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Book of Mormon [JACOB 5-7] Creative with Maria Eckersley
Episode 28 • 7th April 2024 • Our Mothers Knew It • Maria Eckersley
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Our Mothers Knew It with Maria Eckersley

A Creative Study of Come, Follow Me

Book of Mormon [JACOB 5-7] Insights

“The Lord Labors with Us”

April 8 - April 14, 2024

WEEK 15: SUMMARY

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Lesson Summary:

Jacob’s final teachings will focus our attention squarely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. In Jacob 5, he’ll teach us Zenos’ allegory of the Olive Tree to help us understand the depth and infinite scope of God’s love for His children. Next, in chapter 6, he’ll urge us to be reconciled to God through Christ in this life and not procrastinate the day of our repentance. In chapter 7, Jacob we teach us how to be unshaken in the face of fierce opposition when he encounters Sherem, the first Anti-Christ of the Book of Mormon.

This week we’ll open up conversations about the Olive Tree symbolism by creating our own paper-bag vineyard. Next, we’ll balance a trio of knives to study the tools Jacob used to know and defend truth. Finally, we’ll play a new Kahoot to help us review the first 3 books of the Book of Mormon and appreciate the steadying force of scripture study in our lives.

1) “I will liken thee … unto a tame olive tree”: Vineyard Craft

2) “He had hope to shake me from the faith”: Triangle of Truth Knives

3) “They searched the Scriptures”: Kahoot Challenge #1

CHAPTERS

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00:00:13 CREATIVE INTRODUCTION

00:03:23 OBJECT LESSON 1

00:08:30 OBJECT LESSON 2

00:12:30 OBJECT LESSON 3

00:15:23 WRAP UP

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CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST DISCLAIMER: This podcast represents my own thoughts and opinions. It is not made, approved or endorsed by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Any content or creative interpretations, implied or included are solely those of Maria Eckersley ("MeckMom LLC"), and not those of Intellectual Reserve, Inc. or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Great care has been made to ensure this podcast is in harmony with the overall mission of the Church. Click here to visit the official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Transcripts

Maria:

Welcome back everyone.

Maria:

It's time for the creative side of week 15.

Maria:

So I've got three object lessons for you to work with.

Maria:

I think, especially on a week like this one, where you've got this really

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big chapter, that's sort of, you know, that kind of flows all together.

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This is a good week to break things up with a few creative ideas.

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So let me walk you through the supplies list first, and then I'll take you

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into each one and help you see how you could maybe teach them or adapt

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them to your kids or your classes.

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Okay, let's break them down.

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First, I wanted to give you a good teaching tool to help you walk through

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the allegory of the olive tree.

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And one of my favorite ways to do that is to actually make a vineyard.

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So if you weren't part of the course, We started this craft.

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It's basically, you're making a paper bag olive tree so that you can help your

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kids understand the love the Lord has for his trees and how he cares for them.

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You can take this in a bunch of different directions, but this teaching

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tool will help you pull it off.

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It's been revamped for this year.

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I've added new things to it and pulled more from.

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the current teachings, especially about covenants to

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tie covenants into this story.

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So for this one, all you really need is the printable itself.

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So it's, um, it includes the base piece and all these leaves, and then

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you need something to make the trunk.

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So to create it, you just need to go and get standard, uh, paper bags.

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You may even already have them in your pantry for your kids lunches.

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If you get the bigger size, you make a bigger tree, but I

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personally like the standard size.

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It works great for me.

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So grab those supplies and I'll teach you how to make an epic tree, and

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hopefully a whole vineyard of trees that you can talk through the allegory with.

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Okay, second one.

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This one is talking about what I call the triangle of truth.

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Often, especially in the last few conferences, I feel like we're hearing

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about how to discern truth from error.

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That we need these key tools of the Holy Ghost and living

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prophets and the scriptures.

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It's the same thing we studied when we talked about the iron rod.

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So I wanted to teach it in a new way and talk about how having that stability of

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that triangle of truth gives me power.

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Because Jacob is able to confront Sherem with power.

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He knows what to say and how to say it.

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And I think our kids want that same blessing.

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So we're going to talk through that object lesson with knives.

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For this one, you just need three butter knives.

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So just pull these out of your drawer.

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If you want to make it easier for your kids to understand, you also want to

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add these little printable sleeves that'll go on top of it and give

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you some links to some scriptures.

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on the back.

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So this is a cool balancing object lesson that will help your kids

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understand why they need all three of these to work together.

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Okay, last one.

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I don't have anything to hold up because you guys, it's the end of

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a quarter, which means it's time for us to have a Kahoot challenge.

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For this week, the reason I want to put a Kahoot challenge in this week is because

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I really liked the way, after Jacob talks about people being confused by Sherem,

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he says they turned to the scriptures.

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After Sherem dies, the people turn to the scriptures and that's how we're going

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to find clarity and avoid confusion.

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the Antichrists that are coming our way down the road.

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And I think that applies for us as well.

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So this week you're going to play a Kahoot game.

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I set up a whole bunch of questions for you so that you could check your

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understanding of the weeks we've done so far and prepare yourself

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for the weeks that are coming next.

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So if you've never done that before, I'll walk you through it in just a second.

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Okay, that's all your supplies.

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Now it's time to get started.

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I

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think the reason Jacob taught so much of Zenos's words by giving us this

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giant allegory is he really wanted his people and us to understand

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the atonement of Jesus Christ and how much the Lord loves his people.

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What he'll, the lengths he'll go to to help them know that they are loved and

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give them many chances to come unto him.

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And the allegory does a beautiful job of this.

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What's hard about it is it's so big that it's really easy for your

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kids to feel like they're swimming.

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in the verses, you know, because they sound similar and it's hard to

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know what the Lord is talking about.

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I found with my kids it helped immensely to let them make something.

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So this craft is basically, we call it a paper bag tree.

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We've done this a couple different ways.

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We did it last year with Zacchaeus.

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If you remember, we made a sycamore tree.

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So this year I've created an olive tree version.

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So the leaves are a little different and you've got Elder Hallett's quote

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about how the allegory teaches us about the atonement of Jesus Christ.

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And then on the bottom, I've actually added.

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Some reference points so that as you teach this throughout the week with

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your kids or in your classes, you can talk to them about the different.

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Symbolic actions.

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Talk to them about pruning and digging and nurturing the soil.

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All those things that the Lord does to care for his trees.

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Then there's another column that talks about all about the symbols.

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Those key symbols that help us understand what they're even talking

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about and why this applies to us.

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Most of those I pulled from, if you haven't seen the Liahona from

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this month, so I think it's in the I think it's in the April Liahona.

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You can go online and find it, but there's this really beautiful

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article that's linked in the creative notes that helps kind of talk.

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I found like it talked more about covenant connections in the allegory of the

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olive tree than I'd ever heard before.

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And so I tried to incorporate that into the printable.

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So the idea is really simple.

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You'll just create this little paper bag tree.

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It does take a little bit of time.

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For an adult, it probably takes 15 minutes or so, for younger kids,

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it might take a little longer.

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I did create a version that has much larger leaves, so that if you're

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working with a primary class, or with younger kids, they could make a

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completed tree a little bit faster.

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But the process is actually really simple.

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If you haven't made one of these trees before, you're just

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going to take the paper bag, and you're going to open it Why?

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And then you're going to scrunch up the middle.

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So you're basically creating the trunk out of the middle of your paper bag.

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And then that box base will become your roots and the top

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will become your branches.

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You can go on the printable.

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It walks you through the steps for how to create that gnarled look.

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But what I like about making these olive trees is they deliberately

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aren't pretty or perfect.

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You're actually, if you look at olive trees in Israel, they have that kind

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of gnarled outer appearance and they grow in kind of weird directions.

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So little kids can make these and they look just as good as what an adult

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might make, but follow the instructions on the printable, make the olive

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trees and then let your kids watch.

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the video.

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My favorite one, especially if you have older primary kids or teenagers, is

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the one that's actually made, I think it was just made this year, because it

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walks through the pictures that are in the new Book of Mormon Stories artwork.

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And I thought it was a beautiful job.

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It's only a few minutes long, but it kind of walks you through all five of those

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time periods and what they apply to.

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So I would watch that as your kids are crafting.

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And then as you go through the week, you might use this as a teaching

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tool in lots of different ways.

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So, for example, if you were trying to help your kids understand how,

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in the vineyard, the servant points out that one of the struggles that

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those trees are having is that they have overgrown their roots.

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They get so big on the top, and what the people can see, the pride that

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is swelling, that their roots get.

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diminished and parched, and so the trees start to die.

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So if you wanted to teach that lesson, you could create these olive trees

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but not attach things to the base.

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And show your kids how hard it is to start attaching the leaves

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when it's not on the base.

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The tree topples over every time.

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It's really hard to get control of it.

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But if you attach the base first and get these roots firmly

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planted, then it's really easy to get all the leaves on the tree.

Maria:

Those kind of things you could, you can look at the allegory of the

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olive tree and decide what principles you want to teach and then help

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your kids see it as they craft.

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Another one that resonates a lot with my kids is understanding how

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much the Lord loves his trees.

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Even my boys who, when we first made these, were not

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enthusiastic about making a craft.

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Once they had put the 10 or 20 minutes into creating their little

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tree, they cared about that tree.

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So when I told them it was time to cut off a branch, like I

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asked them to cut off one of the branches, they didn't want to do it.

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They struggled to cut off a branch because they loved their tree.

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And I think even those simple principles will help your kids

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understand how the Lord feels about us.

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That's what the allegory is all about.

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It's about The Lord teaching us how much he loves us and what he will do

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to help nourish us and cultivate us.

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So if you want to talk to your kids about pruning or grafting, you could

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actually have them go through that process by cutting off one of their trees

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and attaching it to the tree of their brother or their sister and then talk

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about how the Lord does that for us.

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So I don't have like a specific way to teach this.

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I'm just hoping that this teaching tool will help you be able to teach

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whatever spirit prompts you to cover with your kids or with your classes.

Maria:

I think the interaction between Sherem and Jacob is really powerful,

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especially for our teenagers, because they're going to encounter their own

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version of Sherems in their worlds.

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People who will doubt why they have faith at all, people who will mock them for

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believing, they're going to encounter those who are trying to pull them away

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from their faith constantly sometimes.

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And I think watching how Jacob responds in those situations is really helpful.

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I want to make it to get.

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The tools Jacob uses because Jacob, although he has this really powerful

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testimony, it comes from somewhere.

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It's not something he's just given.

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He, he has to get that over the course of his lifetime.

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And I like that he, in the verses, sort of breaks down where

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his understanding comes from.

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And what he points to is the same thing that Nephi pointed to and Lehi pointed to

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when they talked about the Word of God.

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That if we want to understand truth, Then we need three sources.

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We need living prophets.

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We need the words of the scriptures and we need the confirmation of the Holy Ghost.

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And when those three things work in tandem, we have a base of power.

Maria:

So to show that you're going to create basically a tower base, you're going

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to create a structure that seems like it shouldn't be able to stand.

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But it does.

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To do that you're going to take your butter knives.

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I found it was helpful to put the paper sheath on the butter

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knife when you put the sleeve on.

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One, it makes the butter knife a little grippier so it's easier

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for those knives to stay together.

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It's also really nice because it actually has the words on it and

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it has the Words of modern leaders talking about these same principles.

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I just thought it was cool to see how many different conference talks

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in the last one or two conferences have focused on understanding truth.

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And these same principles of these three things working together are taught

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repeatedly by many different people.

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So that's what you find on the back of the printable.

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So to do it, you just are going to invite your kids to spread out some cups.

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So you're going to take three cups, turn them upside down if that's easier, and

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their challenge is to try and use those three knives to create a stable base.

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For us, the easiest way to get our cups spaced out was to actually use the knife

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and lay it between the triangle of cups, so you get basically about the right

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amount of distance, and then you invite your kids to try and figure out how those

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knives can work together to create a base.

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You as a teacher or as a parent will know that on the printable

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there's kind of a white line.

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You're basically going to.

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We've these knives together.

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So as you put a knife down, you're going to let it go over

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one and under one, depending on which direction you're facing.

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And on the printable, there's a guiding line to kind of help you.

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You're going to lay your knife in the dark zone on the printable, and then you'll

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be able to weave those tips together.

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And once you get the three tips.

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It's woven together, it creates this very steady base.

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In fact, you can get something as heavy as like a hydro flask full of

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water and set it on top of these skinny little knives and they hold it steady.

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The reason I like this for this particular teaching is Not only did Jacob know these

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things, that his testimony comes from those three sources, he also has put those

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sources to the test throughout his life.

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That's what he says to Sharon.

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He basically says, I know these things.

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God has manifest himself unto me through the words of the scriptures

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and through the words of prophets and through the gift of the Holy Ghost.

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He has put these things to the test.

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And when he follows the words of the prophet, and he follows the words that

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he finds in scripture, and he follows the promptings of the spirit, he finds.

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stability, and success.

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That's why I think Jacob is unshaken.

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It's not because he's had these marvelous manifestations, although

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I think those certainly help.

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His unshaken state comes from repeatedly throughout his life trusting in these

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three sources and putting them to the test, and seeing the results that

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when he puts those resources to the test, that Water bottle stays up.

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It can keep things afloat.

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And he sees that over and over again in his life and that secures

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his testimony so that he's no longer hoping or having faith.

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He has this certainty that allows him to be unshaken.

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And since that's what we want for our kids, I think knowing these

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three tools is pretty pivotal.

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Jacob taught that one of the ways the people turn away from Sherem's

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teachings and get back on course is by searching the scriptures.

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And I think that's why we search them as well.

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Because this is one of those three parts of our power, right?

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This is where we get truth and we can trust in its stable base.

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In fact, I really loved, there's a talk from Elder Newman from the last, a

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couple conferences ago, and he said this.

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The voice of the covenant people is found in our own words of testimony, and it is

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found in the words of living prophets, and it is preserved powerfully in scriptures.

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It is there that our children will come to know Jesus and

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find answers to their questions.

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It is there that they will learn for themselves the doctrine of Christ.

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It's there that they will find hope.

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They will prepare, this will prepare them for a lifetime of seeking truth

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and living on the covenant path.

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We want our kids rooted in the scriptures.

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That's what the Come Follow Me program is all about.

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But I think it's helpful to take a break now and then and make

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sure your kids are on track.

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If your family is anything like my family, some weeks are great and some weeks are a

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distracted mess and we miss it entirely.

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So I think it's helpful to take a second this week and

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review what they know so far.

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Mostly because I think it's reassuring as a parent and as a teacher to see how much

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your kids really have picked up on things.

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And the way that you do that is to do the Kahoot challenge.

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So this is quarter one.

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So I set up 25 questions that are based from the introductory pages of the Book

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of Mormon all the way through Jacob 7.

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There's a smattering of questions.

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The age range that I set it to is about like, you know, 12, 13, 14, maybe 15.

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Some questions are a little harder, some are a little easier.

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But my hope with the questions is that If you have younger kids that they can

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team up with an older sibling or somebody else in the class, but you can find a way

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to kind of make it a little more even.

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And then you play.

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In fact, if you haven't played Kahoot lately, you don't just have

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to play with the ordinary way of having the questions projected up

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on the TV and answer on your phone.

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You also can play these other fun little games.

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So this time today, we had my kids do a few of the other options.

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Like there's a tower one where they build towers and there's a few different

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options that they can go through.

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What I liked about the new games is.

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It actually, you could set a time limit and it cycled through the questions until

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your kids knew them within the time limit.

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So if they missed one, they would, Kahoot would add that question back into

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the mix and let them answer it again.

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And it tallied up the scores for everybody over the course of time.

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So there were three or four games that we played together as a family

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to review these same questions.

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And by the time we had played it three or four times, They were pretty solid,

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you know, they, I could see where they were lacking a little bit, I

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could see where they were strong, and as a parent, I can adjust and pivot.

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I think that's what Jacob wanted us to understand.

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The scriptures are a tool that's designed to help us come closer to Christ.

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That only works if we really understand them.

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And so this is a good week for you to check in, see how your family's doing,

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catch up where you're lacking, and get ready for going into this next quarter

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as we head into the words of Enoch.

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Thanks for being here, you guys.

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That's it for week 15.

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Remember, if you aren't in the course and you don't have access to the

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notes or the printables, you can often find the printables on my Etsy shop.

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So things like the knives or the olive tree, you can look for that

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on Etsy and you can find the link in the YouTube video description.

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But if you're in the course, I hope you jump into the notes.

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The creative notes, and I'll see you in the next one.

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And the insights notes will help you navigate these chapters and also link you

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out to really recent conference talks so that you can find out what our leaders

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have said about these particular verses.

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So I hope you dive into those.

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Also, if you need more help, you're more than welcome to join us on

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the live that's Monday mornings.

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10 a.

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m.

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You just need to come to gather.

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macmom.

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com.

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That's where the course is housed, so that's where you can find out more

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about how to subscribe to the course, or if you're just interested in being

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a free member, you can be part of the conversation and join us on the live.

Maria:

Otherwise, I hope you really enjoy this week of study.

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I know it's big.

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Chapter five is big, but I think seeing it with fresh eyes brought all kinds

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of new insights for me this week, and I hope it does that for you as well.

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Enjoy this week of study and then come on back as we head into Jacob's son Enos

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story, which is powerful all on its own.

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So come on back next week and we'll head into week 16.

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Alright you guys, enjoy your week and I'll see you on Monday.

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