Challenge Accepted!

image from lds.org

During my week a Girl's Camp, I had the opportunity to do one of the evening devotionals. I didn't have anything prepared and the night before I was to give my devotional, I had the idea to have all of the YW read the Book of Mormon by the end of the summer, or in my my September 1st.

I presented them with this challenge and was peppered with this response, "The Bishop's already making us read it, by the end of the summer!"

I had not spoken to the Bishop previously and had no idea he had issued this challenge. But I knew that the youth needed this challenge or we would not have both had the same idea at the same time, without even talking to each other about extending the challenge!

So I took this challenge to heart. I thought to myself, "if I am going to challenge my YW to read the Book of Mormon in less than 60 days, I need to do it myself!"

That night, Oswald helped me (because I'm lousy at math) figure out how many pages I needed to read to finish. There are 531 pages in the Book of Mormon and I had 53 days to read it. I had to read a little over 10 pages per day. "Piece of cake" I thought. WRONG!

Each day I would try my hardest to read a little in the morning, during the day and in the evening, so I didn't have to stay up super late to get my 10 pages in that day. Some days I was very successful and other days I was not. There were days when I had to read 12-15 because I got behind the day before.

Then the stress of finding a house set in upon me and that made life even more difficult and made the amount of time I had to read, even smaller. But I pressed forward, not wanting to shirk on my goal and responsibility.

On July 28th I was laying in my bed reading while Oswald was doing a bit of work at home, he looked at me and said, "Looks like you've got 50 more pages to read by Sunday. You going to make it."

"Of course I'm going to make it."

"Well, you want to be done before you go to church on Sunday, right?"

"Yes, and don't you worry, I'll be done." was my reply and I quickly went back to reading.

Sunday, July 31st at 10am, I closed my Book of Mormon. In the very last chapters of Moroni, he challenges those who read the Book of Mormon to pray to find out if it is true or not. I already have a testimony of it's truthfulness. I got that in college. But I had the strong impression that I needed to pray.

I went into the closet, for some peace and quite, knelt down and said a prayer thanking my Heavenly Father for helping me find the time to read this sacred book. I thanked him for my calling in the YW program and then I asked him to bless our family to be approved to rent this house we wanted so desperately.

Not even 5 minutes later, the phone rang. It was our agent saying we had gotten the approval and that all of the paperwork was being take care of.

I know that because I stuck with my goal of reading the Book of Mormon that our family was blessed. I know that blessings come to those to read the Book of Mormon. It's amazing that every time I read this book, I learn something new. The thing that stuck out the most to me this time is when Alma told us that if we look to Christ we will have everlasting life, just like in Moses' time they just needed to look at the serpent and they would be saved and some people didn't. We just need to look to Christ. He is the answer to everything in this life. He can help us get through any trial we have.

Just turn and look to Him

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If you would like a free copy of the Book of Mormon, please email me and let me know. I would love to send you one! amormonmommy@gmail.com