Wow. What a week.

Seminary started last Tuesday with a bang. I have the Freshmen/Sophomore class again which is awesome. I have 30 kids in my class, give or take 5 on any given day. I had to be more creative with how I set up the room because of the limited space. I could move to a bigger room but there are issues with all of the possibilities. My cabinet isn’t big enough either but I scored one from the stake center this morning, I just have to get Jon to go get it for me. Unfortunately it doesn’t lock though so we’ll be losing scriptures this year.

I don’t know how people sleep at night after having taken someone else’s scriptures. It’s like tracking mud into the temple. You feel terrible.

Anyway, so yeah, 30 kids. Thirty. Three-zero. The biggest class in the stake. Lots of names to remember, not enough supplies for everyone (yet, I’m working on it).

Something interesting happened too. Noticeably different. Last week we spent the first day getting to know each other (which took the whole 50 minutes), the second day talking about expectations that we have for each other, the third day getting to know all of the study helps that will help us learn more from our scriptures, and the last day talking about the Plan of Salvation.

Monday we were ready to really crack those spines on the fresh sets of scriptures (for the freshmen anyway) and I kid you not – there was less goofing around, less talking out of turn, less distractions as soon as those books were pulled out of their cases. All 30 kids were participating, answering questions, trying to beat Kayla ’cause she was answering them all so fast, and really looking for things. It was a completely different experience from the week before. The week before seemed like complete chaos compared to Monday.

So, the moral of the story, at least for me, is that when their books are open, their mouths are closed and the Spirit will be their guide. That’s all there is to it.

We had so much fun on Friday! It was our last Friday together before the end of the Seminary year and I wanted to make it upbeat and cheerful. I had no idea how much fun we would have.

I have such a cool dynamic in my class. I have kids from all three of the wards that meet in our building, including the Spanish ward. They have loved to spend Fridays working on just memorizing Scripture Mastery. Quite a few of them are really close to passing off all 25 (I only have two more to go!). Since Friday was our last Friday for this year, I was just going to give them that day and had just planned to sing an upbeat hymn to get the class started. I decided on “There Is Sunshine in My Soul Today” (#227) and told them that we had to sing all verses and we had to sing them loud so that Brother Prettyman’s class could hear us all the way down the hall. They thought that was a good idea too. Then someone mentioned singing it in Spanish (there were a couple Spanish hymn books in our room). We decided that half the class would sing in Spanish and the other half in English. So far there were only six of us there so Brooke, Paige and I sang in English and Abel, Maria and Edwin sang in Spanish. We had so much fun that after the opening hymn we decided to sing another one.

As the rest of the class started to trickle in, they would walk in and be totally confused but before long they were singing just as loud as we were. We ended up singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel”, “Carry On”, “How Firm a Foundation”, and a couple of others. Then we spent some time on Scripture Mastery, because our voices were tired, and at the end of class we sang “Choose the Right” because the kids wanted to get that song stuck in their heads so that they would “… make right choices all day long.” Their words, not mine.

I swear, I have the best kids EVER in my class!! I’m going to miss them over the summer and some of them next year (when they have to move up into the OTHER class)!

So many things have happened in seminary this year that I really wish I would have written down somewhere. I am not a good journal-keeper.

My friend Joan said to me at the beginning of the school year that “there is nothing better than a good day at seminary, and nothing worse than a bad day at seminary.” Over the past 7 months, I have found that to be a very true and accurate statement.

I was out of seminary for the first 4 days of April and missed my class like I would have missed my own kids. The next Sunday was General Conference so I didn’t even get to see them that day. By Monday I was ready to hear all about their week and to get back into the swing of things. I got my lesson all prepared and ready for Monday morning, got up and got to the church.

One of the things about seminary is that you can never really be fully prepared for what’s coming – the good or the bad.

The day started as they all do. Our class president asked for someone to lead a hymn and say a prayer. We sang. Someone prayed. Then we talked about the Scripture Mastery for the day, normal so far. Then we had a devotional. Interestingly enough, the girl that gave the devotional shared a scripture that talked about how God doesn’t leave us alone. When she was done sharing the scripture she said that she KNEW that her Heavenly Father loves her and that He will always be there for her, no matter what. Still mostly normal (devotionals bring out the best in them all). Then it was time for the lesson.

I thought that, before we got started, I would ask them about General Conference to find out what their thoughts and feelings were about the things that were said. I don’t know why I was so surprised at what happened next.

Before I get into that, though, I should preface with what happened before we even got started. Every Monday morning we have to set up all of the chairs for class. I try to get there early to do that, but it’s not easy to do. That particular morning I wasn’t early so one of the girls was in the room helping me. Her older sister then walks into the room and loudly proclaims that she KNOWS that President Monson is a true prophet of God. That’s it. No “good morning”, no “hi”, nothing else – just that she KNOWS that President Monson is a true prophet of God. Looking back, this should have been my first clue that this days wasn’t going to be just like any other day.

After I asked about General Conference, there was no way that we were ever going to get to the lesson material that I had prepared. I was so surprised and so thrilled to see how excited every single on of them was about their favorite talk. Some of them watched all four sessions. Most of the boys went to the priesthood session too. There were two themes in the things that they found to be their favorite:

1. Just as the girl had mentioned before class – they know that President Monson is a prophet and that he was called by God.
2. The importance of bearing testimonies and how they should be shared in sacrament meeting.

I thought that the first was a given. Per a previous post, I know that the succession of the Presidency of the Church was talked about repeatedly and in detail. I figured that they would have come up with that. I wasn’t as prepared for the second one. Thanks to the Spirit though we were able to carry on a very good discussion about testimonies. We talked about what Elder Oaks said about testimonies – what is appropriate to share and what is not. We spent a great deal of time talking about it. At the end of class I challenged them all to remember what a testimony is and what a testimony is not and to bear their testimony this week using Elder Oaks’ talk as a guideline.

Needless to say, I was humbled and overjoyed when two of my students bore testimony in Sacrament Meeting today, focusing on the things they’d learned from the Spirit that early Monday morning in seminary.