Resolutions

I have several resolutions for the New Year in mind, even though I've never really set any before. This year I decided I was at a point in my life that this would be beneficial. One main goal I've had for a while is to set some kind of scripture gospel study session that would prove fruitful. My scripture study for several years now has been to try to grab moments where I can actually sit down and try to study. These moments are random and rarely uninterrupted and I usually just open up the scriptures and read something because I haven't felt I wanted to spend those precious moments making a plan of WHAT to study. This year, around New Year's Day, a plan of study hit me. It was so obvious, I couldn't believe I had never thought of it before. So, I wrote down my plan and was very excited to start. I would simply follow the reading material outlined in the 2011 Curriculum of study for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plus a bit extra.

So, excited, I called Jared and told him that I had decided that at the BARE MINIMUM, my goal for the New Year would be to read:
1. The Book of Mormon
2. The New Testament
3. All the General Conference Addresses
4. The Relief Society Lesson materials for the year
5. Articles from the current issues of the Ensign magazine
6. Handbook 2: Administering the Church
7. The Book, Teaching, No Greater Call
8. 2011 Outline for Sharing Time
9. Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith (because I never read that)

He started laughing and kept laughing so hard I could tell he was crying! Hmmm....Maybe it was because I'm often complaining that I can't get anything done with a toddler and a baby. My Grandpa Pace once told my parents that I would need to marry someone who had a sense of humor (I believe because I'm so serious much of the time). Hmmmm....Jared told me he thought I had a good goal, just maybe unrealistic.

Well, maybe I'm setting a goal that's unrealistic for this point in my life, but I am still happy to have a goal and I've decided to keep it as an ideal, and try to be happy with whatever I can achieve.

And, by the way, I found 2 really great resources for my goals. First is a scripture calculator at ldsscripturetools.com. This site tells you how many pages you need to read each day to meet your goal. At first I thought this was just simple division, but this site gives you a day by day schedule which I thought was great. The second site is a customizable reading schedule for Sunday School and Priesthood or Relief Society Lessons for 2011. The nice thing about this site is you can save the document in Word and customize it to your ward's schedule. Click HERE
for the site.

As a side note, I know it's more effective to study for a specified amount of time instead of a specified amount of pages or chapters, but that method of study just doesn't work at all for this point in my life. Far too often I can't even pray without hearing, "Mom...", and let's face it - a toddler who needs help in the bathroom, or a baby who's giving the "I'm hurt" cry just can't wait!