Lesson for November 5, 2017

Today we were given the presidency leadership lesson by Charlene Farnworth on the new teaching method coming up. She reflected on Lana’s lesson from last week on the Book of Mormon. Charlene thought of the children of Israel and the brass serpent. A lot of the Israelites perished, although all they had to do was look. She wonders if the Book of Mormon is our brass serpent. All we have to do is look. It has healing powers. About 6 months ago she went to a conference at BYU called the LDS Educators Conference. About 150 people were there. She wondered why she was invited, since it was for anyone who is LDS and who teaches. The General Sunday School presidency taught the lessons. They talked about the new program to counsel together. Elder Callister quoted Elder Packer that there is no question that need go unanswered, any question or problem. A framework for teaching was presented. Teaching and learning is a cycle. Prepare-Engage-Improve This takes place in a role as a teacher or a learner. It is a why we are going to learn. Elder Callister said that principles are ways to improve our maximum agency and maximum growth. Principle 1. We are here to learn 2It is a call to action. 3. It must be scripture based, including our current prophets. 4. We will have guidelines and boundaries. 5 inviting—a time when we can all join in. 6. Environment of trust. 7 Open. So community opportunities and things we need to learn about will be talked about. We are asked to act outside the meeting on the challenges we discuss. Joseph Smith said, “I teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves. We will base our discussions on scriptures, like Nephi asked God about the scriptures his father told him about. It is not for the purpose of divulging private issues, but we can talk about sensitive issues without naming names. Some things are private in our hearts. So we need to be sensitive. We are all invited to discuss, but none are pressed to discuss. We want everyone to get a chance to speak, if they wish. Trust is important. Trust is a powerful principle, so we need to engender a safe environment and be trustworthy. We need to be dear friends. Five basic elements to be trustworthy: honest, benevolent, speak openly, confident in what we say and understand the scriptures, and we have to be reliable. It points out the significance of token trust. It takes a long time to restore broken trust. We need to be open, so teaching in a circle helps with openness. In Adam-Ondi-Ahman, it is a huge bowl/circle where Adam taught is descendants. If Father Adam can do it, we can try it. We are going to do an exercise to decide what to talk about in 2018. We filled out a survey to decide what we want to talk about.