The Book of Mormon in 40 minutes

Just so you know, it's possible to recap the entire Book of Mormon to a 2-year-old in 40 minutes. I know because we did it last night for FHE, quite unintentionally.

I decided that in addition to giving lessons from the nursery manual, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to also go over scripture stories. We read scriptures together as a family, but let me tell you how well Rachel listens during scripture time. Oh, she doesn't.

She might repeat a few words we say here and there. We've tried giving her turns reading. We've tried pretty much everything. She'll sit still for about 2 verses and then she's off in Rachel-land, riding camels and horses on the couch and spinning never-ending circles. I'm quite sure she gets very little out of the tortured time we spend trying to maintain a pithy degree of reverence while reading half a chapter before calling it quits. *Sigh.*

So last night I got out the Gospel Art Picture Kit and we decided we'd go over the story of Nephi using the pictures.

Rachel got to choose the opening song. She always chooses "Jesus" and we don't really know what song that means so end up singing Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam or Jesus Once was a Little Child; or she chooses to sing Book of Mormon Stories by putting her hands together to make a book. Once she chose "temple" so we sang I Love to See the Temple.

As you can see, we sing the same songs, often...so we try to have singing time during the lesson so that she can learn more songs and hopefully pick up some of the lyrics so that she can ask for them.

Anyway, last night Rachel, fittingly, chose Book of Mormon Stories, which we sang, and then after saying a short opening prayer, proceeded to tell some of the stories from the Book of Mormon.

Putting the scriptures into Rachel-talk was quite interesting, but she was very into the pictures and the story and didn't want to stop. We had to end FHE with her throwing a fit for more stories. It wouldn't be FHE without a fit and since she sat so nicely through the lesson it was only fair that she would lose it when FHE was over.

I don't think Rachel had ever seen a picture of a weapon before, at least not "primitive" weapons, so when we got to the picture of Enos kneeling with his bow and arrows, Rachel started describing the picture first.

"Guy. Sad. Stick. Hand. Stick. Poky."

I recapped the story of Enos for her, how he wanted to be happy so he prayed all day and all night long to Heavenly Father. He repented (said sorry) for everything he had done wrong and Heavenly Father said that he forgave him. And then Enos kept praying. He prayed for his friends and family and then he prayed for people who weren't very nice to him, too.

"Stick. Poky." said Rachel, pointing to the bow.

"Yes," Andrew said, "That's a poky stick. It's used to shoot even pokier sticks, like this..."

Then he jabbed her while making "pew-pew-pew" noises.

Swords are also poky. There are a lot of pictures of swords in the illustrations of the Book of Mormon. Ammon carries a big sword and cuts off people's arms. Andrew graphically demonstrated how this might be done on Rachel, using his arms as swords and her arms as arms.

We went on and on and came to the story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. She noticed that everyone had pokies and began to shield herself from Andrew's fingers. She was a little surprized when he didn't poke her.

I told her that the people in this picture had done a lot of bad things and had hurt a lot of people but, because of Ammon (who carries a big poky and cuts off people's arms) and his brothers, they turned into good people.

"Then the people took all their weapons..."

"Poky!"

"Yes," I started again, "Then the people took all their...uhhh...pokies...and put them in a big hole and promised to never use them again."

Truthfully, it felt a little funny to use the word poky so many times while talking about the Book of Mormon, but Rachel loved it.

My favorite part of the evening, though, is when she called the liahona the "lia-honey pot."