So I found all these resources about Biblical/Zion/Hebrew-based dating and courtship. Of course there are the Duggars videos, so if you haven’t watched those scroll to the end of this post and watch those. But the Duggars aren’t the only ones into this! Watch all of these other videos too! I like that the Duggars videos show the parents role in the process of monitoring. Many of us don’t have our single adult children living with us, but we can share these videos with our children who live away from us and discuss them. That’s what I plan on doing with my three older children.
The video above and below are from the movie “Come What May.”
Here’s a great video sharing step-by-step of how one young man pursued “Biblical romance” involving a father’s permission to pursue a relationship.
The next three videos are from a cute couple who have a YouTube channel called “SelfLAW” which stands for Self, Love, Acceptance, and Worth. I so appreciate their willingness to share how they waited for their first kiss at the wedding altar and how hard but worth it that it was to wait.
you can see more of Brandon and Sheretta’s videos here at their youtube channel, “Worth the Wait.”
We had a super enlightening time discussing Zion-based dating and courtship last Wednesday. It was so good I have decided to continue the discussion. We are going to have part 2 next month on Thursday Feb. 18th 7 to 9 PM Mountain Time. I have planned a topic for each month for the rest of the year, and we will be meeting on the third Thursday of every month. Each topic has to do with raising the bar as a family to bring about Zion. I am so excited! It is time we rise up and learn God’s word on each of these topics! We can find God’s word in the scriptures and the words of latter-day prophets, and learn from each other, both in and out of the LDS Church, how to apply the word in our modern culture where industrialization and Hollywood have blindsided the Biblical-based family culture.
Here are the resources we will be discussing for Zion-based Dating and Courtship Thursday Feb. 18:
February- Dating and Courtship part 2 Thursday Feb. 18
Restoring the Patriarchal Order and the Power of Prayer specifically towards a Husband
You can go here to see the schedule for the whole year. Please email me at celestia at treeoflifemothering dot com to get the link to join the online video classroom! I only have 20 spots so respond early! If the link doesn’t work scroll down past the videos to see the full schedule.
All meetings are held online at 7 PM Mountain Time in a Zoom videochat classroom
RSVP to Celestia (celestia at treeoflifemothering dot com) to get the link to the online classroom
January- Zion-based Dating and Courtship part 1
Hannah Stoddard’s Article on Dating and Courtship with links to other resources at the bottom
excerpt from Beloved Bridegroom by Donna Nielsen on Hebrew based courtship, p. 11 to 23
Are you new to homeschooling and don’t know where to start? Or are have you been doing it for a while but want to breathe some fresh life and ideas into what you are sharing with your children? Do you want some monthly themes to help you implement the TJED principles of “structure time not content” and “you, not them”? Then this online course by my dear friend Katie will surely help! She is on a mission to help mothers build foundational character in their children and unlock the chambers of the heart so that their education is whole. If you have any questions please contact Katie at this email: katie (at) gatheringplaceforfamilies (dot) org.
Read on…
The rest of the words are from Katie:
Building Foundation & Unlocking the Chambers
I have updates for the Foundation Builder Guide and a link to your copy of my FREE article.
UPDATES:
1. The first step in fulfilling our mission is to mentor the principles.These principles are from the “Language of Creation” which is Symbolic Hebrew. (see video link below) The way we share these principles is through online Workshops & Recordings /Discussion Calls. These classes create an environment of self-discoveryso you can use your agency to discover them yourself! This is important to Foundation Building because for you and I to help nurture our children’s foundation, we have to experience the power of learning in this way. It’s patterned after how God nurtures us!
Then, we offer to you, a plethora of resources through The Foundation Builder Guide (click to see more) for you to teach these principles in your homes. Isn’t that exciting! A whole set of thematic resources with a holistic approach to teaching these principles with your children comes with it!
I am excited to announce, I am beginning the next class starting January 23rd at 7:00 am MST. There are Workshop recordings to watch and instructions to read and study before you join us, so come on early enough, by January 18th, to get the materials.
So, you get to learn and have TONS of help to teach the principles in your homes! Not only have I done research to find over 70 classic stories &/fairy tales to teach these principles from, but there are original symbolic stories, songs, positive scripts, simulations/games, and it introduces The Organic Environments & Materials with fun hands-on discovery activities including all the subjects (for those wanting to include all the subject-based learning). It nurtures project learning and storytelling in the home, as well as character!
2. The second step in fulfilling our mission is to help nurture those inner most places within which hold our children’s Divine Nature and genius. Yes! It’s in there and this is where you can really NURTURE it to come out! It’s also in you and whether or not the REAL you has come out, you get to nurture your true self while you nurture your children’s. Isn’t that amazing! We help with this through what we have identified and called The Organic Environments & Materials. (click on it) Please read it and ponder over times you have already incorporated these organic environments.
We not only provide this article, but we also provide many ways for you to teach the principles utilizing these “Organic Environments & Materials” in
The Foundation Builder Guide. AND, we provide a beautiful nurturing experience at our Family Celebrations and Facilitator Workshops & Retreats – Unlocking The Chambers (more info coming!).
Come learn the Principles of Creation (Symbolic Hebrew) for your own foundation building and to help enhance your mentoring with your children in truth.
And by the way, this program was specifically designed with the Artist Generation in mind and when you look at it seriously, it contains all the 7 Liberal Arts in their essence – grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music. It is whole and exciting!
If this calls to you, come join this whole new community of Mother’s who are deliberately nurturing foundation and unlocking the inner divine genius of their children.
Building Foundation and Unlocking Chambers,
Have you seen the Foundation Builder Guide’s shortIntro Videos? Check them out to see if this resource can help you increase foundational principles understanding in your home.
You know those potholders you make out of a loom kit, with the loopies that look like they are cut from women’s colored nylons? I found out recently you can make your own loopies out of old T-shirts! After packing, moving, and unpacking, and Christmas shopping and cooking, my fingers were itching to do something crafty just for fun. So I followed the instructions from Heather over here at mommypotamus and made the above potholder. It took longer than I thought it would take, but it was very relaxing and then totally satisfying to see my beautiful creation at the end. I plan on making more while the family has movie nights each Friday night this winter. I have a hard time sitting and not doing “something.”
Last year, one of my adult children has had more than one “steady” relationship this past year while at college. It has been a roller coaster of emotions for me as I first hear about the person my child is dating as the “one” and then later I find out that the person is “not the one.” I have been relieved that a wedding event that was looming in front of me faded away, as emotionally and financially I was not ready to put on a wedding. One of these “ones” turned out to have major problems. Another “one” was not a good personality match for my adult child. Arranged marriage is looking really good to me so I don’t have to ride a roller coaster. Where is Yenta when I need her?
Is there any way we can increase the chances that our children will marry someone who won’t turn out to have major problems (i.e. self-harm/addictive behaviors)? I have done my best to encourage my children to live the For the Strength of Youth standards and then have let them fly from the nest as I hope for the best. As much as I love the Duggars standards of dating and courtship, you can’t really enforce those rules when your children leave the nest and go away to college.
How do we prepare our youth to have Zion-based courtship and marriage (especially when they are living away from home)? What can we do to encourage them to have high standards without meddling?
I want to discuss this! My girlfriend Shauna and I have been talking about it a bit and we want to invite other like-minded women to contribute to the discussion!
So… we are having
an online discussion about the topic of
Zion-like Dating and Courtship!
Wednesday January 27th at 7pm MT
If you would like to participate in this discussion please RSVP by making a comment below, in order
to reserve your space in my Zoom Class Room. (20 couples maximum). Yes, husbands are invited! My Zoom classroom can only handle 20 household participants.
You must RSVP to get the link to come to the classroom! If we have more than 20 couples RSVP I will consider holding a repeat event another night to accommodate all the respondents
Here are some words from Shauna:
My motivation for putting this together is to help myself and others come to a better understanding of how parents can and should guide their teenage and young adult aged children through the dating and courtship years to yield a good match in marriage. I’ve been studying the Hebrew custom of courtship and betrothal. It is very different than our current mode of operations. The Hebrew model is something that deserves our study and implementation however comfortable you would feel doing so.
In order to be prepared for this discussion please read the following articles.
Beloved Bridegroom, Donna Nielsen’s book: Pages 11-23. (15 minutes of reading)
Looking forward to your input to shape a new understanding and culture of Zion-like dating and courtship . . . I hope to see all of you who want to talk about it there!
Have you ever researched the origins of our “public” education system. Most of us have always assumed it was to benefit all people. I highly recommend you listen to this episode of the Luminous Mind. You will find out that in the U.S., public education was designed to benefit some and exclude others. This is fascinating!
Are you stuck in a rut with fixing meals? I recommend the Pioneer Woman cookbooks to motivate you to cook, and to get your kids learning cooking skills. True, they aren’t all whole/real/ancestral foods, but I just substitute melted butter for canola oil for the baking recipes, sucanat for sugar, or olive oil for canola oil that is in dressing. I also leave out the occasional call for wine. A lot of the recipes call for white flour, and I’m off grain, so I just don’t use those right now. You will have to look elsewhere for grain-free bread or cookie recipes. She has some awesome recipes for side dishes using vegetables and some terrific salad recipes, like butternut squash, greens, and pine nuts. Santa Claus brought me two of her cookbooks for Christmas. Because each recipe has the steps listed out with full-color photos, these recipes are great for giving to your kids and asking them to pick out a recipe or two they want to fix for the family in the coming week. We are getting them out on Sundays to plan the following week’s menu, and the gorgeous photos totally rope them in to picking out some recipes. Right now my 14 year old son is just finishing up making the chicken alfredo. Last Saturday I made PW’s hamburger soup, featured above in the video, and the smell was so glorious! Mmm, yum, yum, yum! The recipe is in the book below.
This book below is chock full of ideas to make every holiday special with food. Some of us grew up with traditional food for every holiday, and some, like me, didn’t. We had turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the other holidays were not set. So I really appreciate having this guidebook for holiday food. It just makes me look forward to the whole year.
Here’s to a great new year of enjoying being in the kitchen!
For the New Year I thought it would be fun to share what apps are my favorite that I plan on using to make this year my best year ever! Of course I am assuming you have the usual apps already for the weather, Facebook, MyFitnessPal and Youtube. These apps I am listing below will help you find real food from local farmers, get the best deals at your local grocery stores, study the gospel, find commentary on the scriptures from General Authorities, answer some of your gospel questions, solve breastfeeding problems, keep track of your budget, do your family history research, keep your brain fit, and much more. I have found all of these apps in the app store for the iPhone. I can’t vouch that they are all available in Android form. Do a search in the Apple app store to find them for the iPhone or Google Play for android.
First is the Glow app, featured above in the video. It was designed to track your fertility signals so you can achieve pregnancy, but you could also use it to avoid pregnancy. Either way you can track your natural fertility signs. I’ve looked at a lot of fertility tracking apps, even the Creighton one, and so far I like this one the best. You can also try Ovagraph.
2. Next is an app to answer all of your breastfeeding questions. The author of the app, Nancy Mohrbacher, is an IBCLC and author of the Breastfeeding Answer Book. Using an app at 2 AM to get help with a crying baby and sore nipples sure sounds a lot easier than searching through a book or using your desktop.
3. Now for the Gospel Library app from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Does anyone not have this yet? If you don’t, you are missing out, so go get it today. It’s free, and It is truly amazing to have! You can have all the scriptures, all the Church manuals, all of General Conference, all the Church magazines, and all the current publications of the Church in one place! Do we truly appreciate this gem of a resource? I read my scriptures from my app first thing in the morning, using the Gospel Doctrine study guide, answering the questions at the end of each chapter, in my journal. Then I listen to a General Conference talk and two chapters from a Teaching of the Presidents manual while I get breakfast going and get ready for the day. It totally turns on the brightness of hope in the atonement of Jesus Christ for me.
I also play a story or two from the Friend, the LDS magazine for children, every morning for my kids at breakfast. I used to read aloud a story or two from the print edition. Problem is, I would run out of stories by the end of the month, and have to get out my archived back issues. No more! Now I can have all 40+ years of back issues in the palm of my hand. I can also do a search to find stories from the Friend, and all of the Gospel Library (articles from ALL the church magazines, scriptures, Bible Videos, Mormon Messages, etc.) for a certain topic and play them for my kids. Each month we are doing a different kind of character trait. For instance, for this month of January 2016 we are doing “forgiveness, penitence, and humility,” so I can find a boatload of stories to go with that in just a few minutes. This is so cool!
Back when I was teaching Primary, before I moved, I would read the upcoming Primary lesson on Monday to apprise me of what I needed to get ready during the week (I’m not kidding, one week it suggested I bring boiled eggs, another week it was homemade play-doh). It’s nice to have a week to prepare and refer to it when I am on the go with my phone. Then on Sunday morning I would review as I got ready for church services by listening while I dressed and curled my hair. When I would remember, I would listen to the Gospel Doctrine lesson teacher’s chapter, and the upcoming lesson from the Teachings of the Presidents manual.
4. LDS Tools, also from the LDS Church. Imagine being away from your house, and you suddenly have to contact your son’s Cub Scout den leader. You don’t have the phone number as part of your “Contacts” list. What to do? This happened to me once and I was so grateful I was able to look it up on the LDS Tools app. I love having my ward directory in the palm of my hand, wherever I go! I can look up ward members’ callings and numbers whenever I need to know. When we moved to our new ward here in AZ, we were able to quickly find out who the new elder quorum’s president is using LDS Tools. Then we could call him up and ask for some strong male help to move the heavy furniture. This was a lifesaver as the clock was ticking to get the truck back before we got charged a late fee.
5. LDS Music Here’s a link from the lds.org page that describes the LDS Music app. It even shows the notes for the music, which is so great since the notes are not available in the music on LDS Gospel Library. You can even find some of the newer children’s music that has appeared in the Friend since the Children’s Songbook was published over 25 years ago, like “Scripture Power” and “If the Savior Stood Beside Me.”
7. The Mormon Channel App. Watch the video above to learn all about it! You can have a 24 hour talk stream of LDS content, a 24 music stream of the MoTabs or contemporary LDS music (like Michael McLean) or listen to different series created by the LDS Church, like Mormon Channel Daily, Extreme Genes, etc.
8. Find Real Food App by the Weston A. Price foundation. It allows you to find real food in your area. So cool! Just don’t get discouraged if you can’t find anything in your area on the app. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not available. Don’t assume that means there isn’t any raw milk or farm fresh eggs around you. Start asking around to your friends, ward members, neighbors, and at the health food store and you will mostly likely find some local farmers who just haven’t bothered to register with the people who made the app.
9. Your bank’s mobile app. You all probably have yours installed, but it took me to move over 800 miles away from my bank to appreciate the convenience of this. My husband had to point it out to me. You can take a picture of a check with your phone and then deposit it through your phone. Wow! Google your bank’s name with the phrase “mobile app” to see if it’s available.
10. Familysearch’s Family Tree app. Now you can look at your family tree, do research, and add names on the go! Impress your relatives at your next reunion by pulling up stories so you can correct disputes about details. Watch the above tutorial to get in the know.
11. Everydollar. If you want an easy, portable way to keep track of your budget, this is a dream come true. Dave Ramsey’s team created it, and it’s free! You will have no more excuses not to track your expenditures. I can’t tell you how many times I went for years and years where I wouldn’t put an expenditure into Quicken because I would be upstairs at the end of the day, and I would remember that I hadn’t entered it into Quicken yet, and I felt too tired after a long mommy-homeschooler-juggling-balls-all-day to go downstairs to the basement where the desktop PC was to put in. So I would avoid the duty, which caused my CPA-trained husband endless amounts of frustration when he would discover the neglected charge as he was balancing the checkbook. Oops! No longer! Now, wherever my phone is, I usually am within a few footsteps, so I can grab my phone and track the expense. This app is so tremendously helpful to make the budget transparent to both spouses, wherever they are, as long as they have their phone. It’s especially helpful in tandem with all of Dave’s Baby Steps and when completing Financial Peace University,which I am working on. Now spouses can instantly see what is left in the budget without being at home or in verbal touch with each other. Amazing! Get this app today! Sign up at everydollar.com and then get the app at the itunes store or Google Play.
(In case you need help in creating the budget on paper in the first place, then watch this video with Dave’s daughter, Rachel Cruze.)
12. Flipp. This is an app that collects all the flyers for sales from stores in your area (supermarkets, discount stores, dollar stores, and more). You can clip the coupons digitally and bring them on your phone to the store. They are all right there! No more forgetting coupons at home, unless you forget your phone! You can even set up notifications to remind me when the sales and coupons are about to expire. As Jordan Page says below, it’s the grocery store app everyone needs.
13. The Cutegirlshairstyels app. I wish I had more need of this! I have always loved hair and have fond memories of my sisters and me trying out different hairstyles. My older daughter is gone from the nest and long ago started doing her own hair, and my only other daughter isn’t into “cute”. But if I had more girls I would definitely be using this app to give us ideas for hairstyles every day when the crunch is on to get out the door looking presentable.
14. The evernote app. One of my New Year’s goals is to learn how to use evernote to organize my endless amounts of lists. The possibilities are endless: things to tell my kids, the scriptures and hymns I want them to memorize this year for our devotional according to monthly themes, a honey-do list for dh, insights I get as I listen to Gospel Library, the menu plan for the week that I design on Sunday, shopping lists, and I could go on.
15. The LDS Citation Index app. Say you are sitting in Sunday School and someone brings up a question about the Lost Ten Tribes after the class reads a scripture out loud together. You know sometime, somewhere, Bruce R. McConkie said something about it to enlighten your mind but you can’t remember what it is. If you have this app, you can quickly go to the scripture on the app and find not just what Elder McConkie said about it, but what any General Authority ever said about that scripture from the pulpit or in Church-published writings. So cool!
16. The Deseret News app. After I got married I realized I had spent way too much time reading the newspaper during my youth. Some of what I read was good but I grieve all the time I spent wading through all the negative news to get to the uplifting material. So my dh and I decided not to subscribe to the newspaper. Sadly, Deseret News had a policy, and for all I know, still does, that in order to get the LDS Church News, if you live in Utah, you have to subscribe to the daily paper to get the once-weekly-published Church News. I thought that was silly so I went for 20+ years only being able to read the Church News when I visited my parents and picked up their copy. I suppose I could have read it online but I just always forget to look it up when I was at my desktop PC or even on my phone. But now, with this app, I can easily and quickly find and read articles that have been published in the Church News whenever I want, wherever I take my phone. Once you are in the app, you click on the little menu icon (the horizontal parallel lines) and then you look for “Faith” and then “LDS Church News.” This is a great way to read inspiring news and stories of people living their LDS faith. I like doing searches for “Nauvoo,” “church history,” and “Family History Moments.” Mormon Times is also available under the “Faith” tab.
17. The Familysearch Memories App. You can upload photos that you’ve scanned from your phone into Familysearch with this fabulous app. Picture yourself at a family reunion, seeing photos you’ve never seen before and you wish you could take them home with you. Capture those precious images into Familysearch with this handy-dandy app.
18. Lumosity. Now, for some games. I have never been a fan with video games because they are brain candy. But…I am OK with games that actually sharpen your memory and your ability to problem-solve, plan and multitask. So Lumosity fits the bill. Use that time while waiting in the doctor’s office to get smarter.
19. The librivox app gives you quick access to common domain books in audio format. For a while, we were listening to a great audiobook of U.S. History for kids, available through this app, every time I drove my kids to homeschool choir practice. Then we moved and I got out of the habit. Time to create a new habit loop for that audiobook!
20. Then there are photo editing and scrapbooking apps. So you can make collages, add captions, and fancy up your photos all in your palm, away from your craft room. I have sooo many boxes of photos, with my last completely finished scrapbook page from my daughter’s birth in 1995 (ouch!) so this idea of “scrapbooking on the go” really appeals to me so I don’t get any more of a backlog! Also check out Facetune and Rhonna Designs.
21. Gasbuddy. This awesome app allows you to type in the zip code of where you want to buy gas, and it will tell you what the gas prices are at all the gas stations in that zip code. Brilliant!
22. byutv. This app allows you to quickly locate any show that is on the byutv website and watch it wherever your phone goes, as well as stream byutv live. You can watch all the BYU devotionals, American Ride, The Food Nanny, and other exclusive byutv content. I love it! Catch the newest offering from byutv, Joan of Arc, an amazing documentary about the amazing woman!
Whew! That’s enough to keep me busy for a year! And I didn’t even share a new app that I am holding out on, for its own separate post. Stay tuned for that one!
Does anyone out there have any more recommendations? I would love to hear them! How about any on pregnancy or childbirth?
This is a picture from our new Arizona’s ward Christmas party. One of us didn’t want to be in the photo, and three kids didn’t move with us because they are out of the nest, so that’s why there are only three kids pictured.
Sorry for being gone so long from blogging. I have missed it! It seems like I have been in hibernation! I wish I could say that I have been sleeping for most of the time I’ve been gone, but I’ve been busy, busy, busy. There have been so many times I ached to have my fingers typing up a blog, sharing ideas, especially for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but with packing up for a big move, moving, and the holidays on top of that all something had to give and blogging it was.
Right before we pulled away from our old home in our moving truck and minivan, Grammi treated us to a lovely dinner at her home.
Our moving truck on the way to AZ. For the first two nights we stayed at my parents’ home. We drove through a blustery snowstorm to get there Saturday night.
I have been in survival mode for the past three months. We moved to Arizona right after Thanksgiving and became cowboys! We left our Layton UT home right when the first storm was coming in, Thanksgiving weekend, and got out of the state before the big dump of snow four weeks ago. My dream of getting out of the snow has come true! I am coming up from air in the midst of packing, moving, unpacking, organizing, shopping for a new home, prepping for Christmas, recovering from Christmas, hosting my mother-in-law and three big kids for the holidays, making new goals, starting a new semester of homeschooling, etc. to say Happy New Year! I am alive and well! The photo at the top of this blog post of me, my dh, and 3 of my 7 kiddos was taken at our new ward’s Christmas party here in rural southeastern Arizona. The three oldest kids are out of the nest and stayed in Idaho and Utah for their college or senior homeschool year activities. I am used to missing my college kids but getting used to missing my 17 year old.
This is my old kitchen which served me for 11 years. I am so grateful to upgrade to a larger one.
I have had some mental battles adjusting to the emotional upheaval of packing up decades of memories and errata for 9 people and planning a huge out of state move. Not to mention the struggle of adjusting to life in a new place but all in all I love it here on these 5 acres of mesquite trees. I have a much bigger kitchen and am out in the country, which is another dream come true! I’m still getting used to having to drive into “town” (about 20 min.) to go shopping or to the library. Best of all our finances have improved tremendously because of this move. We can now do the Dave Ramsey baby steps with a vengeance! The weather is perfect, not too hot, not too cold. On Christmas Eve it was a balmy 63 degrees! It is usually sunny and bright. It did snow twice but the snow melted before it hit the ground.
Here are some random musings from my move:
moving, like childbirth, is a mathematical equation. You have a finite amount of material that has to be compressed into a small place to get out. You don’t know how it’s all going to fit until the actual push happens! In the end, we were able to fit things by having the biggest U-haul truck available, plus a trailer, plus a trip back to the house after the first night’s stay at my mom’s to get some random stuff that we hauled in the minivan.
next time I move, I will start packing at least a month sooner so that I can not still be packing while movers are moving boxes out of the house. I want to be watching every box that goes into the truck! Some stuff that was supposed to go to the thrift store ended up going in the truck, and some stuff I wanted to bring (like the kids’ bikes and the doll cradle) went to the thrift store
I am so grateful for my friends and family who helped. My girlfriends,Tara and Jorgina, a ward member, and my dear brother, his wife and girls and my parents helped tremendously. Also my big kids were a big help when they were home for Thanksgiving weekend. I’m sure they didn’t think it was fun to spend their Thanksgiving weekend packing up a kitchen but they never complained.
Moving is like childbirth in that it leaves you raw, emotional, and open to crazy thoughts. I have felt as worse or worser as my postpartum blues. I feel like I have been in a time warp, isolated from friends and real time as I have been setting up a new home.
When you unpack you have to organize twice. Once to get everything out, once again to see how it can fit together.
It is amazing how wonderful it is to move to a new ward and have that network of people ready to help you. It’s truly cool how random strangers rise to the occasion to help people moving in. We had two yummy dinners brought to us the first two nights. I am so grateful for these helpers. Two of the families who brought dinner have three little girls each around my daughter’s age so I am looking forward to having her play with them. One of the families even homeschools! We also had a cute couple come help us unload the truck the first day, the wife helped me in the kitchen and the husband helped unload the truck.
When you move, you can never have too much packing tape and Sharpies.
Sliders are a moving family’s best friend! They slip under your furniture and you can easily move heavy furniture with little kids while dad/husband is gone to work.
Warning: mommy brag moment coming up! Watch the video above featuring my son Dallin and his best friend Jacob. These two homeschooled young men are among the greatest kids I’ve ever known. I’m not saying that just because they are my son and his friend, but because it’s true! They both excelled in their LEMI scholar projects. It was so amazing watching them tackle the final class, called the Edison project. They were peer mentors and would have meetings on Monday mornings at 7 AM! Jacob, at age 16, got accepted into BYU. He raised enough money on his own last year to attend the World Scout Jamboree in Japan. Dallin at age 17, is preparing for a mission and college. He has tackled chores at home and out of the home on his own initiative that have left in awe, thinking, wow, most kids aren’t willing to do that. He has taught speech and debate classes on his own and mentors an advanced acting class. He has a a sterling character that you don’t encounter every day. They have teamed together to win a few Key of Liberty Constitution bowls as well. Both young men earned their Eagle Scout awards and excel at speech and debate events. Their homeschooled mock trial team took 2nd place in state a few years ago. They blog over at inspirationlamppost.com, which is dedicated to inspiring teenagers to be excellent. They’ve had lots of fun challenging each other to overcome fears, as demonstrated in the video below.
Here’s a message from my son Dallin:
“Do you know of any youth whose capacity and motivation could be greatly enhanced by one-on-one mentoring and hard core accountability from peers who have been successful? Maybe this youth is you. If you answered yes to any of these questions then this above video is for you. Lionheart Mentoring is a program run by youth who are excited to share with other youth the tools that have made them successful. For more info, check out lionheartmentoring.com“
Is your youth stuck at getting his Eagle Scout Award, developing solid personal habits, creating vision, raising money for a dream, or preparing for college/increasing ACT score? Consider getting a Lionheart mentor for your youth. This is a tribe of audacious, honorable youth who are available for public speaking and one-on-one coaching. Please check out lionheartmentoring.com and learn more!
Tree of Life Mothering 