It’s time to jump into a new year of Come Follow Me scripture study. Can you believe it? Where did 2021 go?! As a mom of four and former Primary President, I know this is an area that can bring many blessings but can also be a big struggle to implement. Especially with kids! (Trust me, with my four kids, I’m right there with you). As a family, we have tried several different approaches to our family study through the last several years. Between my husband and I, we’ve been through many callings that have kept us crazy busy too – Bishopric 1st councilor, early morning Seminary teacher, and now Bishop for my husband and Primary 1st Councilor, Primary President and now Nursery Leader for me. (Okay nursery leader isn’t so busy but every Sunday I kind of become Single Mom by default. 🙂 ) After much trial and error, we discovered that Sunday evenings is Our Time. This is the one day we’re home and it just works best for us. I know that it’s different for everyone and that’s okay!! What matters is that we’re studying the scriptures as a family, right?
The second half of successful Come Follow Me study we’ve discovered is finding something that works, that keeps all the kids engaged, that teaches us, and is easy for us parents! I hear stories about amazing but elaborate things families do for their family Come Follow Me and at first, I felt a bit of Failure Syndrome creeping in to eat me up, but eventually I got over it. I love to keep things simple, it works, end of story.
I was called to be the Primary President in 2019, that first year of Come Follow Me, when we studied the New Testament. I began looking for different resources out there that families were using and passing them on to the Parents in our ward in an email each week. At the end of 2019, one of our favorite authors, David Bowman, announced he was going to start doing videos for Come Follow Me starting in 2020 too. We were excited! We signed up right away and have loved every single one! They have been a huge blessing to our family. David does an amazing job of teaching the concepts for each lesson and making them fun and engaging for all ages. He does it in a way that helps my kids get what the lesson is trying to teach them, often better than my husband and I teaching the lesson from the manual. There have been so many episodes my kids have asked to watch over and over on their own. When my daughter is asked to give a talk for Primary, she now will watch the video for the week and is able to write much of her talk on her own. My husband has even admitted to looking up a video or two for ideas on how to teach a particular concept/story to the youth. We usually go through the lesson in the manual as a family and then watch the video when we’re done. Sometimes though we do have those weeks where we just watch the videos and call it good… Life is real Ya’ll. I am especially grateful for this option as we plunge into the Old Testament!
David has a lot of great books for kids and teens as well as beautiful artwork. He did a thing for a while called “Teancum’s Warriors”. He stopped doing this for now to focus on his Drawn In videos so somehow, I need to figure out how to get my youngest two kids included in the group someday. 🙂 The package included a cute picture he drew of each kid and an assigned number of which one of Teancum’s Warriors they were. They also got a beautiful picture of Christ of their choosing and a fun headband. My kids are #26 and #27. My daughter has her picture hanging on the wall surrounded by some of her favorite scriptures.
We have loved David’s books as well. (Not pictured below – Dude, Don’t be Lemuel simply because it’s lost somewhere in a teenage bedroom….) We read the Who’s Your Hero series over and over when my oldest two were younger. We still occasionally say “Natural man – scram” when someone is needing a reminder to behave better.
If you are interested in finding out more, (which I recommend!) you can go here. You will find samples of videos, what’s included in your subscription, pricing options, etc. This is one Come Follow Me resource you won’t regret adding in each week!