Come Follow Me for Individuals and Families – Page 4

Witness

Today Daniel’s apartment building caught on fire in Santiago, Chile. He escaped, thanks to living angels who stopped to warn, guide, and unlock doors. Feel free to join me in prayers of gratitude for his protection. He grabbed his scriptures, wallet, keys, camera, and photos which were already prepared for travel. He already had his shoes on when the call came to escape. He and the other elders had to abandon a smoky stairwell with hot handrails for a different route out. When they were trapped on the roof, with only locked doors to stairs going down, someone came up to open a locked door to a safe stairwell. A quote from his message today:

Needless to say, that was an intense experience. Maybe we were never in real danger. But my mindset changed. As a missionary, I already have very few personal belongings, but as I stood there with reminders of my family and my scriptures with all my markings and couldn’t think of anything else I would want to save I realized how easily we can get distracted by things that don’t last. There are a lot of things I left behind that don’t matter, and now that’s especially clear to me.

God really does protect us, guide us, answer prayers, and puts people, thoughts, and when necessary angels in our lives to help us return to live with him again. The Savior truly understands us, and through his infinite sacrifice and atonement we can be cleansed from sin.
-Elder Daniel Ross

I was very unwell all morning before I heard about this. Maybe I knew on some level he was in danger. I also felt complete peace when he announced his call (mission assignment) last April. I don’t need any more assurance that all will be well, whatever things look like at present. I don’t think he has his “cloak,” but he does have his “parchments,” (2 Timothy 4:13), and knows the value of them.

And last of all, here is a link to the journal page for our study of Matthew 2 and Luke 2 at our house for the week of January 14-20.

Four choices of study for Matthew 1 and Luke 1

Last Monday I posted the worksheet that I made for our family for the Come Follow Me curriculum week one. The important thing is that our family followed our plan during the week, and we had a good discussion on Sunday. They won’t be making any training videos for family discussions using our family, but it was good.

For this week, we have four family members at home, so I split the readings in Matthew 1 and Luke 1 into four stories: Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth/Zacharias (counts as one), and Gabriel. Each of us will choose one person (or couple) to study this week.

If you care to see the study guide I made for Matthew 1 and Luke 1, this is a link to the document . Some of the questions come from the Church study guide, and some are my own. I feel silly posting this. But there it is.

Correction: on worksheet, the last reference for Gabriel should be Luke 1:26-37, not Matthew.

This is how we are doing it this week: Come Follow Me for Individuals and Families Week 1

This week, the goal is for each person to study a few verses on their own each day and write about it. We wanted the kids to start a journal of their scripture study, so each week I plan to make a page on which they can write. This week I typed it. Some weeks it may be photocopies of post-it notes. And yes, we will be sweetening the deal as we come together to share on Sunday morning. We will keep reading the Book of Mormon as a family in the evenings. Every scripture and question is listed in the study guide, so there’s nothing original here, just the way we are going to use it.

Post edit addition: we are changing the cinnamon roll time because it’s the first Sunday of the month. 😉