A pasta see or Apostasy!

Greetings from your 30-year-old teacher!

That's right, friends, I have left my twenties behind. And in the spirit of leaving things behind, I have this fabulous quote from Puumba (the warthog on the Lion King), "You've gotta put your behind in the past." Truer words were never spoken. :)

This week in class we talked about what an APOSTASY is. There have been general apostasies throughout time, periods of wickedness when the truth was lost, including the Great Apostasy after Christ's earthly ministry and before the gospel was restored through Joseph Smith. We also talked about the idea of personal apostasy. Nephi taught we should liken the scriptures to ourselves, for our profit and learning. We came up with a list of how we could apply the apostasy to our lives and here's what we came up with:

General Apostasy

• Corrupt or no priesthood
• Wickedness
• Lord takes away truth
• No living prophets

Personal Apostasy

• Going against God's teachings
• Broken
• Doing opposite of what we have been taught
• Going against God when you know he's right
• Doing it for the treats (obeying for worldly rewards)
• Rejecting the Holy Ghost
• Worshipping false gods

We also talked about some ideas to make class better. We are going to continue to do the challenges, with the youth choosing the challenge for each week. The other suggestions were to have treats in class, brought by whoever chose the challenge for the week, and that those who choose to complete the challenge can eat the treats; to have one of the youth teach part of the lesson each week; to get our challenges earlier in the week; and to have the challenges delivered in a different way than just online.  We will be working on making these changes. For this week, the challenge comes from Derek:

Challenge: In church, when do you feel happiest, and why? Please share an example in class.

See you Sunday!

Love,

Sister Lewis

Reunited and it Feels So Good!

Hey! Ho! Hip-hop-hooray! Ho!


The blog is coming back to life after a brief hiatus. I'm in a bit of a weird mood today, so excuse the greeting. Today was my first day back teaching the Sunday School class in several weeks. I was out of town and we also had Stake and General Conferences recently, and I found myself missing my good ol' youth class. So today we did a little catching up with each other. I've been thinking lately that part of the success of learning the gospel in groups is being comfortable with the people who surround you, in this case, the other members of the youth class. So we spent the majority of our lesson today learning new things about each other for the benefit of hopefully opening up a little more and becoming closer as a class. I enjoyed it thoroughly! Thanks to everyone for being a good sport. I didn't take notes while we were talking, but I remembered at least one thing that each person said about themselves. For those of you who weren't in class today, maybe you'll learn something new by looking at this list! There were some pretty funny stories shared. :)

Derek - competed in a spear fishing tournament
Jeremy - almost drowned a few times, has spent more $ on his car than it's worth
Alec - likes wakeboarding, been to Disneyland
Ryan - never been to Disneyland
Braden - likes baseball, hasn't been to Hawaii
Kayla - likes four wheeling and dirt biking
Avery - fluent in Mandarin, choked a python and got scratched by a tiger
Nicole - has been to Harry Potter World three times, has met Adam Sandler
Rachel - has ridden a motorcycle, has been to college
Amber - runs relays in track
Sister Lewis - is pregnant!

We are talking about the Apostasy and Restoration this month, and I am excited for this topic of study. We also talked about ways the youth would like to improve upon the format of the class, or whether they would like to add something new, or change something we're already doing. One idea was to continue this trend of getting to know one another better by sharing some new fact about ourselves at every class. What do you all think of that? I enjoy the opportunity to get to talk with you and hear things about your lives outside of church because I don't see any of you apart from Sundays very often. There was also discussion about whether we want to continue the weekly challenges, or substitute them for a different idea.

Please help me make this the kind of Sunday School class that you want it to be! I think it has been going well, but can get even better. This week's challenge is related to the topic of improving our class:

Challenge: Come to class next week with at least one suggestion or idea for improving class. Tell me whether you want to keep doing weekly challenges, and if not, what you propose to do instead.

As always, enjoy your week, thank you for all you do, and you ROCK.

Love,
Sister Lewis