Cornerstones, Keystones and Capstones

A new year, a new Sunday School topic, the possibilities are endless! This year we will be studying the Doctrine and Covenants and began the year with a bit of an intro. We were going to watch a video that Colin brought, but after several seconds of staring at the box decided to wait until next week when we can have the video player. Instead we watched the circle of Zarahemla (which will be needing a new name this year) transformed into the capstone of the Salt Lake temple upon which the statue of the angel Moroni stands (nice link between BoM and D&C don't you think?). The church and gospel of Christ have been likened to architectural features. For example, in Ephesians we read that Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, or the first stone laid. We have had Joseph Smith declare that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion, or the stone which supports the structure. But another one I hadn't heard before, was the Doctrine and Covenants being likened to the capstone. The capstone of the Salt Lake temple was ceremoniously laid as the last stone of the building structure to be put in place. Likewise, in this dispensation the revelations now recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants gave the final pieces needed to fully restore Christ's church upon the earth. We look forward to an exciting year of learning more about these revelations.

A Puzzling Sunday…

These mysterious codes were analysed in Sunday School this week: AWDG, WESHG, LATDBUL, HTTL. Having gotten slightly less than optimal sleep this week, I cannot remember what any of these mean. Who can help me out?

What's it gonna be?

Sunday School. The classic and mandatory Zarahemla circle. What is it today? It’s... the number zero! Why? Because that’s how many members of the church there were in 1820. Colin proceeded to write the figures for varying intervals of time, until today where we have over 13 million or less than 1% of the world’s population (if anyone knows the correct figures feel free to post them in the comments). How is this relevant to the Book of Mormon? The prophecies stating that the true believers of Christ would be few in the last day could certainly be supported as true. Although membership continues to grow we will always remain in the minority, consistent with many prophecies. But as I like to say, quality is better than quantity and in the Lord’s strength we can do all things.

Faith Is Like A Little Seed...or is it?

Our lesson this Sunday was from Alma 32, and was of course on faith. The diagram of city of Zarahemla was cleverly disguised to look like a seed, representing the seed spoken of by Alma to the poor of the Zoramites. Emily pointed out that Alma 32:28 is different from the primary song which says faith is like a little seed; in this verse it is the word that is likened to a seed. Remembering that a seed, if not planted, will remain a dormant seed and will not grow or progress, we must plant the word in our hearts and nourish it if we want it to grow into a testimony. As we begin to see results from the planting and nourishment of the seed, our testimony begins to grow and we become more sure of it. Sometimes the growth is so gradual we don't notice it until we look back and realise how much it has grown.

We also had an exciting annoucement from Tyler, who received his mission call on Friday to the Halifax Canada Mission, French Speaking. He leaves mid-October. Congratulations Tyler!

Would you like fries with that?

In our Sunday school lesson this week we all learnt some interesting things. We learnt that many names in the Book of Mormon start with either A or Z. We learnt that Mari-Anna doesn't trust Scott (too mischievous) but she trusts Denisha. We also learnt that it is possible to knit a hamburger. But most importantly we learnt about witnesses, and saw various examples of doctrines testified of by both Alma and Amulek in the Book of Mormon.