Book of Mormon Read-a-Thon

On July 1 and 2, I hosted a youth activity for the teenage girls from our church that began on Friday at 10 am and ended on Saturday at 8 pm with a sleepover at my house while the rest of my family was traveling.  After a recent survey, I determined that this was something they all were extremely eager to do, so I planned it right after they finished school for summer vacation, just prior to the US Independence Day holiday weekend, and tied in a stars and stripes flag theme.  After all, that's where the golden plates laid hidden for hundreds of years.  For fun, I ordered a bunch of t-shirts and shipped them to the hotel when Kelly was on a recent business trip to the States.

It was an incredible two days with these righteous, lovely young women.  Their souls delighted in the scriptures.  They really felt an appreciation for the truths they discovered in the pages of The Book of Mormon, as they pondered over these words from paragraph six of its introduction page.

"Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said: I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."

I grocery shopped, cooked, and baked the few days prior to their arrival, and fed them lunch, dinner, breakfast, and one more lunch, after which they began their fast to prepare for the next day's testimony meeting.  I reminded them what a pure testimony should be, and not about saying how much fun they had or how good the food was, but to share what they had learned from the holy scriptures.  The next day at church, several bore their testimonies and I could not have been more pleased with their strength and the truths that they shared.

I have more pictures from our event, but will add them tomorrow in a separate entry.  I do not want to take away from the nature of this post by adding food pictures, and so forth.  I realize that a good portion of those who look at my blog are already members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and have your own copy of The Book of Mormon.  For the rest of you, you can click here to get your free copy or to chat with a friendly Mormon missionary in almost any language that you prefer to ask questions about our church.

And while I'm at it, I might as well share my own testimony of The Book of Mormon with the world, as it has been posted on mormon.org for several months, and I sincerely hope that everyone can have access to this marvelous book, that has helped me and my family draw closer together and most importantly toward the Savior, Jesus Christ.  Some people wonder why we put so much effort into sharing what we believe with the rest of the world.  If you could experience as much joy and happiness in life and felt like you had something so wonderful, you'd want all your friends to know about it too.