CES Spring Workshop

On Friday my office had its annual CES Spring Workshop. What the means is that everyone in the Central Office that works for CES (the Church Educational System) and their spouses or “friend” get to spend the day going to workshops about CES or the gospel. It was amazing! There were three classes to go to and I just have to tell you about all the cool things I learned.

The first class we went to was sort of like a seminary class. We learned about finding and applying principles found in the scriptures. We learned that there are three basic ways or methods of “obtaining living water from the scriptural reservoir”. They are 1) Reading the scriptures from beginning to end. 2) Studying the scriptures by topic. And 3) Searching the scriptures for connections, patterns, and themes. (That was from one of Elder Bednar’s talks). Another way to read the scriptures that I had never really thought about is to see yourself in different roles as you read. For example, read the scriptures as if you were a parent teaching a child, or as a home/visiting teacher, or as a missionary. You will begin to see things in a different light when you do that. Our teacher shared a ton of wonderful quotes with us, but this one especially touched me. It is from Elder Haight:

“I promise you…that if you will follow that counsel to govern yourselves by correct principles – principles you learn at home, through the scriptures, modern-day prophets, and the Holy Ghost – your decisions will be made with confidence and ease. And though the fierce winds may be whipping the trees, your roots will be deeply entrenched in the ground.”

The second class we went to was about the new “Old Testament Visual Resource DVD” that the church is putting out. And it is SO cool! You know those seminary videos that you watch all the time. They have made 5 new videos that are from the second half of the Old Testament (since the old ones are all from the first half). They have put them on a new instructional DVD with the old ones, but they have it all split up into sections of the Old Testament. Each section has a video, a talk on it from an apostle, charts and graphs, paintings, music…I just can’t tell you how cool it is! They showed us bits and pieces of it. I can’t wait to see the whole thing. It has been 7 years in the making. It should be available for CES (ie: seminaries, institutes) by August. And here’s the really cool part, ANYONE can buy it after it has been out for a year for only $6. All the old Seminary videos you can’t buy, but this one you will be able to use with your own family. They are planning on doing the New Testament next, then The Book of Mormon, and then the Doctrine and Covenants. I wish I could explain to you just how amazing this video is going to be, just know that you will want your own copy when it comes available.

The last class we went to we learned about this cool thing on the internet called “Skype”. I had never heard of it before. It’s a program that you can download for free. Yes I said free. It’s a lot like instant messenger, but you can actually talk to people like you were on the phone with them or if you have a webcam you can have a video conference with them, and you can instant message them too. It’s amazing because if you have it and say you know someone that lives in England, if they have it and you are both online at the same time, you can talk to each other for free! It’s like making a long distance phone call for free. I think it is sooo cool. For just an audio conversation you can have up to 10 people, but for the video conferencing you can only have two people in on it. Anyway, if you know someone who is far away and you don’t get to talk to them much because it costs so much, try this out, it’s pretty amazing.

Well, now that I have written a novel, I’ll stop. But I just have to say again how much I love my job! How many people can say they have gospel discussions everyday at work? I am so blessed to be here and I have learned so much. I never want to leave, everyday is so uplifting.