2023 WEEK 14 [EASTER]

“O Grave, Where Is Thy Victory?”

April 3 – April 9

WEEK 14 NOTES: https://tinyurl.com/ykpppaak

THE LIVING CHRIST STUDY KIT: https://tinyurl.com/2zddsmth

HOLY WEEK DAILY PLAN: https://tinyurl.com/266p8rk3

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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.

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Hey everybody. Welcome back. This is week 14 of Creative. Come follow me for the New Testament and it is officially Easter week and maybe our only mini week of the entire four years. I looked ahead, uh, this coming week between conference and Easter. We have two birthdays, a daughter on bedrest and a grandson at home.

We've got a lot on our plate. In addition to that, it's spring break for my kids, so I wanted a chance to lighten the load a little bit, and this Easter. Gave me a good opportunity to do that, cuz honestly, the reading material is pretty light. You could take it as deep as you wanna go, but for me, I found the most richness when I zeroed in.

And the idea. Going in depth in the manual to all the places they're directing you feels overwhelming. Then you can find comfort and rest as you study the living Christ. So I'm gonna walk you through just a touch of that today and then take things a little easier all around. So grab your scriptures, grab your notes.

Let's get started. Before we get into the Living Christ, I wanted to show you what you'll find in the notes this week. So since it's a little bit different, this week is gonna play out different on all fronts, and it will be a little different in the notes as well. What you'll find there is some simple resources.

So I think one of my hopes, and maybe it's because of the way we've studied the Savior's teachings all this year, where he's trying to teach the scribes and the Pharisees to stop creating more, to stop making their discipleship. Busier and more cumbersome and instead to simplify on what matters most. So that was sort of the focus for me all throughout this week.

With videos and other supplies, if you follow that website. Another great one I happened to find this week is, uh, he is Risen video. I don't know if you guys have seen this. I think it came out last year, but I've never watched it before. It's a little longer, but what I liked about it is it's this video that talks about beautiful art and music and then has all this.

Whether your kids sit and watch it or it just happens to be playing in the background, I think you'll find. Adds a little bit of lift, so don't miss that link in the notes. You're also gonna see some links out to the testimonies of the apostles since we're focusing in on the Living Christ. I, I think you wanna, if you have time, click on a few of those links and listen to what our apostles say about their own witness of the Savior.

Uh, I think even if you do nothing else, that's a really powerful way to connect with this Easter season. Um, so don't, don't miss those links if you can. The other thing you'll see when you go in the notes is I've broken. The manual essentially. Basically the manual broke it into three big sections, and I've laid out one of those for each.

So if you're in the course, I would invite you to go. If you go back into the Old Testament course and look at week 14, I give you this beautiful creation that my friend Amy Ferry basically made. She's this incredible artist and she provided, we worked together. With some of the ladies from Sugar Doodle, and we created this advent of sorts to to work you down to Easter so that there's a simple video to watch and a craft or an activity to do each day.

There's also some gorgeous decorations. She's got this palm tree garland that we put up on our fireplace Every Easter and supplies that you can put at your Easter table. There's this incredible spread so that you have everything you need. If you want to approach this Holy Week plan that the, um, that the conforming manual lays out.

So I really liked the way the manual broke down the many witnesses of the living Christ that we have at our fingertips. I think. For us to develop our own witness, it helps to have this cloud. You know, like I, I actually see the cloud of witnesses as when I hear somebody witness to me, even if it's reading the story of Mary Magdalene or reading the story of Peter.

And so in the manual you'll see a whole bunch of witnesses laid out. I just found that their way of laying them out was a, Harder. So if you go in the notes, you'll see that I've added bullet points and just kind of broken them down and told you and given you all the references out so that you can see those a little bit quicker.

But I do think there's a lot of value when you're talking about understanding your own witness to, to build your cloud with as many tools as you can. And a lot of the witnesses I found were coming from those references and come follow Emmanuel. So go click on a few of those, read the verses, and then let let those witnesses thicken your cloud.

The last part is about how you can find hope and joy through Jesus Christ. This is actually what led me to the living Christ, cuz I felt like what I've learned. In fact, this week I got to teach at a great ward near Bountiful, all about joy and in my studies for teaching that relief society, I found there was this.

And that's how I feel when I read The Living Christ. I feel like that document just exudes. And joy and rest, and this is where it, I just found myself diving into it, maybe even tumbling into it this week because I found so much in it. If you don't have time to study any of the verses that are laid out in the Come Follow Me Manual, I would encourage you to just open up the Living Christ and look at every single scripture reference there cuz when you study them that way, for me at least, it opened up a lot of potential for.

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Full disclosure here. I've had it kind of hard to jump from the miracles of last week, the walking on the water and the feeding the 5,000 and the Bread of Life sermon to jump all the way into the last week of the savior. It was hard for me. I don't know if this is just me and maybe the baggage that I carry with me in my situation, but I found myself thinking, no, there's more, like there's more.

You know, we started in the Book of Mormon and we read the doctrine confidence together. We studied. The Old Testament and now the new, and we've read this Easter story from all those different vantage points, and I kind of felt like the living Christ was a culmination of all of those. It's this beautiful harmony of all those doctrines, and it brought really sweet memories back to me as I studied it, different testimonies that I've gained throughout all these different books of scripture.

Bubbled up to the surface for me as I was studying, so I hope that happens for you as well. I will tell you that there is a really handy tool that you might not wanna miss this week. So I created a wide margin version of the Living Christ that you could print over and over and over again so that you can scribble all over it.

You could highlight it, you could print one copy that you're gonna focus in on what the savior does for you, and maybe another copy that you focus in on what the savior does for your family. Or you could have one copy that's focused in on the priesthood and one copy that's focused in on, you know what I mean?

Cause I felt like it gave my mind some. Quick reference points. I also really like having a lot of space around the edges, so in addition to the people in the course, we'll have this access to this printable. I'll also put a link out for those of you who are watching on YouTube, or if you're listening on the podcast, hop over to YouTube and grab it from the comments link.

But hopefully this will help all of you jump into the Living Christ and be able to just dive in a little bit deeper than you could have. Uh, when you go in, let me tell you a few of the things I just pulled out, one from each paragraph, but trust me, there is so much more. I only spent a couple hours with the Living Christ to study it and kind of follow the references out.

In particular, I loved that verse or that saying, because of what we just read about the woman with the issue of blood and that he recognized that virtue had gone out of him and that virtue equated to power. And I really like that the apostles chose to add that word in here. I think the power of his atoning sacrifice is softened and more full when we think of it as virtue.

It says at the very last sentence, He taught the truths of eternity, the reality of our premortal existence, the purpose of our life on earth, and the potential for sons and daughters of God in the life to come. Essentially, in that last one sentence of paragraph two, you find that he has answered all those common questions that everyone has.

Where did we come from? Why are we here and where are we going next? Is there purpose in life? All of that is answered in the ministry of the. When you go into paragraph three, I particularly like what you see in the, that last sentence, uh, sorry, second to last. It says, he gave his life to a tone for the sins of all mankind.

Another one that you're gonna see in four, I love how it begins, says, we solemnly testify that his life, which is central to all human history, neither began in Bethlehem nor concluded on Cal three. When I studied that, I found. Almost laughing at myself for being sad about studying the death of the savior this week.

I just, you know, even though it's hard to read, it is not the end. And where we began in Luke two is not the beginning. I just think especially this year as we've been in the New Testament, to appreciate that. His life is so much bigger and that what all those miracles we saw in the Old Testament were the savior.

The reason that I love that is simply because, do you remember what happens with Gyrus and his daughter and Jesus is trying to tell him, don't be afraid she's only sleeping. I think the promise of the Savior is, That all who we have lost are simply sleeping. There is, there is just a break until we see them again, until they are all restored.

The hair of his head was white, like the pure snow, his countenance shown above the brightness of the sun, and his voice was as the sound of rushing of great waters. Even the voice of Jehovah. What I love about that in particular this year in the New Testament, is we've heard him promise that he is the living water, especially last week, where we read the Bread of Life sermon, that, you know, partaking of that sacrament, those emblems that he's gonna teach 'em about in that last week of his life is our way of taking those living waters into us and being restored and replenished by.

They both want us to succeed. And I think the phrase advocate is just a poignant one. It it, it, to me, it's almost like a coach. You know, you picture someone who is rooting for you, who is gonna provide the tools that you need, who's gonna. Be an example for you and provide you with this constant encouragement so that you can accomplish what needs to be done.

I also think it's someone who doesn't lower the bar. You know, a, a really good coach doesn't lower the bar for you. They give you the tools and the training so that you can. Leap over it. And that's what I feel like the Savior is one of my favorite descriptions of him as an advocate. I think it came from Michael Wilcox years ago.

Just in these last couple weeks, I've had to renew my temple, recommend, and so I went to go visit with a member of the Bishop Brick first, and then a member of the state presidency. And what I loved about that process is I found that both of those men were my advocates. That the men from the bishop brick was my advocate with the state presidency.

They were someone who wanted me to get to the temple. They wanted to provide whatever tools I needed. If I had needed some sort of repentance process, they would've happily guided me through that. There they were. A lot of. They were there to be my advocate cuz they want to get me there. They do not however want to get me there at the expense of pleasing God or abiding by his.

How did it go? You know, it's a, it's a kind. Advocacy and then he can then turn to the father, similar to the way a bishop would turn to a state president and say, I can recommend her. I think there is something really warm about that visual and so I love that you see a, a touch of that in the living Christ.

In eight, you see that this is the testimony last of all, so this is Joseph Smith's speaking and he said of him, the prophet also declared, and now after the many testimonies which has been have been given to him, this is the testimony last of all, which we give of him that he lives. And then when you roll into nine for, we saw him even on the right hand of God and we heard the voice bearing record that he is the only begotten of the father.

He's watched the fruits come from it, and so he has his own steady witness, and I love that promise. When you a little bit further, you're gonna see in 10 that by him and through him and of him, the worlds are, and were. The inhabitants there of our begotten sons and daughters of God. I thought that word choice at the beginning was really interesting, that by him and through him and of him, I started wondering what's the big difference between by and of?

And I don't know that I have the right answer you guys, but I really liked thinking about why each of those three are included. And for me, I think by means he is the creator. Just like we know that he is the creator under the direction of God, the father of him to. Kind of denotes what we've learned about him being the source of light and life.

This is talking about the priesthood and the church being restored. We declare in words of solemnity that his priesthood and his church have been restored upon the earth, built on the foundation of apostles, prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, especially where we're rolling off of a week of hearing from our prophets and apostles.

I think there is power in this. Remembrance that his gospel is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That this gospel that we have here is based on the blueprint that he's set up in the New Testament. We've taken that same structure and it has been restored. The keys are restored, the priesthood is restored, and this is the only church on the face of the earth that has that, that has those keys and has that authority to really have the fullness of his gospel here on earth.

I think this is one of my favorite paragraphs of the whole living Christ for a couple reasons. First off, I love this promise that when he comes again, it will not. Difficult two spot. He, his glory will radiate out where people in Nazareth only saw him as a carpenter son. There will be no question when he comes again, who he is and who sent him.

Don't I have that option? So I find myself envious of those people in the New Testament, and then I read this promise and I think about this idea that at one point when the Savior comes again, every single person will have a chance to be healed from the savior. Every person will be made perfectly whole.

No matter how you lived your life, all mankind will be restored to their body and in a perfect form. And so we'll get to stand by and watch as every person we love, especially those who have struggled with mortal limits will be. Perfectly restored, and that's when every knee shall bow. In fact, I believe that a big reason every knee will bow is because at that point in time, every knee can bow.

And I think that's the same thing that happens with me if I choose to wait until that day when all are made whole. I will know that he is my savior. I will see him clearly, but I will have missed out a miracle of having a relationship with him, being connected through covenants. Knowing him and him knowing me, and having miracles play out in my life.

I, I don't wanna miss that. So I, I like the reminder in that verse is a powerful one for me. At the very end, 13. I'm just gonna read the full verse, but it says, we bear testimony as his duly ordained apostles, that Jesus is the living Christ, the immortal son of God. He is the great King Emmanuel, who stands today on the right hand of his father.

I found this because I went to the holy land, so I told you guys, I went when I was 20 and again, when I was 40. When I went, when I was 20, I had this goal. I wasn't terribly great at Revelation and I had this thought in my mind that I. I would walk where the savior walked and I would know for a certainty, like some, I really thought something would happen.

It's not like I thought the walls would crumble or some, I just thought there would be some sort of resonance that would hit my heart and I wouldn't know for a certainty. Whereas I didn't know for a certainty before I went there. I thought if I went to the holy land and walked where he walked, I would get it.

And then once everybody was clear, I decided it was my turn. And I went in almost hesitantly cuz I was like waiting. I went into the garden tomb and I felt nothing. I, I didn't feel anything negative. I just didn't feel anything. And I stayed there for a couple minutes thinking, come on, heavenly Father, this is, this is where I needed my witness.

That's where I saw my parents and I saw my brother and I, I saw people out there and I got a, this bright sun in my eyes and I, I remember re feeling at the time that this. This is the testimony of that place, that it's not about standing in that spot, it's that he emerged from that spot. And over the course of time, I've learned that I, my witness doesn't come from walking in his places, you know, standing where he stood.

It doesn't even come from studying his life. It comes from a witness of the Holy Ghost that when I have studied and when I have done all I can to learn of him, to yolk in with him and try to live his gospel. Where my witness comes from is from the Holy Ghost, and I think that's where the witness of these 15 men came from as well.

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Guys, we're doing things different across the board. The creative side's a little bit different this week as well. So welcome to the creative side of week 14 for Easter week, I decided in order to simplify things a little bit on my end, I would create one new object lesson for all of you to enjoy. And then I would give you some of the greatest hits of the last two years that we've done for Easter.

There's a lot of really awesome resources in the chorus. I think there's 10 or 12 Easter object lessons, but I've just pulled four so that you have a chance to teach some of these beautiful principles. Kids and to your classes. And instead of separating out what's in the course and what's available freely on YouTube or in the podcast, I just decided to make it big, everybody in week.

The first, the new object lesson. For what we're putting on the chart. So if you haven't scratched off this week's chart, it ha it's a goals icon because at the very beginning of every quarter we're gonna focus on those goals. So remember how we set up the children and youth goals last time, and I gave you some templates you could use.

So this is a chance to check in with your kids, see how their goals are going, and if your kids are anything like my kids, like start from scratch and begin again because we didn't do so great. But this is why this week is here. So you have a chance to kind of refresh.

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One of the things I thought you might wanna consider as a goal is choosing to study the living Christ. I know it's one of those things that some of you have studied in the past, but I wondered if as a family or as a class, you could maybe take some time and study it. That's why I provided these tools.

One of the things you could do at Easter is to make a recording of your family or your class saying the living Christ. The only reason I think this is tricky with the version that the church provides is it has a bunch of scriptures kind of tucked into it, which is great for study, but a little hard to read.

It's also formatted small. So for younger kids it's a little bit tricky, but if they wanted to take time to try and memorize the living Christ on their own, or simply as a family recite it, you can use these little flashcards. So basically what they're is, I've broken up the Living Christ into eight chunks and taken out all the scripture references and tried to open up the spacing and increased the size a little bit.

So that it's really easy for your kids to read it and recite it out if they're gonna memorize it. I would encourage you to put all these on the little key chain so that they can flip through and practice. If you just wanna recite it as a family or as a class, I would pass out one of these to each kid and then just put your phone in the middle.

So hopefully these simple tools will help you pull that. The next four object lessons, I'm gonna actually post after this one. So you'll see me from the Old Testament course and the doctrine covenants course. Walk you through some of the Easter object lessons. Well, let me tell you a quick summary of what you have in store.

So the first one is helping you understand the resurrection. One of my favorite ways to teach this, and it went great when we did this together in the doctrine covenants, is the rubber egg analogy. So if you haven't made a rubber egg before, this is where you're. Dip an egg and keep it in vinegar for a while until the shell breaks down.

I'm sure you all have eggs this week, so you'll need a few eggs on hand and maybe some vinegar, and you'll be good. Okay. The second one we're gonna talk about, behold the wounds. One of my favorite principles to teach kids is why. The Christus that we see on our church logo has the wounds. In fact, if you look at any picture of the living Christ that we have post his resurrection, they always sort of feature those wounds.

They have special significance, and it talks about when you study them, it helps you understand how much he loves you, that he would choose to keep these wounds. And so we're gonna do an activity that actually is just coloring Easter eggs, but then use that as a tool to teach that simple principle about the wounds in the Savior's hands and feet.

What makes him as magnificent as he is, and one of my favorite ways to teach that to my kids is by creating these cool string eggs. So you're gonna form them around a balloon, almost like paper mache, but lazier. And then you're gonna pop the balloon and see how, by following his example, we become like him.

It's just this beautiful Easter principle that you can teach in this really fun, sticky, creative way. So for that one, you're gonna need some embroidery floss, and then some water balloon size balloons you don't want. Party balloon. You want some like a small, a few inches across, like water, balloon size balloon, and if you have that on hand and a little bit of glue, then you'll be good to go.

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And I love it, except for one thing, as I was studying this week about the resurrection, and I learned more about that. We don't just get our bodies back, but that you get your body in a perfected form. You know all the illnesses, all the disease, all the damage that occurs over. Period of mortality, that's all reset.

You know, we don't go back to being children necessarily, but we get our bodies back in their whole form. And I think maybe, cuz I've seen so many people I love struggle and. Have loss, loss of mobility, loss of health, loss of all kinds of things. There is something so sweet about that promise of getting our bodies in this perfected form.

And you're gonna fill them with vinegar about, you just want enough that will cover the surface of your egg. So depending on how wide or you know narrow your jar is, you're gonna want enough vinegar to cover an egg. And essentially the egg is the same as the glove and the hand story. And you're gonna talk about what's on the inside of this egg, even though you can't see it.

You know, strength and support. So we have the shells represented by the body, but over the course of our lives, that body breaks down and eventually is left behind. As we die and move on, our spirit moves on. So this is where the vinegar comes into play. So you're gonna wanna actually take this raw egg and drop it into your vinegar if you wanna take it to the next level to make a colorful egg.

You wanna put a little bit of food coloring in your. First. So as you drop your raw egg in perfectly white, you'll notice immediately bubbles start to form on the shell. You'll see that chemical reaction happening really quickly, and over the course of about 24 to 36 hours, that whole shell will slowly break down and slough off if it doesn't.

But as you rub the surface of the egg, That shell will slough off, and you're left with this really funky rubbery egg that your kids can play with and enjoy. And then you'll talk about how when you leave this life, your body stays behind, but your spirit goes back up to your father in heaven and in the spirit world, spirits are eager to be reunited with their body.

There are limitations. Somehow, we don't exactly know all the details, but we know that they're eager to be reunited. So in the resurrection, it's basically an opportunity to get that body back, but it's a different kind of body. It's a stronger, healthier, more resilient body. So that's where this plastic egg comes into play.

So you wanna take an Easter egg that's a little bit bigger than your egg, and you're gonna take your rubber egg and put it inside it. And this gives you the opportunity to talk about a resurrected body and that it looks the same and has the same shape. It has the same feel. But it is perfected, it is immortal.

You can bounce it a few times, but if you bounce it from too high, it will crackle over the place. So be careful since it's raw eggs. But I hope you thoroughly enjoy this new twist on a very classic object lesson.

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Odds are pretty good that sometime this week your kids are gonna beg you to to dye Easter eggs. So since that there's an inevitable situation, you're gonna be stuck in, you might as well have a good way to tie it to the gospel. So for me, when my kids wanna dye eggs, I tend to dread that. So I wanted to come up with some new ways to do it, both that are less messy and maybe a little more fun.

During conference or in the breaks, or maybe if you're doing it as a youth group or primary activity, you could watch some of the Bible videos and talk about the life of the Savior. The premise behind the object lesson is that the reason the savior left those prints in his hands and his feet and his side was so we could have an evidence, right?

He comes to the people of the Book of Mormon and invites them to touch the wounds and see. The wounds up close. He does the same thing as a erected re resurrected savior in the New Testament where he invites people to see the wounds, um, because they're evidence. There's this beautiful quote from Elder Holland in the notes about, it's a reminder, a physical reminder of the love he has for us.

And that's kind of the premise behind trying a few different dying techniques that by looking at the egg, you. Appreciate the process it's been through. Um, and that's kinda the same thing with the Savior's wounds. That by seeing them, it's a reminder of what he endured for our sakes. So the goal here is that you'll just enjoy it.

Watch conference, watch the Bible videos, and. Craft a little bit, dip and die. I walk you through, there's some instructions in, um, this week's notes and then there's also some videos that I link out to, to show you the how to tutorials for how to silk dye eggs and how to shaving cream, dye eggs, and also how to sharpen dye eggs so that you have a few varieties, basically the silk diet eggs, to give you a quick summary.

Um, but you're gonna wrap it up almost like a dumpling, as tight as you can get it with a rubber band around the top. And then you're gonna wrap it one more time in a piece of t-shirt. Basically this is designed to help the colors not bleed into each other, because you're gonna put all those little wrapped up dumpling eggs into a pot and cook them for about 20 minutes or so, and then you let them cool and you open them up and they have this incredible pattern.

The shaving cream, eggs, this was probably Violet's favorite. That's basically just a muffin tin with shaving cream or whipped cream in each of the wells that you drip a little bit of food coloring into and then swirl around almost like you're making. A marbled cake batter. So you're gonna kind of swirl the color into the whipped cream and then just roll your eggs in it and set them to the side.

They'll look like a puffy cloud. You wanna make sure they're as covered as you can get them. Let them sit for 20 minutes or so, and you get these really cool tie dyed looking eggs. The third one is kind of an adjustment on that. Option. So I wanted my kids to be able to make their own pattern. So this, we just took the t-shirts that we had laying around that we had already cut, and I let the kids color them with sharpie markers, with whatever design they wanted, and then we wrapped them around the eggs and cooked them in the same way.

I figured it would be a good way for you to gift something. Enjoy this creative process and watch. Conference, watch the Bible videos and just get a, um, a deeper understanding of the Savior and why he chose to keep those wounds, what it is to remind us of. And then as we head into Easter Sunday, we get an even better understanding of that sacrifice he made and a way to tie it to a tradition that you probably were gonna do anyway.

So I hope you enjoy.

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That's a beautiful thing to study at Easter, but we can't lose sight of his life as well that when we. Talk to our kids about Jesus Christ. It's not just that he died for us, it's also that he lived for us. That his life is a pattern for us to follow. And that on its own is an incredible gift. And to help you teach this in kind of a fun, creative way, we are making these.

Crazy string eggs. I don't even know what to call them. They're a little bit scratchy. They're just kind of decorative fun. Um, but my hope is that it will teach this key principle. So let me walk you through how to pull this off. You wanna begin, like I mentioned, with a water balloon size inflatable balloon.

This is the one that worked best for us, but you could use anything that's thin, kind of like this as string, and you're basically gonna follow the same process you would follow with like paper mache. You're gonna dredge your string through a mixture of 50% glue, 50% water. You want it kind of a really thin consistency cuz you're not trying to get like a gloppy mess on your string.

Basically what I did is when I opened up my embroidery floss, I pulled this the little gold wrapper thing off, and if you kind of unwind it carefully, you can see that you can form a circle like this. So I actually looped this circle around a water bottle that was a little bit heavy so that I could pull just a little bit of the string at a time.

Of string or embroidery floss and have this sort of wet pile of strings sitting to the side. Then you're gonna grab your balloon, take the last bit of that floss that you just dipped, and you start to wind. And there's really no. You know, method or magic to this, you're just gonna wind in all kinds of directions.

You wanna turn your balloon a lot so that you don't have any gaping holes in your floss. Over time, it'll kind of look like this. For ours, I found it worked even better if I did a second. Batch of embroidery floss. So you can see on this one it's got dark pink and orange. I just layered the orange right on top of the pink using the exact same method.

And then once you're ready to pop it, you take a thumb tack or a toothpick and you're just gonna. Jam it in, and then the balloon will pop really fast. It makes this cool sound as it detaches from the glue, you can pull the um, balloon out and you have this awesome hollow egg. The point of all of this is to teach about the life of the savior.

This balloon to me kind of represents. His mortal ministry. We didn't get to see it firsthand. We didn't get to touch him. We didn't get to experience these miracles firsthand. But as we wrap our string, as we study his life and learn about his character, for us, the best way to do that is in the scriptures.

So even if we don't have the same experience they had in the New Testament, we know him and we can recognize him when we see him. Again, that's the whole purpose behind this study, so that we'll pattern our lives after him. We'll choose to live as he did, and we can learn all that as we form our choices and our actions around the example that we find in the scripture.

So hopefully there's a way for you to tie that.

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I'm also this week giving you a whole bunch of tools from the Holy Week kit. So last year, if you were part of the course, I added in on Easter week, I think this project that the Sugar Doodle Girls and Amy Fairy and I did for one of the church campaigns for Easter, I think it was the Hallelujah campaign.

So if you don't love Amy Fairy yet, you will. But she created this gorgeous artwork to teach us about Holy Week. It all goes with the principles. There's instruction pages that tell you like verse you can read each day and a couple videos you can watch, and then some traditions that go with it. And then all her artwork is just freely available to download and to print.

So I hope you enjoy it. My intent with all of this is not to make your days leading up to Easter harder on you. When I worked on this campaign and then the following Easter, I helped the church with that campaign and my heart changed a little bit about Easter. We, my kids kind of resent it quite, quite frankly because they miss all the baskets and the peeps and the bunnies.

It's very possible that his children and grandchildren were annoyed that they had to do all these things, and it gave him an opportunity. To teach them. That's what I love about the change in our house at Easter is even though they still miss having the awesome Easter baskets that are full of toys, they ask, why do we do this again?

Why did you change it to be this holy thing? And it gives me a chance to testify and to teach. It is a different holiday to me in my heart because of what I know about the savior. That doesn't mean I'm preaching that that has to be that way for you, but for my house where we have birthdays surrounding that week, we have all kinds of happy, fun, mom opportunities.

So hopeful. You will find a way to add a little bit more Christ into your Easter, but I do believe that as you turn to the Lord and ask, how can I do this better? He'll help you know what needs to be pulled away and what needs to be added. And that's the best part of it, right? Getting an answer about your particular family is what this is all about.

So I wish you the best of luck and I wish you a happy.

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Thanks so much for being here, you guys. I hope you enjoyed this week. I know it's a little bit different than we normally do, but I hope it gives you a chance to jump into some simple scriptures about your savior and then try out a few fun things as a family.

If you have any questions or you wanna join me on the live, I'll have a quick live the Monday after conference so that we can talk a little bit about this week and what it's for and then. Answer any questions you might have about the object lessons. Um, I would tell you if you're in the course and you wanna ask me a specific question, you'll wanna put that on the discussion boards, or if you just have a comment or a thought about one of the verses that you studied, I hope you'll post it there.

Just go to the top right of every video and you can find a link to open up the discussion boards and chat with me or the rest of the community. In addition, I would remind you that if you're on the free version, if you're on the podcast you're watching on YouTube and you want a link out to that, to the notes or to that Living Christ printable, you can find it freely.

All right you guys. I think that's it. I think you're gonna have a really good week. So come off the powerhouse weekend that you had studying conference and now jump right into a little bit more about the savior and his glorious resurrection. And I hope you just have a chance to soak it in cuz it's a beautiful week of study.

All right, enjoy it you guys, and I'll see you on Monday.