Tips For Making General Conference A Success With Kids

• Start preparing early. Introduce the general authorities in a personal way. Use this countdown and learn about one each day. Watch the “LDS Apostles song” on youtube- find a few fun songs to get to know them. They are more likely to listen to people they recognize and know something about. 

• Have things ready, but try to wait until they start to struggle. They are capable of listening and want to spend time together. Have a few things set apart for different sessions. If one thing isn’t working, try another. Keep activities simple, things the kids can do without help from you. 

• Have realistic expectations. To keep it a positive experience, I recommend not making them listen to the whole session. Recognize your child’s attention span, extend that with a few activities, but let them go be noisy in a different room when they are done. They’ll come back for other sessions or even when they’re ready again. 

• Make it a party! Treats and special food is a great way to bring excitement. We make cinnamon rolls. We eat chips or popcorn. We fill a treat cup with small treats and every time one of the first presidency gets up to the pulpit, they get to have a treat. Change up the room where you watch in some way so it’s different than other days.

Here are a few other links I use:

http://heapahoopla.com/tag/general-conference/

https://www.google.com/search?q=conference+bingo&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjpj4jo2v_SAhVIImMKHeWsCg0Q_AUICCgB&biw=1455&bih=655

http://www.momshavequestionstoo.com/list-of-preschool-general-conference-activities/

What Prayer Can't Do and how it relates to Disney's Aladdin FHE

The Genie in Aladdin is ALL POWERFUL. He can control the universe. 

But there are a few things he WILL NOT do.

Just like the Genie who is not real, we have an ALL-POWERFUL God, our Father, who can do all things! But there are a few things he will not do. Consider the talk by President Uchdorf "Fourth Floor, Last Door." He says:

Faith is powerful, and often it does result in miracles. But no matter how much faith we have, there are two things faith cannot do. For one, it cannot violate another person’s agency.

The second thing faith cannot do is force our will upon God. We cannot force God to comply with our desires—no matter how right we think we are or how sincerely we pray. 

We discussed these two things and then some examples of prayers he could answer and prayers he couldn't/wouldn't and why. And in closing our Family Night from the same talk:

Faith means that we trust not only in God’s wisdom but that we trust also in His love. It means trusting that God loves us perfectly, that everything He does—every blessing He gives and every blessing He, for a time, withholds—is for our eternal happiness.

With this kind of faith, though we may not understand why certain things happen or why certain prayers go unanswered, we can know that in the end everything will make sense. “All things [will] work together for good to them that love God.”

All will be made right. All will be well.

We can be certain that answers will come, and we may be confident that we will not only be content with the answers but we will also be overwhelmed by the grace, mercy, generosity, and love of our Heavenly Father for us, His children.

President Nelson's Scripture Challenge

*I just updated this to include a link to the full document at the bottom of this post. I am so excited so many have joined me in doing this challenge. I know we're blessed for following counsel from the leaders of our church. If the link doesn't work, feel free to email me at ashleyjaggi at gmail.*

One of the leaders in my church issued a challenge in January to read all the citations about Jesus Christ as listed in the back of the scriptures and promised those listening that if they would proceed to learn all they can about Jesus Christ, their love for Him and for God’s laws would grow beyond what they could currently imagine. This seemed overwhelming and I quickly gave up. But then he posted that he did this in just 6 weeks and gave us an idea of how in this post.

Here is the picture he posted. There are 2,249 citations in the scriptures we use.

Now that he made it more concrete for me, I'm going to try again. I plan to break it into 90 days, which is 25 citations a day. I copied the citations into a word doc similar to the printed sheets he used to help me keep track. I can send them to you if you'd like. :)

Here is a link to the full doc. I printed the first page separately as a reference throughout and then the pages 2 to 30 front and back.

Want to join me?