This song! I learned to play it decades ago as a teen. It’s given me comfort all these years. It’s “He is Not Here: For He is Risen” by Steven Kapp Perry. Watch the video below to hear it and then get the sheet music here.
If you want more Easter music, check out my page here with links to Easter hymns and Easter songs published in the magazines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, since 1971. Happy Easter!
I learned about this new Easter tradition from Emily Belle Freeman. It’s the Immanuel Wreath. She does it for both Christmas and Easter. You can go here on my blog to read about it for Christmas.
You can use it as an advent for Christmas or Easter. Every night you read one of the cards, starting with card 1. Each card has a section from The Living Christ proclamation, with three names of Christ, used in the text of the proclamation. You light a candle and talk about how you see Christ in your life in that role, for example, as “Creator,” “Messiah,” or “Jehovah.”
It’s totally OK if you missed counting down on Palm Sunday. Just start soon and double up on a few days. The Easter Police will not get you. 🙂
You can get the free download of the names of Christ for Easter that Emily created over here.
I don’t have the official Immanuel Wreath yet, so I came up with this easy DIY version. Here are my super-easy instructions:
Every day, read one of the cards, including the names of Christ for that day. Talk about how Christ shows up in your lives with those names. Then light the candle, plus any from the day(s) before, and bask in the light of Christ. Read aloud a story or two relating from Easter, that you can find from the Easter section of my Celestial Family Devotionals ebook, over here. You can get the complete Devotionals ebook for free over here.
Come join me for Paola Brown’s Homeopathy Book Club for Moms! This is for aspiring Dr. Moms everywhere!
In this book club we read and discuss the first ever storybook about homeopathy, called Evie and the Secret of Small Things, written by Paola Brown.
Here’s why it’s so cool:
-it’s for newbies to homeopathy, laying a sound foundation to learn about this completely reliable and amazing system of medicine
-it’s also for not so newbies, who want to clarify understanding of things like the law of similars, provings, using a materia medica, how to take a case, and how to use a repertory
-you learn what potency and dosing can look like for an acute case
-you learn how we need to avoid bias when taking a case
-you learn about the history of homeopathy with Samuel Hahnemann as you delve deeper into the dangers of suppressing disease.
–you also learn to think about various treatments found in conventional medicine
-you learn what sources are used for homeopathy remedies
-you get to watch interviews Paola did with the director of pharmacy at Boiron
-you will learn how to find a homeopath for your family and best practices to use
-dive into terrain theory, and learn who was right? Bechamp or Pasteur?
-you learn how to make a health and illness timeline for each member of your family
-you get to practice taking lots of cases to boost your confidence for doing it in real life
-you learn the key notes for 19 remedies each used for acute cases: Allium cepa, Nat mur, Arnica montana, Rhus tox, Bryonia alba, and Silicea, Symphytum, Ledum, Apis, Arsenicum, and Nux vomica, Cantharis, Causticum, and Urtica urens, Hypericum, Staphysagria, Belladonna, Carbo veg, Aconitum napellus
-the Online Book Club Area includes over 45 custom made or curated videos tailored to the Book Club to help you and your friends make the most of the material.
For all your dedication and hard work in completing this 8-week Book Club Program, and to support your journey of growing homeopathy knowledge, Paola is so pleased to provide you with an amazing, special digital gift. It provides you access to digital copies of several forgotten (yet truly wonderful) homeopathy books, a coupon book for homeopathy related products from several of the best homeopathy stores, access to continuing education resources from some of Paola’s favorite homeopaths, and additional printables and infographics. This is indeed a small treasure chest of value that Paola and I know you will enjoy!
Logistics of Class:
-8 weeks
-Tuesday nights, starts 6/1 and ends 7/20, 7:00 to 9:00 MDT, online
-over Zoom, so no need to pay a babysitter… put the kids in front of a screen and come in your PJs with some treats!
-tuition fee is $50, $30 early bird price if you register by Friday, May 20, midnight. Pay by Venmo to @Celestia-Shumway or PayPal, using info@treeoflifemothering.com. If needing to pay an alternate way, please send an email to: info (at) treeoflifemothering (dot) com.
-at least $89 materials fee, which you order here. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and order the following pictured below (these prices are the discount prices which occurs when you buy at least 2 items):
Evie and the Secret of the Small Things, for $53
and the Book Club Handbook, for $36
Those materials are required for the class. If you want to invest in something extra, but so lovely and infinitely handy for your family’s health life, I suggest you get the beautiful hardcover Family Homeopathy Journal. It’s $59. Again, order all the materials here.
Easter is less than two weeks away!
I’ll be sharing some links to songs and stories relating to Easter as we get closer to the holiday. These songs and stories are all curated in the April section of my Celestial Family Devotionals, which you can find here for free. Use these songs and stories for your family devotional every morning or night, for Family Home Evening, or just the songs when you want to gather round the piano and sing.
Today’s song is “The Miracle” by Shawna Belt Edwards. You can watch the video below and sing along with your family. If you want to play it on the piano, go here.
Last week I shared a Book of Mormon version of Wits and Wagers. Today, I’m sharing a General Conference version, in honor of General Conference being held tomorrow and Sunday. If you don’t know what General Conference is, go here to learn more and then watch this weekend at that same link.
If you don’t know how to play Wits and Wagers, please go read my blog from last week to watch the video there to get a grasp of how the game works. You don’t have to have the official store-bought game to play, you can improvise with paper or mini-whiteboards and coins for the meeples. As I mentioned over there, it’s a great game for everyone because you don’t have to be good at remembering facts, you just have to be good at knowing who is the best person at knowing the answer. So it’s great for a big group.
Here are the General Conference-themed questions. Remember, all the answers have to be in the form of a number.
When was the first General Conference held? 1830
How many people were in attendance at the first General Conference? 27
How many seats are in the Conference Center? 21,000
What year was it announced in General Conference that Mondays nights were to be reserved for Family Home Evening? 1970
In what year did President Joseph F. Smith announce in General Conference (GC) that he had had a vision regarding the redemption of the dead? 1918
What section of the Doctrine of Covenants contains this vision of the dead that Joseph F. Smith had? 138
In what year did Elder Boyd K. Packer announce in GC a revision of the title of The Book of Mormon to be The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ? 1982 (If you want to learn more about that go here.)
In what year did President Thomas S. Monson announce in GC a lowering of the age requirements for missionary service? 2012
In what year did President Gordon B. Hinckley announce in General Conference that the Nauvoo temple would be rebuilt? 1999
In what year did Elder Quentin L. Cook announce in GC that the standard block of church meetings on Sunday would change from 3 hours to 2? 2018
(The source of the above numbers is here.)
How many times has General Conference been held in Provo? 3, in 1886 and 1887
How many times has General Conference been held in St. George? 1, in 1877
When was the first radio broadcast of General Conference? 1924
What was the first year that General Conference was broadcast on TV? 1949
What was the first year that General Conference was livestreamed on the internet? 2009
(The source of the above numbers is this infographic here.)
As of 2013, from how many countries do people tune in to listen to General Conference? 197
As of 2013, how many languages is General Conference translated into? 94
AS of 2013, how many households from North America tune in to see General Conference? 495,000
(The source of the above numbers is here.)
Happy General Conference weekend everyone! If you want more ideas related to General Conference, go here.
To celebrate the Book of Mormon’s birthday today, I came up with some questions to play a Book of Mormon version of the Wits and Wagers Family game.
Wits and Wagers is a great trivia game because it doesn’t matter if you know the answer or not. Everyone can have fun with it even if they don’t remember trivia.You just have to be good at knowing who most likely would know the answer and vote for their answer. You can still win if you aren’t great at remembering facts and figures. I highly recommend the game, it’s so fun!
If you have this game already, great! Just use the questions and answers below. If you don’t have the game, you can read the rules here and improvise with some tokens for the big and little meeples, and paper to make a game board and answer boards, until you get the real game. (Keep an eye out for this game at thrift stores, it’s definitely a keeper.) Write these questions and answers below on index cards or just pieces of paper with the answer on the back. When you read the question, cover the answer on the back so no one sees it.
I sometimes play this game on Sunday with my family and use gospel-based questions to make it a more Sabbath Day appropriate game. You can take turns using a smartphone or laptop to come up with questions about the gospel and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that involve numbers. Today I’m focusing on questions about the Book of Mormon that involve numbers in the answers.
Use these questions as a starting point, then do your own research to find more number-based questions. Again, all the questions have to be answered with a number. If you need more help knowing how to play watch the video below. By watching it you can see that you could theoretically play with just post-it notes or small pieces of paper. It is nice to have miniature white boards but you don’t have to have them to play. You could keep score on a regular piece of paper instead of a board and use coins or small tokens for the meeples. A bigger coin like a quarter could be the big meeple and a dime or penny could be the small meeple. You just might want to label them with colored paper taped on top to keep track of whose is whose.
How many names for Jesus Christ are mentioned in the Book of Mormon? 117
How often is Jesus Christ mentioned in the Book of Mormon, on average, every ____ verses? 1.7
How many questions are asked in the Book of Mormon? 543 (https://www.ldsliving.com/by-the-numbers-questions-in-the-book-of-mormon/s/74716)
How many questions does Jesus ask in the Book of Mormon? 35 (https://www.ldsliving.com/by-the-numbers-questions-in-the-book-of-mormon/s/74716)
How much did the first edition of the Book of Mormon cost? $1.75
What year was the Book of Mormon first published? 1830 (March 26)
How many languages has the Book of Mormon been published in? 115 (as of May 2021)
At least how many copies of the Book of Mormon are in print? 150 million, as of April 2011 (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/book-of-mormon-reaches-150-million-copies?lang=eng)
How many copies were published in the first edition? 5000
How much did it cost to publish the first edition? $3000
How many months did it take to publish the first edition? 23 months
How many men worked at the printing press to get the first edition out? 12 men
How many hours a day did the men work? 11
How many days a week did the men work? 6
(These numbers come from the video shown above from Lynne Hilton Wilson)
How many words did Jesus Christ speak to the Nephites after he was resurrected, in his visit recorded in 3 Nephi? 12,021 (from the infographic linked below)
How many men, women, and children touched the living Christ in 3 Nephi? 2500
If you’d like some resources to get yourself started with writing some number-based questions, here are some resources:
-Ten Little-known Facts About the Book of Mormon
-this infographic from bookofmormoncentral.org (you may have to enlarge it to read it)
–By the Numbers, Questions in the Book of Mormon
Happy Book of Mormon Day!
If you’d like to share some stories about how the Book of Mormon has changed people’s lives, please go here, and get more from the March section of my Celestial Family Devotionals ebook found here for free.
If you’d like a copy of the Book of Mormon, go here.
Happy Birthday to the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ! It was on this day, 192 years ago that it was published. I’ve been sharing stories about this marvelous book, which you can read over here. In 8 years we celebrate 200 years!
By reading and living the truths taught in this book, a person can come closer to God than any other book. That’s what Joseph Smith wrote in the introduction to the book (sixth paragraph). That’s because this book is all about Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is The Way to God, because He is the Only Begotten Son of God the Father.
Did you know that the book has over 100 titles for Jesus Christ? You can watch a video about that here.
Did you know that by reading this book, over 200 pages in, a woman addicted to smoking lost her desire to smoke? It’s true! It’s a story told by President Gordon B. Hinckley, and you can read it here.
Did you know a copy of the Book of Mormon survived a house fire? Books all around it burned to ashes, and yet this sacred book did not burn. Read about that here.
Did you know that a minister of a Christian church found a copy of the book, with its cover and title page torn off, on a pile of ashes in an alleyway in NYC, read from it, and then taught the truths of the book mixed with the Four Gospels, to his congregation? You can watch a video about that here, and get the link to read the full story in the man’s own words.
Did you know that John Welch, the star of my blog post yesterday, has found more amazing literary forms and attributes about the Book of Mormon that give credence to believing it was not invented by Joseph Smith, but that it really is of ancient origin? You can read about that here.
Did you know that a king said that the Book of Mormon is so precious to him that it is worth more than diamonds and rubies? Watch the video above or read the talk here.
Here are ten truths I have learned from the Book of Mormon. I wrote this in response to President Nelson’s invitation in the video above to list what the Book of Mormon is, what it is not, what it affirms, what it refutes.
What the Book of Mormon affirms:
What amazing treasures of truth! I will be updating this list as I find more! I love the Book of Mormon! My friend Joyce calls reading from it the best beauty treatment! It makes your spirit and your countenance more beautiful as you immerse yourself in it. Here are some treasures that President Nelson quoted President Monson as saying we will have from diving into the Book of Mormon, as published in the January 2020 Friend:
I know these promises are real! I have experienced them coming true in my own life. I testify that the words of the Book of Mormon are true. You might like watching this video below about people who were shown words from the Book of Mormon without knowing the source. I blogged all about that here.
If you want more stories about the Book of Mormon, please go to the “March” section of my Celestial Family Devotionals ebook, found here for free.
Tomorrow is the birthday of the Book of Mormon! March 26th! I’ve been counting down the days by sharing stories, you can read them over here.
One evidence of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon is that it uses chiasmus, an ancient Hebraic literary pattern. John/Jack Welch discovered it as a 20 year-old missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while serving in Germany. (If someone can tell me why Jack is a nickname for John, be my guest :-), I’d love to know, once and for all! It’s truly one of life’s great imponderables.)
Watch the short version of the story of the discovery, as told by John’s son Greg below. As a missionary, John learned about chiasmus in the Bible during lectures at a Catholic University on his preparation day. Then he discovered chiasmus by himself on August 16, 1967. God led him to discover it by waking him up at 4 AM that morning, by putting these words in his mind through the Holy Spirit: “If it is evidence of Hebrew style in the New Testament, it’s evidence of Hebrew style in the Book of Mormon.”
He opened up his copy of the Book of Mormon in German. He saw this page below, in Mosiah 5, with the same word repeated in a stack. Thus led him to see other repeated words, in chiastic style. Eureka! He’s been writing and talking about this ever since.
The longer story is told by John/Jack himself below.
I have blogged about this before over here, where I have the above videos plus two more, including a speech given by John at the 50th anniversary celebration of his discovery.
John also wrote an interesting article about other literary evidences of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon here in an article called, “A Book You Can Respect.” Joseph Smith did not invent the book, he translated it from an ancient language.
As John says in the article:
“In a word, I have never seen the Book of Mormon to be found wanting. The book has raised many questions in the minds of some readers, to be sure. But I find myself continually rewarded—not disappointed—by the answers to which these questions lead. Finding such answers leads to conviction, and being convinced leads to respect. With the coming of respect, the way is sometimes cleared for testimony.
“I know that it is important to develop and to help others develop respect for the Book of Mormon. It is God’s word, and the people who possess it will be judged by it. It is holy scripture given for profitable doctrine, reproof, and instruction in righteousness. It would be ideal if all could accept a copy of the Book of Mormon without suspicion and then, upon humble prayer, receive the witness of the Holy Ghost that it is true, but in these less than ideal circumstances, it is good that the book itself is so abundantly respectable.”
I’m counting down the days to the birthday of the Book of Mormon, on Sat. March 26. Did you know that Elder D. Todd Christofferson gave a speech telling the back story of the book, at the Library of Congress? Watch it below.
The Book of Mormon came forth the way Joseph Smith said it did. It is a true book, the most correct book on earth, as Joseph said. I paraphrase the words of Clayton Christensen, by saying, I urge you to read from the Book of Mormon every day. Everyone can spare at least 5 minutes a day to read it. Doing so with an honest heart will bring you peace, joy, and comfort, and closer to God, like no other book will do. It is another testament of Jesus Christ. As Elder Christofferson says in the speech above, it refers to Jesus Christ more than 4000 times with more than 100 titles.
The following verse comes from the Book of Mormon:
“And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.”
2 Nephi 25:26
If you would like stories about the power of the Book of Mormon, go here to see some I’ve shared here on my blog.
If you’d like even more stories, go to the “March” section of stories in my Celestial Family Devotionals ebook, found for free here.
If you’d like a free copy of the Book of Mormon, go here.
The Book of Mormon’s birthday is this Saturday March 26! To celebrate its birthday, I’m sharing stories about its truthfulness. I’ve shared some stories over here, and today I’m sharing two stories that relate to each other.
The first story is called “One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure” by Andrej Bozhenov. He served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in St. Petersburg Russia. After working to find people and teach the gospel on a hot summer day, he and his companion returned home. Imagine their surprise when they got a phone call the next day from someone they had never met. The person on the other end asked if they wanted their book returned. Someone had found the copy of the Book of Mormon they had given to someone else the day before. They had written their testimonies on the inside cover with their contact information. That someone was a man named Ilya. Ilya told them words every missionary wants to hear, “I would like to learn more about this book and your church,” he said. “May I meet with you?” They gladly taught Ilya, then Ilya decided to get baptized.
The day before, the missionaries had given the copy of the Book of Mormon to an elderly man, who then discarded it to the ground. Ilya found it and was ready to receive its truth. As the author of the story says, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
It reminds me of the true story that was turned into a short movie, “How Rare a Possession.” The main character, Vincenzo di Francesca, found a copy of the Book of Mormon without a cover or a title page, on top of a barrel full of ashes, in an alleyway in NYC. As a minister in a Christian church, he eagerly digested the words in the Book of Mormon without knowing the name of the book.
He decided to pray to know if this book came from God. This is the answer he got:
“I felt my body become cold as the wind from the sea. Then my heart began to palpitate, and a feeling of gladness, as of finding something precious and extraordinary, bore consolation to my soul and left me with a joy that human language cannot find words to describe. I had received the assurance that God had answered my prayer and that the book was of greatest benefit to me and to all who would listen to its words.” (from “I Will Not Burn the Book!” found here.)
He taught his congregation from it, mixing its words with the words of the four gospels. Eventually, he found the Church and was baptized. Watch it below and read the full story here. It’s so wonderful!
Tree of Life Mothering 