Matthew 10-12; Mark 2; Luke 7; 11 "These Twelve Jesus Sent Forth" (March 11-17)
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Matthew 10-12; Mark 2; Luke 7; 11 "These Twelve Jesus Sent Forth" (March 11-17) is a great lesson to start talking about General Conference! I love how we can incorporate our daily lives and events into our lesson every week to help everyone make connections.
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Looking for the free printables? KEEP SCROLLING! These posts are packed with information so be sure you scroll all the way down to the Teaching Ideas section and look for the coral buttons to print!
Study Suggestions
Matthew 8-10, Matthew 11-12, Mark 2-3, Luke 6:1-7:18, Luke 7:18-50, Luke 10:38-12:59 from the Seminary Teacher Manual
Matthew 8-12, Mark 1-4, Luke 4-8, Luke 9-14 from the Institute Teacher Manual
“The Prophet of God” by Elder Neil L. Andersen
“Give Heed unto the Prophets’ Words” by Elder Quentin L. Cook
"The Sabbath Is a Delight" by President Russell M. Nelson
"Can I Honor God While Working on the Sabbath" by Samuel B. Hislop (LDS.org blog)
"The Power of Keeping the Sabbath Holy" by Elder John H. Groberg
“Bear Up Their Burdens with Ease” by Elder David A. Bednar
Videos
Watch a video and discuss it after dinner, recap a part of the lesson before Church on Sunday, share a video in a group and discuss it together, or pause and discuss a video as part of your main lesson.
Jesus Calls Twelve Apostles to Preach and Bless Others (1 1/2 minutes)- Bible video
Bear Up Their Burdens with Ease (about 16 1/2 minutes)- Talk from Elder David A. Bednar
The Sabbath Is a Delight (about 3 minutes)
Upon My Holy Day- Honoring the Sabbath (about 1 1/2 minutes)- Great visual for thinking about honoring the Sabbath by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. There are 3 videos in this series.
Make the Sabbath a Delight by Finding Your Ancestors (about 3 minutes)- Clip from President Nelson's talk (there are several other videos on the Sabbath there as well).
Jesus Heals a Lame Man on the Sabbath (about 2 1/2 minutes)- Bible video
Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind (about 8 minutes)- Bible video
Jesus Heals a Man on the Sabbath (about 3 minutes)- Children telling the Bible video
Keeping the Sabbath (about 1 minute)- Clip from President Gordon B. Hinckley
Preparation of Gordon B. Hinckley: Forget Yourself and Go to Work (about 2 minutes)- Story of the missionary letter he got from his dad.
Service Through Song (about 3 1/2 minutes)- A group shares love through singing hymns to a group of elderly residents.
Service (about 20 seconds)- Side by side comparison of showing love like Christ does (These short videos are great to share before or after your lesson through email or social media to keep the conversation going).
Images
Hang one on the fridge, mail it to a friend, cut it into a puzzle, and more! Bright Idea posters come from the Friend, Mormonads are from The New Era, and others are images found throughout LDS.org
Mormonads for Sabbath Day and Sacrament, Service, and Prophets and Revelation
“When we’re helping we’re happy”- Bright Idea
Yoke of Oxen- photo
Questions to Ponder and Discuss
Use these questions to help you ponder as you do your personal studies, encourage journaling for your kids, text them to a friend or child to get the conversation going, or take them with you in the car and randomly draw from a bag as you carpool to school or your next practice. These go beyond the questions in the manual.
What does it mean to be sent as sheep into the midst of wolves?
When have you been given through the Spirit what to speak when you needed it?
How has losing your life in the service of others helped you to find your life?
In what ways can you magnify your current calling? How can you magnify your calling as a disciple of Christ?
How has taking Christ’s yoke upon you given you rest? How has his yoke been easier than bearing your burden alone?
Why is it important to have a balance between the spirit and letter of the law? What is the danger of weighing one more than the other?
How are you following Jesus Christ in your daily life? What can you do to better improve your willingness to follow Him?
Are you the righteous individual or a sinner that Jesus mentions when eating with the publicans and sinners? Do we go between the two? Sometimes we are righteous and on the right path and sometimes we are a sinner seeking forgiveness? Where are you at right now?
Why is the Sabbath made for man? How can you use the Sabbath day to better yourself? How can you help others on the Sabbath?
Why should we avoid judging what others choose to do on the Sabbath? If we were to see someone else do what we do on the Sabbath would we judge them harshly or be happy with their commitment? Are there things you want to change about your Sabbath practices?
How did the Savior honor the Sabbath?
Why do you honor the Sabbath? How do you do it?
What is the difference between following a list of dos and don'ts for Sabbath observance and honoring the principles of observing the Sabbath? What does it allow us to do?
What is the purpose of the Sabbath?
In addition to attending church, taking the sacrament, and performing your calling, what else can help you make the Sabbath a delight?
What example are you setting in your family of honoring the Sabbath?
In what ways is your reverence towards God directly related to your Sabbath observance?
How does honoring the Sabbath all day allow you to experience its spiritual blessings throughout the rest of the week?
What does the Lord require of our Sabbath day observance?
What things are you willing to give up for a more joyful Sunday?
What happens when we change our view of going to church from getting what we want to serving someone else?
How can we recognize those in need of service?
What does service have to do with the Sabbath?
What are you currently doing on the Sabbath? How can you make it more?
How are you using your agency on the Sabbath?
Teaching Ideas
These are my ideas. My hope is that my thoughts may be a springboard to your own great ideas that are right for you and your family. Some ideas are for families with young children while others might be for widows meeting together as a group. Read through and find what’s right for your situation.
Make your own apostle “dolls.” Each member of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve includes a background that relates to their personal history. These facts match the facts on my free General Conference countdown. See if your family can guess who they are! Then get out the countdown sheets to check your answer or give clues. You can roll each doll into a tube so they stand on their own. They will also fit around a toilet paper tube if you want them to be sturdier. If you want to avoid overlap of the image, cut extra white space beyond the black lines.
Using my apostle dolls, discuss how each person has a different background and different talents but the Lord uses them all. How can some of their talents help them as they go about doing the Lord’s work today? How can our talents and backgrounds help us be instruments in the Lord’s hands? Design your own disciple “doll” using my templates. Add your talents and other things that make you unique in the background.
You an also talk about how each person has different gifts. It doesn’t matter which gift we have as much as it matters how we use it. How we can use our gifts to do the Lord’s work? How can we use even our daily chores, jobs or school in a way that helps us share the love of God and His gospel"?
Did you know I have General Conference lesson helps already on the blog? Use them to review some of the talks from the most recent talks by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. The fire handout comes from Elder Gerrit W. Gong’s talk, “Our Campfire of Faith.” The veggies come from Elder D. Todd Christofferson’s talk “Firm and Steadfast in the Faith of Christ” and the Cellphone Guidelines sheet goes with President Dallin H. Oaks talk, “Parents and Children.”
Print out the handouts I have for each talk and see if your family can match the dolls to the printables. They can use a Conference Ensign for help. It would be fun to break up in teams and do a little race. Then briefly explain how the handout goes with the talk and why it’s important to keep reviewing the messages from General Conference and how you can apply those teachings to your lives (or how you have been doing so).
Give each person in your family or group one General Conference talk to teach for 5-10 minutes. Share the message but more importantly any actions you have taken since hearing the talk or how we can continue to apply it our lives. You can text the link to my lesson aids to help them out.
- Have a relay race! Set up an obstacle course in your backyard or at the park. Grab some sports cones for people to go around, a couple of buckets with a broom stick across to step over, an inflatable pool with some stepping stones, etc. Have fun with it! The catch is each person has to carry a heavy load the entire way. A bucket full of water usually does the trick. No spilling! At a certain point in the course (i.e. halfway, the hardest part, when you start to see them struggle), have someone come in and help carry the load. You can do this with another broom stick handle- slide the bucket of water on to the middle of the handle then each of you carry one end of the stick. When the race is over, discuss the race. How did they feel when someone came to help? Did you wish they came sooner? Then compare it to how Christ will help us carry our loads. When He comes to help is entirely dependent on us! We have to ask Him and be willing to let Him help us!
- Does your family like puzzles? See if you can find an ox-yoke puzzle near you. They would be in historical gift shops. You can also make one yourself. If you need help solving the puzzle, check out this YouTube video. You can use the puzzle to discuss how when we take Christ's yoke upon us, it can feel like He is actually carrying the whole load. OR do it reverse and talk about how when we allow Christ to help us, our load becomes lighter.
- There is a quote handout from Holly's Home about taking Christ's yoke upon us if you want a printable for your journal.
- Print my oxen with a yoke photo and turn it into a puzzle. Use it to quickly introduce what a yoke looks like as your family puts the puzzle together. There are also smaller images to glue in your journal. Note: I didn't turn the photo into puzzle pieces so you could easily make it as difficult or easy as you need to for your group. Cut it into pieces and have fun!
- Share a New Testament Candy Gram with your family or ministering friends this week! The Take 5 candy bar works great with incorporating teaching about taking Christ's yoke upon us.
Use my handout to talk about how the Sabbath is more than going to church on Sunday. Cut the image of the church building into pieces (you may want to print it on a different colored paper so you can see the outline of the church better). At the beginning of your lesson, have the church building taped on your scene as normal. Then as you discuss the Sabbath and ways you honor this holy day, give each person in your family or group a piece of the building. Ask them to draw on the back of their piece something that represents the Sabbath to them. It can be an act of service, how we can strengthen each other at church, a way you honor the Sabbath, etc. Put your pieces on the scene with your drawings showing to build the chapel. How does seeing these things help you view each Sabbath day? How does that better represent doing well on the Sabbath?
Discuss why we don't need a list of dos and don'ts for the Sabbath. It's not about what we do but more of our attitude while doing it. You could start out your lesson making a list on the board then discuss why that list isn't necessarily the best way to honor the Sabbath. In essence this is what the Pharisees and Sadducees did. Jesus did something they thought should be on the don't list.
Discuss what service does for us. Then discuss what the Sabbath can do for us. Show how these two things are related and have similar purposes.
Sing the primary song, "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" then discuss what that song means and how we can be rays of sunlight each Sabbath.
Teach the finger play about going to church. Interlock your fingers and close your hands so all the fingers are in the middle of your hands. Put the pointer fingers up to look like a chapel and the thumbs are the chapel doors. When you open your hands, wiggle the fingers to be all the people inside. "This is the Church and here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people." You can see an example of this rhyme on YouTube. Then discuss how we can help all those people at church. How can our experience at Church change as we focus on what we can give at church instead of focusing on what we can get out of it?
- Looking for more helps? Teach Me Messages has great lesson packets each week that work for home or if you teach primary. Remember to tell them I sent you!
Activity Pages
In the interest of focusing my time better, I will no longer be providing the specific links back to the activity pages. LDS.org already has a topic page now so I feel it’s redundant for me to do it as well. Definitely check out the latest addition of the Friend and New Era as well. I have years of those links by topic on this site too. You can search by keyword using my handy dandy search bar (be sure you have flash enabled though or you won’t get any results).
