Succulent Mango

One of my students put forth a very plausible explanation for a verse that has been bugging me for a few years. Endowed members will be forced to agree that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had fruit that was very desirable, and delicious to the taste. Not bitter. 2 Nephi 2:15 contrasts the forbidden fruit with the fruit of the Tree of Life, the one being sweet, the other bitter. It seems to me that the implication is that the fruit of the Tree of Life is bitter. In Lehi's vision of the Tree of Life, though, the fruit is sweet above all that is sweet. Plus, I'd like to think the thing that represents the love of God isn't bitter. My mother and I had an interesting but not super fruitful (ha!) discussion of what it all might mean. This morning, though, Alexandra suggested that perhaps the forbidden fruit was very desirable to Adam and Eve to get them out of the garden, and delicious to the taste because it was new and exotic to them. That, from their perspective in the garden, it was delicious. From our perspective in mortality though, the fruit of the Tree of Life is the sweet, delicious one. So it's natural for Lehi to talk about something being sweet that, to Adam and Even, was boring and not particularly desirable.

Scrumptuous Meal

I officially declare the first day of seminary a success. There was a ton of food. We bagged the leftovers and might do breakfast again tomorrow. Many thanks to the parents involved in bringing and cooking the food.

We watched "For Our Day" and sang Book of Mormon Stories and the Book of Mormon version of Ten Little Indians while we waited for the food. Afterwards I shared Alma 7:11-13, my favorite scripture in the Book of Mormon. Simple, fun day. Tomorrow we hand out materials and start regular lessons.

Startup Meeting

We just had our orientation fireside. I definitely like the fireside format instead of doing a less formal meeting between wards. I'm so excited for Tuesday! It sounds like a lot of the students are, too, which is a good sign, I think.

School Multiplexing

I finally went through and found all the holidays for all the schools. The spreadsheet is here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pFLhZHo-5rTPwQV9odRKmcA&output=html

I made a public Google Calendar that has all of the days off, as well as the orientation meeting, in-service, and the first and last days of class. Hopefully this will stay up-to-date and be useful for people.

I think you can import the calendar into your favorite calendar app using this link for iCal format:
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/uvbf30jtb8sknd3sundkimojo8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

It's also shown at the bottom of the page here.

Stake Meeting

So, technology came up at Stake Priesthood meeting last week. Just as I was considering relaxing my no-personal-electronics policy, President Standage warned of the dangers of excessive screen-time. He quoted heavily from a CES fireside by Elder Bednar. The context of the warning was interesting to me. He was speaking on new attacks Satan makes, and emphasized that Satan, who has no body, wants to degrade our body. So he attacks us with thrill-seeking, like kayaking down waterfalls. And he attacks us with virtual relationships (facebook, myspace, etc.) instead of real relationships that actually require bodies (seminary, mutual, etc.). Despite talking for several minutes about computer dangers in a talk about the sanctity of the body, porn got only a passing mention. The emphasis was clearly that too much screen time is bad, almost independent of what is on the screen. It makes me feel a little better about a couple of lessons last year where I challenged certain students to go without TV for a few days, even though they weren't watching anything in particular that was bad.

Surge in Motivation

Last night was the first in-service with Brother Baker. He is quite different from Brother Adamson, so I'm looking forward to learning about different aspects of teaching the gospel. He solved my dilemma of whether to read the whole Book of Mormon this summer or spend my time memorizing scriptures. He challenged each of us to memorize all 25 before the school year begins. He also gave out a ton of good resources and suggested we go buy a few more. So my TODO list before September is:

-Memorize the scripture mastery verses
-Read J Reuben Clark's The Charted Course
-Read Lectures on Faith
-Read Teaching the Gospel
-Purchase Charting the Book of Mormong (FARMS)
-Check out the always-improving CES website
-Figure out how I'll do grades
-Figure out how I'll do devotionals

It's doable, and I'm pretty pumped up from last night. I am a little worried that once seminary actually starts and I'll be able to practice things every morning I'll be so tired that my motivation will fall. We'll see...