 00:07:49].

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yeah.

Elaine Dalton:

Distracted, discouraged, and disqualified. Those kind of just go hand in hand. You get distracted and you forget who you are, then you get very discouraged and then you do things that are not smart and not becoming a daughter of God.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yeah. Oh I love that. The three D’s that’s super powerful and that kind of fits in with another question I had. You talked in your book about my ancestor, Kristina, which I thought was so exciting.

Elaine Dalton:

I didn’t know that. That’s wonderful.

Kristen Walker Smith:

So if you’re not familiar with this story, there is a statue of Kristina who is my ancestor in Denmark. And she was one of the first people from Denmark to come over to Utah. And she was just a teenager when this happened. And so the sculpture that my uncle made is of her standing against the wind with the wind. Oh, you’ve got!

Elaine Dalton:

Look at it!

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yes. I don’t even have it and I related to him. I need to get it.

Elaine Dalton:

I love this. Keep going.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yes, so it’s the wind blowing against her. And I think that so much of what we face that distraction, discouragement, what was the last D?

Elaine Dalton:

Disqualified.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Disqualified. It’s like the spiritual winds blowing against us. But you talk about these small decisions like Kristina made that one day that she was going to get on that boat and how it’s blessed generations. My family is here because of Kristina. So what do you feel like are the small decisions that we, women and girls are making every day that will make such a big influence on our future and the future generations that come after us? What are those small decisions?

Elaine Dalton:

Well, first you got to look at Kristina. Look at the winds blowing so hard, her ponytail’s straight out. I just love that.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Isn’t it awesome?

Elaine Dalton:

And I think it’s kind of almost symbolic for this day where we’re just getting all these winds of opposition and yet there she is standing firm. And in Denmark, I went to Denmark and stood on that pier with Kristina and she’s bigger than life there. And it’s so amazing. And I remember being with the sculptor, Dennis Smith, who said, “This is my great, great grandmother. And on her decision that day hinged my eternal destiny.”

Elaine Dalton:

And I was so touched by that. And that was a long time before I became the general young woman president. On that decision. So I think we do make daily big decisions. I think getting out of bed in the morning is a big decision sometimes. I think making your bed is a difference making decision.

Elaine Dalton:

I think every decision we make forms little habits that become who we are. I also think that we all need to get in the habit of making inspired decisions. And especially in this day and time, I think more than anything that we should be trying to do is to be able to kneel down in the morning and pray for the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and then try to tune in to how he’s guiding you. And sometimes it’s always different, but as time goes on, I think you’ll become familiar with how he speaks to you and when.

Elaine Dalton:

That’s happened for me. I’m old. It’s taken a long time, but it has happened for me. I know exactly when he’s speaking to me now. And so I think if we can make daily guided decisions how to use our time, who to call, who to reach out to, what we should be doing to develop ourselves, setting our goals and making ourselves mind ourselves. It’s still personal progress.

Elaine Dalton:

We might not have a program, but I didn’t think personal progress was ever a program. I think every day we have to say, “I’m going to make some progress today.” And I love what the young women do now. They’re saying, “Make progress spiritually, mentally, physically, and socially.” Just do it. And I love that. So decisions are big. They are. They define everything.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I love that. Oh, that’s so powerful. Cali, you had a question for her though.

Cali Black:

Yeah. And just going off that, I have felt that learning curve where I just remember being a young woman and thinking, “How will I ever be guided by the spirit all day long?” That just seems like such a big thing. And it was never like, “Yes, now I’ve got it.” But I feel like slowly now I can say I have multiple times a day where I’m like, “Okay, do I need to help this kid or do I need to do this?”

Cali Black:

I’m trying to balance my life. And I just get this little thought, like I realize the spirit is just a good thought telling me, “Hey, just play with your kid right now.” And I do it. And then I feel that little quiet assurance that I’m doing the right thing. And I just think it’s this slow progression that doesn’t seem super powerful all the time. But it’s those small moments that I think add up a lot.

Elaine Dalton:

Oh, I love hearing you say that, Cali.

Cali Black:

Yeah. Okay. So my question for you, kind of going back to comparison because I feel like that’s a big thing is women is we’re not only comparing ourselves against other women, but sometimes we get on this slippery slope of, well, this isn’t as bad as something else. I feel like, especially with media watching shows or TV, I sometimes get caught up in, well, it’s not as bad as this terrible thing.

Cali Black:

And so it’s going to be fine or even something that I’ve done before that I may have repented of while it’s not as bad. How do you recommend kind of facing that? Not getting on this desensitization where you’re like, “Ah, I’m sure it’s all fine,” but getting back to what really is truth.

Elaine Dalton:

Well, I call that the scale of descending mediocrity and we just keep saying, “Well, it’s not as bad as,” and then we’re there and then we go, “Well, this isn’t as bad as,” and we just keep descending into mediocrity really when we should be, I think as daughters of God, I don’t think anyone truly comprehends what that means. That we shouldn’t be saying, “It’s not as bad as.”

Elaine Dalton:

We should say, “What is virtuous, lovely praiseworthy and a good report,” and then seek after those things. Because I find that, well, here’s the reason to do it. This is the principle. It’s about having the spirit with you always. And you get in a situation where you’re listening to a movie where there may be two or three words that are very offensive.

Elaine Dalton:

Not only just you, but to the Spirit, to the Holy Ghost. What happens? He’s not going to hang around. He’s Holy and he doesn’t do that. And so I think the whole principle is I want to guard what I listen to, what I watch, what I allow into my life, into my home. I want to guard my thoughts because I can’t do this life alone. I seriously, and now even more than ever, I have got to have help because who’s right.

Elaine Dalton:

We’re going, is it him? Is it this? Is it that? And I just am finding more and more, I really need help because everything looks good. Everything looks true and I need that guidance. So back to the Holy Ghost again, and as far as people saying, “Well, I don’t know whether I have it all the time and I can’t really recognize that I’m being guided,” Elder Bednar taught me a great principle.

Elaine Dalton:

He said, “Elaine, you are,” he called me a good girl. “You are a good girl. And you go to church, right? Yes. Do you take the sacrament? Yes. Are you trying to do what’s right? Yes.” And he said, “Then what you need to pay attention to and worry about is when you don’t feel the spirit. Because you carry that with you. When you renew that covenant, you make it at the sacrament to always have his spirit. You’ve become pure, you’ve repented. And so you’re carrying that spirit with you. And as you don’t do anything to cause him to go home, to leave you, you have him with you.”

Elaine Dalton:

So he said, “Pay very close attention when you don’t feel the spirit.” And that was so helpful to me and still is. You walk into a room and all of a sudden you’ll just go, “I don’t feel the spirit here. I better leave or I better be on guard,” or whatever that is. So I’m so grateful to Elder Bednar for teaching me that because most of the time, I think we all have the spirit with us. Look at your eyes. I can see it in your eyes.

Cali Black:

That’s a cool way to flip that around though. I love that. Instead of am I feeling the spirit, instead focus on, when do I know the spirit has left and then make the change then. I’m going to remember that one.

Elaine Dalton:

Just make those decisions. Don’t rationalize. It’s so easy to. There’s some really good shows on Netflix right now. And everyone’s recommending them. And I put one on and thought, “Oh, this will be really great.” And I turned it off in about two seconds because for me, it’s really hard work to get the spirit back once he leaves. And I don’t like to go through all that hard work and fasting and praying and stuff. I like to eat.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I have to say I was so excited when I read that part of the book. Because I made a promise to myself back in my early twenties, probably actually when you were at the general young women’s president about my media use and it has been hard to stand up for that because there is not a rule. There’s no rule that says exactly what words you should not listen to or exactly what scenes you should walk out on. And so I have struggled for years to explain why I treat media the way I do and why I will not watch what I will not watch.

Kristen Walker Smith:

And when I read that, I thought, “Oh, she just put into words all of these feelings I’ve had.” So it made me cry when I read it. I just thought, “Oh, this is so powerful for young women to realize that you cannot kick the spirit out and expect him to come right back in.” He doesn’t just sit there waiting and he’s like, “Oh, the show’s over. I’m back.” I love what you just said. I think that is a powerful distraction of Satan, those media choices. So thank you for that.

Elaine Dalton:

It’s the same thing how we ask young women to be modest. Modesty for everyone is different. It really is different. And it just depends on, I think when you feel good. When you feel you’re actually portraying yourself as royalty. And so when we say, “Just dress modestly,” it’s not to make the young women unpopular or look crazy. It’s just it’s to have the constant companionship of that member of the Godhead.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Yes. Oh, absolutely. And this is a little bit of an aside, but talking about members of the Godhead, something that you and I have in common is that we both had the experience of having our fathers when we were young become ill and praying for our dads to get better and having them actually not get better. My dad died when I was seven. And how old were you? Were you in college when that happened?

Elaine Dalton:

Yeah, first year at BYU.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Okay. I struggled for years to figure out why I should bother praying if, when I want something so much and I pray so hard and I fast, it’s not going to happen the way I want necessarily. So I would love to hear your insights on that. Why is it worth praying if you’re not going to get exactly what you want out of that prayer?

Elaine Dalton:

Do you know what? That’s a question that I think a lot of young women ask, not just you and me. I think that young women have difficult things they’re facing. Their parents are getting divorced and they’re praying so hard that that won’t happen. And they’re praying so hard for different things. I met one young woman who decided she wasn’t ever going to go to church again because her cat got sick and she prayed and prayed for him to get [inaudible 00:20:42] and he didn’t.

Elaine Dalton:

And I told her the story of my father, and you’ve probably told that to many young women too. And the answer is, I don’t know why my dad didn’t get better. You don’t know either. But what we do know is what Nephi told us. Nevertheless, I know that God loveth his children. And so I never, when I didn’t get answers to prayers, I never quit knowing that for some reason. That he loved me.

Elaine Dalton:

And so I kept praying and my prayer wasn’t now, “Help my dad get better.” It was, “Why did you take him?” And I pestered the Lord about that, but I didn’t stop praying. I just kept asking and asking. And as you know, in my book, I maybe have told that in the book, I got my answer, but it took a long time and it didn’t come in a concrete this is why.

Elaine Dalton:

It was Proverbs 3:5 and 6. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him. And he will direct your paths. In other words, there’s a plan in place, Elaine, and this is all part of a marvelous plan. And someday you will understand all of this and be so grateful to our father in heaven. So I guess my advice to any young woman who’s been praying and felt like her prayers aren’t answered is to just hang on because I can testify now every prayer is answered.

Elaine Dalton:

Sometimes not the way we want, but every single prayer is answered. And every answer comes from a loving heavenly father. And it always turns to your good. Always. My dad’s been there when I’ve had babies. My dad’s been there when I got married. My dad has been here when I’ve been ill. My dad was there when I gave my first conference talk. And I know that. I don’t think that heaven is that far away.

Kristen Walker Smith:

I agree. That’s such a powerful testimony. Thank you for that.

Cali Black:

That’s beautiful.

Elaine Dalton:

Thanks for the question.

Cali Black:

As we’re coming to the close here, I was just speaking to a group of young women a couple of nights ago, and I was talking about scripture study and I asked them what’s your biggest struggle with having good scripture study right now? Thinking that they were going to be like, “I fall asleep,” or, “I don’t understand them,” or something. And here these young women were like, “I’m not sure how exactly to use the footnotes effectively.” Or, “Isaiah is a little bit confusing.” And I’m like, “What?”

Cali Black:

These young women were blowing me away with what they were already doing in scripture study compared to what I felt I was doing in scripture study at that time. And yet I know so many of them just feel like your book says ordinary. They feel so ordinary. And yet me, I don’t even feel that old, but I still felt looking at them filled with this love of you are doing so much better than you think you are.

Cali Black:

So I’m just curious if you have any kind of big message that you would want to give to all of the young women or the women in the church of how do we get out of that ordinary feeling? How do we tap into that love?

Elaine Dalton:

Well, I think we’ve talked about some of the principles. One is stop comparing. And the second is let yourself be filled with the Spirit and the light that the Spirit brings because the Spirit will not only testify of the savior and our heavenly father, but he’ll testify to you and your divine identity.

Elaine Dalton:

So those two things are critical. But I think that you should maybe … I did a study a long time ago about who am I? I asked that question. When I study the scriptures, I usually study them asking a question. And when I realized who not only I am, but who every woman and every young woman in the world right now on the earth today is, it was absolutely mind boggling. In fact, when I am in the presence of young women or a group of women, I always feel so humble because I know who they are.

Elaine Dalton:

And in my calling, that knowledge was actually made even more clear to me. I knew who those women were. And I was, I could see the nobility of their spirits, if that makes any sense at all. I could stand at the pulpit and look at a group of women and I could see who God sees. And if anyone ever had that glimpse, oh my goodness. It is absolutely phenomenal.

Elaine Dalton:

But it is also very humbling because you see, we are not ordinary. We have been reserved to be on the earth right now because of how valiant we were in the premortal realms, because we chose Jesus Christ and the plan the father authored. And we bore such strong testimony of that to others as we fought that war that we’ve been reserved to be here now to do the same thing. To bear that witness and that testimony of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Elaine Dalton:

And I think our prophets have been calling to us for a long time. And President Nelson now even has issued a plea. He says, “A plea to my sisters. Just arise to that stature. You are the women that are fulfilling prophecy right now. You’re the ones who will bring women of the world into the church in large numbers because you’re different in happy ways.” And so I think I would just in ending, just say, you’re not ordinary. And remember you have to be different from the world in order to make a difference in the world.

Elaine Dalton:

You have to be different. And so value that uniqueness that is yours and value the fact that you have a divine mission and that you are a daughter of a heavenly parents, of our father in heaven and that they love you and that they will guide and direct all of your paths in your life.

Elaine Dalton:

And those are things, these are just worse for me. I’ve been all over the world. I’ve been in little huts and sat with women, and I’ve seen the nobility of these women. I’ve seen who they are. And I’ve been in mansions and in castles and with queens. And I’ve seen that too. And if we all could get together and understand who we are and whose we are and why we’ve been reserved to be here on the earth, we could really change the world.

Elaine Dalton:

We’re being a little distracted, but I think the heavenly father’s given us this moment in time to be still, to be home, to focus on what matters most and that’s you and your family and getting close to him and learning in this still time to hear his voice. So that’s just my testimony, but it’s also kind of my sure knowledge. I really know that.

Cali Black:

And I can tell that you really know that. And I love that. I feel that truth in my heart too. And I hope that that’s something that we can all learn and have that be our shared truth that we are powerful and we have bigger purposes than we may see at the moment.

Elaine Dalton:

Yeah. I had one of my granddaughters, she’s just getting ready to go on her mission. If she gets to go where she’s called, she’ll be in Tahiti in a few months. And I said to her, she was a little discouraged. And I said, “Ella, you’re forgetting something. You have just gone through the temple. And you came as a powerful young woman, but now you’ve been endowed with extra power because you’ve been in the temple. You’ve been gifted with power. You can change the world.”

Elaine Dalton:

And I think that’s what we all have to realize is we are changed the world girls, and we can change the world and we will. We will. I have every confidence we will.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Who else wishes that their kids could have Elaine Dalton as their grandmother? You’re amazing. Sign my kids up. I’ll send them to your house. Well, this has just been an absolute pleasure. And the last question that Cali and I ask of each person we interview kind of in line with what you were saying about our need for the Spirit is to ask you, how do you hashtag hear him?

Elaine Dalton:

How do I hear him? I hear him in so many different ways. I heard him this morning when I walked out my door early and saw this bright pink sunrise. I hear him when I listen to music. Sometimes he speaks to me, even in contemporary music, not hymns. Like I was listening to James Taylor and it was “It’s Going To Be A Bright Sunshiny Day.” And I heard him. I heard him tell me that. I hear him when I read my scriptures. I hear him in the voices of others who are inspired to stop by or to call.

Elaine Dalton:

I hear him in my granddaughters who call me sometimes at 6:30 in the morning and say, “Nana, are you okay?” They’ve actually, I think how prompting. They don’t know that, but they’ve actually had a little prompting to call and ask that question because most times when they do, I’m not. And so I hear him always. I’ve just heard him talking to you two and I’ve also seen him as I’ve been able to look in your eyes and see the light of our savior, Jesus Christ. So thank you both for who you are and what you’re doing and how good you are and let’s just keep trying together. And when we fall down, we get up because the savior made that possible.

Kristen Walker Smith:

Elaine, I cannot thank you enough for being here and for the powerful testimony that you’ve shared with us. I have felt so built up. Before we got on, I prayed and I said, “Heavenly father, please just help us to build someone up.” And I know that what you’ve said will. I know it will.

Elaine Dalton:

Thank you. Thank you for bringing the Spirit into my home today. Thank you so much.

Kristen Walker Smith:

You are wonderful.

Cali Black:

Of course. Thank you so much.

Kristen Walker Smith:

You’re wonderful.

The post One Minute Scripture Study Podcast episode with special guest Elaine Dalton first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

We all recently found that the “Church-supported” portion of our gospel learning is being put on hold for a bit. 

Since I run a huge account and website focused on Come Follow Me Study, I’ve felt this urgency and desire to help out as much as I can.

I asked my followers for questions and concerns they have while making this transition, and I’ve collected them all here! Some answers are from my own experiences as a middle school teacher, avid studier of the Come Follow Me curriculum, and as a young mom to two little kids. Other answers have been crowd-sourced from my followers or from other Come Follow Me resources. 

What are we supposed to do?!

I LOVE this question because I think it has a powerful but simple answer. We do not HAVE to do anything. We are not even SUPPOSED to necessarily do anything. 

Let me ask you a different question: What do you WANT to do? 

What do you want to do now that you have a day of total rest with your family? 

What a cool opportunity to pray to decide what is best. I’ll give you quite a few options and ideas below, but ultimately, you are the authority within your home. You can decide what Sundays are going to look like as you counsel with your spouse if you are married, and with your Heavenly Father. What a blessing!

I do want to add – please do not administer the Sacrament in your home unless you have been given explicit permission by YOUR Bishop. If you have been given permission, please follow your Bishop’s counsel with how to administer the sacred ordinance. 

How do we make Sundays special, especially if work and school are cancelled, so we are home all day every other day, too?

One of my favorite quotes goes something like: “If you don’t do anything differently, how can you expect it to be different?”

So what will you do differently on Sunday morning than a Saturday morning? 

Different shows on the TV? Different meals (eating breakfast together vs. on your own)? Getting ready for the day at a different time? Different music being played? 

My advice? PLAN. PLAN. PLAN. And then expect things to not go according to plan. (That’s one of the first lessons you learn as a teacher. I guarantee any other teacher can attest to that!)

Think about what type of schedule might work well with your family. Set clear expectations beforehand so people, especially kids, know what to expect! Do you have a set start-time for an activity or lesson together? Let people know!

And then be flexible during the day. This is NOT a situation where you need to wrap up on time or else the next ward is waiting out in the foyer for you to finish. Let things go as long or as short as they need. Pay attention to the natural timing and flow. Has an activity run its course in five minutes? Let it be. 

Consider your plans for the ENTIRE day. Late afternoons are usually tough times for everyone, from toddler to teenagers to adults. So will you plan a family walk to get everyone moving? Have everyone take a nap? Watch an uplifting movie together (which probably means Dad is taking a nap)? 

(I’ve got more specific tips for families with YOUNG KIDS and families with TEENAGERS, too!)

What if you or your family haven’t really done Come Follow Me yet? Or haven’t done it in a long time? 

First of all, literally no judgement. You are certainly not alone! 

But, what a nice little tender mercy in the midst of all the chaos, that you now have a little impetus to get you started again!

It might seem awkward or weird (check out point number 4 in my “5 Ways to Make Come Follow Me work for you this year” article). But really, it’s just reading and studying the scriptures! 

And what does it mean to study the scriptures?! Just slow down and think about them a bit. Stop and reflect. Discuss. If you need ideas of questions, check out the current Study Guide HERE (or look back on previous ones, too!). 

Crack open that curriculum manual, turn to today’s date, and start. Let go of any guilt you may feel from “missing” previous weeks. Trust me, you’ll learn exactly what the Spirit needs you to know when you put in some effort. 

What are some ideas for home-centered worship on Sundays?

First of all, the Come Follow Me curriculum is absolutely perfect for this situation. If you haven’t immersed yourself in this curriculum and scripture study yet, now is a great time to start.

Here are some ideas for using the Come Follow Me curriculum on Sundays:

• Give everyone individual time to read the assigned chapters on their own and mark a few verses that stand out to them. Come back together and share what you learned.
• Read through a few of the sections in the manual for the week. Talk about the discussion questions asked in each section. 
• Read through the posts that I made on Instagram @comefollowmestudy for this week and discuss your thoughts. (Or, don’t forget, all my Instagram posts are also posted on my website. You can click on the dates for the week and it will pull up all the posts for that reading!)
• Assign each family member a section of that week’s reading. Give them time to prepare a short lesson, thought, or summary about what they learned from their section. Have each family member share from their portion. 
• Act out or draw portions of the lesson. Hang up the artwork around your home for the following week. 
• Give everyone time to write in their journals about how they can apply the lessons from the Come Follow Me readings to their own lives. Have people share what they wrote if they are comfortable. 
• Watch the Book of Mormon video that corresponds to the assigned reading. Talk about what stood out to you from the video. 

Looking for ideas to specifically keep your little ones engaged? Check out this article!

Do you have teens you are trying to keep involved? Check out these ideas!

Here are other ideas for Sunday that are not related to the Come Follow Me curriculum:

• Prepare for April 2020 General Conference by studying about the Restoration of the Gospel and the First Vision in the Doctrine and Covenants.
• Read, watch, or listen to previous General Conference talks.
• Watch “Music and the Spoken Word” live from the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square (broadcast on BYUtv or the Choir’s Facebook page at 9:30 am MDT).
• Assign a “topic” for Sunday that you feel like your family would benefit from. Assign family members to prepare messages or thoughts about the topic. 
• Sing hymns or primary songs. Learn a song that your family might not be familiar with. 
• Do family history work or index names. 
• Keep in touch with distant family members through video calls.
• Keep in touch with ward family members, especially those you are assigned to minister to, through phone calls, texts, or visits (where appropriate). 
• Hold a “Fast Sunday” and have family members bear their testimonies if they are comfortable sharing. 
• Give everyone time to write in journals. 
• Do anything else that you consider “Keeping the Sabbath Holy”

What if I don’t have a picture-perfect “family” situation for Sundays?

If you live alone, this is a beautiful time to slow down and focus on your scripture study habits. How can you dive into the scriptures even more? How can you learn to love them? What good habits would you like to make and keep? You can also reach out to friends and loved ones through technology. Consider forming a study group through a group chat or video call so that you can encourage others to keep themselves emerged in the gospel, too!

If you live with only one other person, this is a great time to connect on a gospel level. Whether you are newlyweds, empty-nesters, or any other situation, take the time to connect with each other about the scriptures. This will also give both of you plenty of time to focus on your individual study. It probably isn’t necessary to be overly “formal” or scheduled with your time together, but commit to making some form of partner study happen. 

If you are the only member living with others who might not be observing the Sabbath day, consider how you can create time to be by yourself for some personal worship. Invite others to participate with you in non-threatening and uplifting ways, if possible. Connect with the people you live with in positive ways while still committing to keep the Sabbath holy. 

Final Thoughts

In Jacob 4:14, we are warned to not look “beyond the mark”. This means over-regulating ourselves, or looking for things that aren’t necessary. 

You don’t have to create a perfect experience for everyone in your home. You don’t need to become the Primary President and the YW leader and the Bishop and the chorister. Keep it simple. Think ahead and plan, but keep it simple. Use the Spirit to be your guide. Your family’s day will probably look different than everyone else’s and that’s totally fine.  

Think of all the emphasis that has been put on “Keeping the Sabbath Holy” over the past 5 years. You know what kinds of things will keep the Spirit and what won’t. Use personal revelation to continue to decide what is appropriate for the Sabbath.

And don’t forget to reach out! We are all in this together, in little homes and apartments throughout the world. Share your successes, your “let’s not try that again” moments, your testimony a-ha’s. Leave them here in the comments on this post, or on my Instagram or Facebook. 

Things might feel a little lonely, but you are certainly not alone. 

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Totally Home-Centered Church Survival Guide first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

P.S. If you’ve got young kids, check out my tips here, and be sure to read my full Survival Guide with tons of advice HERE!

I seriously love working with teenagers. I got my degree in Elementary Education, but I wound up teaching middle school for 4 years and getting my middle school endorsement. I know, I know, I’m that weirdo who enjoyed teaching middle school. Since I run the @comefollowmestudy social media accounts and website, I asked many of you what questions you had now that we are taking the “church-supported” portion of our Sundays away. 

And tons of you asked for advice on teenagers!

I’m going to share some ideas that I have from working as an English teacher for middle schoolers, EFY counselor, and YW leader, but I’ve also crowd-sourced some amazing ideas from my followers at @comefollowmestudy as well! If you have any thoughts to share, please comment below or join the conversation on my Instagram page!

LOVE is the answer

Teenagers are all over the map when it comes to their spiritual development. 

• If you’ve got a teen who is ready and willing to participate in any gospel activities you have at home, then make sure you express your love and appreciation for them. 
• If your teen is more casual about the gospel right now, make the Sabbath a day when you can express your love to them and meet them where they are.

If Sundays become a source of contention, then it will be difficult to get any gospel learning done.

Remember Elder Holland’s sage advice: “Maybe you can’t teach them yet, but you can love them. And if you love them today, maybe you can teach them tomorrow.”

Get them involved in planning

Just like the new youth initiative focuses on youth making the plans for activities and goals, have your youth help plan Sundays. 

Ask them what activities they think might be appropriate for the Sabbath. Ask them what they want to work on now that church can be whatever they want it to be. Allow them to seek personal revelation to contribute to the planning. 

If there is something that you want them to prepare for Sunday (check out all of my ideas for using the Come Follow Me curriculum in your families here), consider giving them time on Sunday morning to do that preparation. The rest of their week is probably filled with school assignments or other activities, so set realistic expectations and have them prepare a short message or thought on Sunday to share later in the day. 

Keep things fun and interesting!

Just because they might act like they are too cool for school (that phrase alone makes me seem uncool, I know), doesn’t mean that they don’t want some fun. 

Ever tried giving a room full of teenagers paper and crayons and asking them to draw an image from a story? It will literally be the highlight of some of their days. 

You might not get too much enthusiasm from asking them to dress up and act stories out, but stick to drawing, writing, physical games, songs, and videos, and you can keep them engaged pretty well!

Make room for discussion

Pretty much everyone likes to talk about themselves. Given the right conditions, think of discussion questions that might help them open up about personal struggles, questions, or testimonies that they have. To help you out, I’ve created Study Guides for every book in the Book of Mormon so far that give you tons of guiding questions for each chapter. 

I also post at least 5 spiritual thoughts every week on my Instagram page @comefollowmestudy. You could read through all of these thoughts and discuss your ideas afterward. (You can also access all my posts on my website HERE.)

And moments of silence are SO IMPORTANT for teens. There have been so many times where I have shared a message, and just waited in the silence for a bit. Suddenly, hands shoot up as kids make connections and think of stories to share. 

Get them in the scriptures

Sometimes, it is tempting to act as their “teacher” a little too much. Who is the best teacher of all? The Savior. And we learn about him through the scriptures. 

Have they read the assigned scriptures for “Come Follow Me” this week yet? If not, set aside time on Sunday to just sit and read! If they’ve already read the chapters, consider teaching them how to “study” a little better by re-reading and looking for connections and questions. 

Ask them questions that get them looking back in the scriptures to answer.

Do you know a specific struggle or question that they have right now? Give them a personal challenge to look for answers within the scriptures. 

Again, look through my long list of ideas for using the Come Follow Me curriculum HERE for even more ideas to get them in their scriptures. 

Set expectations beforehand

Is everyone sleeping in? Should they be awake and ready by a specific time? Are you meeting as a whole family at a specific time? Whatever you decide is best for your family, make sure they know the expectations beforehand. 

Nothing will cause more contention than teens not meeting expectations they didn’t even know existed. 

Analyze and be willing to change

Your teens will appreciate being respected enough to ask their opinion on a Sunday night. 

“How did today go? How can we do better next week? What should we start, stop, and continue?”

Their feedback will be invaluable for making adjustments for the following week, instead of just plowing along with what you think is working. 

Keep your own studies going

Actions speak louder than words. ESPECIALLY to teenagers.

The best way to teach them that reading the scriptures is important is to have them see you reading the scriptures. 

So take time to make sure your spiritual tank is filled. Be a great example of immersing yourself in the gospel on Sundays, and your family will naturally follow suit. (Or, if they don’t follow suit right now, they’ll always have that example in the back of their mind.)

Your teenagers will be such a helpful tool in this home-centered church. They are awesome. Their testimonies are powerful and pure. Share your successes with others! Help them with what has worked well, and don’t be afraid to let go of habits that aren’t working well.

Comment below with any other tips specifically for teens, and be sure to read my full post on using Come Follow Me HERE. 

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Teenagers Edition: Totally Home-Centered Church Survival Guide first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

P.S. If you have teenagers, check out THESE TIPS – or read my entire general Survival Guide HERE!

Solidarity to all of you who have had the thought, “No more nursery?!” or “No more primary?!” cross their minds recently. 

I’m a young mom with a 2-year-old and a 2-month-old, and I also have my degree in Elementary Education. I’ve run the @comefollowmestudy social media accounts since January of 2019, and also have my own site with all of my study thoughts each week. I know a fair amount about kids’ development, how to appropriately teach at each age level, and I have a huge passion for studying the scriptures.

And still, this is no walk in the park. 

But here are some tips that I have for making your new completely home-centered Sundays run as smoothly as possible. Some of these ideas come from my own experiences, and others have been crowd-sourced from my amazing followers on Instagram. Please, if you have anything else to add, comment below on this post, or head over to @comefollowmestudy and join the conversation!

Flexible Routine, NOT Rigid Schedule

Two super important words for young kids! 

First, make a routine. I recommend creating “blocks” of time. For example, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. we are doing “arts and crafts”, even though the hour might look like coloring for 5 minutes, drawing with chalk for 20, coloring a picture for 10 again, building a temple out of blocks for 15 minutes… you get the picture. Routines help little minds know what to expect, and they also give you as the adult some structure to work with. 

And second, be flexible. If “song time” is going great and your kids are rocking out to all of the Article of Faith songs over and over, then keep it going. If next week, “song time” runs its course in 10 minutes, don’t stress. You’ll lose their attention fast if you are trying to force something that they aren’t interested in right now. 

Make it Fun!

In my undergrad classes at BYU, I was taught that during the first week of school, I needed to have my students leave my classroom thinking, “That was such a fun class!” If I could get them to leave thinking that for the first few days, then I could throw in all the hard work and rigor I wanted to later, and they would buy into it because my class was “fun”. 

So find ways to make the Sabbath fun! Sundays do not have to be boring days. You might not want your kids watching the same shows or playing the same games they do on weekdays, so what can you offer to make the day more special instead of seeming like a chore?

Some ideas to make the day fun in appropriate ways:

• Church videos on YouTube or on the Church’s website
• Listen to Primary songs
• Listen to other Church songs on YouTube by current popular artists
• Delete their normal game apps for the day so they aren’t as tempting of an option
• Pull out board games or card games that might not be used as often
• Get some outdoor activities for your backyard that you don’t usually use or have time for
• Get new church-related or uplifting books

If “fun” is a theme of the day, then it’s a lot easier to get real “learning” in!

Let Them Help Plan!

Kids LOVE getting buy-in. During the week (or even on Sunday morning), ask them what they would like to do as Sunday-appropriate activities. You might be surprised at the good ideas they come up with! If they have some ideas that you don’t want to pursue on the Sabbath, keep it positive by telling them it’s a great idea for a Wednesday, and put it on your calendar if possible. This helps keep them feeling like their contribution is meaningful! 

For super young kids, giving them two choices is a fun way to still create buy-in (“Would you like to take a walk around the neighborhood, or read a picture book?”)

Give Them Jobs!

Along with getting their buy-in in the planning phase, get their help executing the plan, too! This can look completely different based on the ages of your kids, but can be really effective in keeping them engaged. 

For the older kids, have them help plan part of an activity. They can: 

• Cut out olive trees to use for a reenactment
• Learn how to read a few verses so they can read it out loud to the family
• Color visual aids
• Think of a personal story to share
• Come up with a fun game for the family to play in the backyard

For the younger kids, give them jobs during the activity to keep their interest. They can:

• Bring you supplies when needed
• Hold visual aids or props
• Act stories out
• Dress up for a story
• Repeat simple phrases over and over

Spread it Out!

Kids are usually most attentive in the morning to mid-morning. Consider:

• Activities or lessons that require more focus earlier on in the day
• Nap time or “quiet time” in the early afternoon
• More active plans for the later afternoon
• A church or uplifting movie for the evening 

Don’t feel like you need to cram all of the day’s activities into a two-hour block, just like church. 

Take the Wins, Ignore the Losses, and Don’t Stress

A million things will go “wrong”. Because that’s what happens when you try to work with little, developing personalities and maturities. 

But Jesus loved the little children, temper tantrums and all. Reframe the Sabbath as a way to just shower your kids with love while teaching them correct principles, and you can’t go wrong. Get them in the scriptures if you can. Bear your testimony in small and simple ways. Share personal stories that they can connect with. 

Make it a process that YOU enjoy, because this is your Sabbath day, too. 

Find time to reconnect with your spouse. To dive into the scriptures by yourself. Put that oxygen mask on yourself before helping others. 

I know, easier said than done with little ones. 

But when you make Christ a priority in YOUR life, it will naturally spill over into the way you interact with and teach your kids. This was my complete motivation behind starting @comefollowmestudy and it is what keeps me going. We’ve got to fill our own buckets first and feast upon the words of Christ. 

Have any more ideas for working with young kids on the Sabbath? Drop them in the comments below or head over to Instagram and share there! We are in this together.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post Young Kids Edition: Totally Home-Centered Church Survival Guide first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.

You can now check out some of my most FAVORITE study materials right here!

Have any questions about other supplies I use?!

Drop a comment at the bottom of this post, and I’ll respond with my favorite recommendations!

*Some of the links I share might be affiliate links, meaning I get some income without you paying anything extra!*

Let’s start with: Marking the scriptures!

I LITERALLY got this pencil when I was 8 years old. AND I recently learned that my mom got the same type of pencil when she was in the MTC. Soooo this scripture marking pencil has been in the family for generations now hahaha!

It’s nothing too fancy, but you do feel pretty cool changing between the 8 different colored leads.

Why is this my fav?

It doesn’t bleed through the pages! It still marks very boldly, but you can’t see it on the other side of the rice-paper-thin pages unless you are pressing down way too hard.

It gives you the ability to change colors easily without keeping track of multiple pencils. I have TONS of scripture-marking techniques that I have tried throughout my life, and they all involve needing more than one color to mark things. But I only have one pencil to keep track of!

It lasts FOREVER. Seriously, between the 8 different colors of lead, it will take you a loooong time before you even come close to running out. Red and dark blue are my most-used colors by far, so I might have to look at refills soon, but even then, it’s taken me many years to get to this point. Oh, and luckily, the refills are super easy to just pop in to the appropriate little area if you get super obsessed with marking a color in particular.

You never thought anyone could talk that much about one pencil, huh?! HAHA! Click down below if you want to grab one for yourself or any family members, and let me know what you think of it in the comments!

If you have scriptures with regular paper thickness (like the D&C and Book of Mormon I recommend below), then THESE are the pens you want!

When I taught middle school, these were the only pens that I would use to grade papers. They had every color available, and I love how bright and thick the ink was, without smearing. Like truly, I have never met any kind of colored pens that work even close to as well, and I think I’ve tried them all.

PAPER MATE GEL PENS

My favorite wide-margin, spiral-bound Doctrine and Covenants!

This has been my FAVORITE new discovery for studying the Doctrine and Covenants this year! The pages are normal 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, so there is literally TONS of space to write notes anywhere. I haven’t ever run out of space– and that’s saying something for a writer like me!

My other favorite feature is that it is spiral-bound! I can lay it open to any page, and it will stay there. No folding back pages necessary!

These scriptures really are HUGE, and I love them. The shop also has giant carriers that perfectly fit the size of the scriptures, so if you carry your scriptures from place to place often, I highly recommend grabbing a bag, too!

I was also able to get a discount code for you! Use the code CFM10 for 10% off your entire purchase. CLICK HERE!

My Favorite “Book of Mormon” that also doubles as my journal!

This is my favorite new way to read the Book of Mormon – the authors have taken out the chapters and verse markings and breaks (although you can still easily find them at the bottom of the page for reference purposes). This makes it read much more smoothly – just like a story, separated into paragraphs and events that occur naturally!

I ALSO love this Book of Mormon because it has super wide margins and lots of blank white space at the end of “event” chapters. I have plenty of room to write my notes and questions in the margins as I read, and if I have a lot of info that I want to get down, the end-of-chapter sections give me plenty of room.

I love that all of my thoughts are all contained right alongside the scriptures and all in one book! This really is currently serving as my scriptures AND my journal!

Book of Mormon Study Guide? My answer is probably more boring than you would think!

There are TONS of study guides out there with fabulous insight. But my favorite study guide will always be the Church’s own Book of Mormon Student Manual for Religion and Institute classes.

The reason I love it? It sticks to doctrine and gives background info for exactly what I need. I prefer to let my own mind wander when it comes to practical applications and personal inspiration – so I really like that this manual gives me the info that I need to just UNDERSTAND what is going on if I get lost, and provide doctrinal guidance if things seem confusing.

It has sections for almost every chapter and verse, so I don’t always read every single entry. I’ll glance at it and see if it is something I feel like I need more information on at the moment. I love it! But feel free to share any of your favorite study guides in the comment section, too. I definitely have not tried them all!

You can access this COMPLETELY FREE online HERE https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/book-of-mormon-student-manual/title-page?lang=eng

Or, I actually prefer to have the physical copy for this one. You can grab it at Church Bookstores if you live by one, or order one from Amazon.

Next up: Need a kick in the pants?!

This book will literally light the fire underneath you to get you moving forward on making changes and setting spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical goals that actually work. The book walks you through the “training program” that the Lord taught here on the earth and throughout the scriptures, and then teaches you how to apply this same “training program” in your own life!

Plus, it’s filled with entertaining and inspirational sports stories and analogies that really make the concepts tangible for readers of all ages.

Pluuuuus, Skye Fagrell (the author) used to be my Bishop, and he is such a dynamic speaker and seminary teacher that I knew he needed to write a book. Turns out, he did. And it’s awesome. Read it as a whole family and learn how to actually make lasting change in your spiritual life!

MORE PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS COMING SOON!

Remember, have a request for a recommendation, or a specific question? Pop it in the comment section down below, and I’ll add on to this article with more of my favorite STUDY things!

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

The post A few of my favorite *STUDY* things… first appeared on Come Follow Me Study with Cali Black.