Book of Mormon Marathon

Our family visited grandparents the first weekend of January.

That's my excuse for not knowing about our bishop's "Book of Mormon Iron Man" earlier. By the time I learned that he'd challenged every ward member to read the entire Book of Mormon before spring general conference, I figured we'd lost too much daylight to make it happen.

Oh, maybe I could swing it as an adult if I buckled down and hurried. But my four kids (ranging in age from 7 - 14)? No way. Did I start my personal Book of Mormon Iron Man? Hate to say it, but, um, no.

Mid-February, my husband had an idea that was both shocking and totally amazing:

What if the family had a Book of Mormon read-a-thon over President's Day weekend?

My gut reaction was, Wow. Neat idea, followed quickly by a mental snort, Yeah, right, and finally, Hey, why not? We should totally try it!

So we did.

The kids jumped on board right away. The only person in the family who wouldn't read the entire 531 pages would be our first grader. She'd get to read the illustrated version and count that.

We sat around the dinner table and discussed what food to have around the house . . . because Mom wouldn't be stopping to cook regular meals . . . and fun snack food is, well, fun for something like this.

We went shopping for the big weekend. We bought a take-home pizza to bake for Sunday dinner. We cleared our schedules as best we could.

Friday night after dinner, we began. That would be just a brief taste of what was to come: about two hours of straight reading before bed.

The next day, Saturday, we started bright and early after an easy breakfast. You could find the six of us scattered throughout the house: my son draped across this couch, a daughter curled on a bed, my husband in his home office. All of us reading sacred scripture. A few scheduling things we couldn't clear got in the way of making a solid day of it, but we made good progress.

Sunday, aside from going to church, we did pretty much nothing but read. (I think the older kids might have even sneaked in some chapters during sacrament meeting). By the end of the day, we weren't quite as far as we needed to be, but we'd made a lot of progress.

Monday was the last day of our long weekend. All of us (except for the first grader, who was beating us with her illustrated version) had almost half of the book left.

Could we all finish in just one more day?

I don't know that most of us even bothered getting dressed; we read and read and read. But somewhere around 9:00 pm, everyone was DONE.

Cheering and celebration followed. The sense of accomplishment on each of my children's faces was priceless.

I personally learned a lot through the experience, finding connections and having themes jump out at me in a way they never had before, because I was reading the entire thing so quickly and could make the connection between what I read yesterday to what I was reading now.

We discussed the marathon with the entire family. My husband expressed a similar experience to mine: he noticed many things he hadn't before, largely because he covered so much material in such a short space.

The kids obtained a fantastic overview of the people and history of the Book of Mormon. One said that reading it so fast was almost like reading a novel; she finally "got" the story and understood often-quoted scriptures better because now she had a context they fit into.

Every Sunday between the marathon and general conference, the bishopric member conducting sacrament meeting reminded the ward where they should be in the Book of Mormon if they were to finish the "Iron Man" in time. Every week, my kids grinned because they were already done.

A few tips for doing your own Book of Mormon marathon:

• Carve out a large chunk of time. Three days plus two hours on Friday was cutting it close. If we could have started even a couple of extra hours earlier (have an entire half day Friday), we wouldn't have been squeezed for time at the end.
• Meals and snacks. It was amazing how much more we could get done when food was at our fingertips. Blood sugar drops, and sometimes all we needed just a bowl of grapes or a cookie to keep going.
• Schedule a few breaks. Time them so you can get back to work, and decide in advance what you'll do during them. For example, one break on Saturday consisted of the family playing Dance, Dance Revolution together, which got our blood pumping, took our minds off tiny text, and was additional bonding time. Sunday we took a break to eat dinner (pizza baked in the oven). We ate that meal together and talked about our reading.
• To help keep your mind from wandering, consider listening to the Book of Mormon while you read. This does take longer, because most people can read quite a bit faster than a book is read aloud, but it's a great way to keep your mind connected to what you're reading for hours and hours.
• An additional benefit to listening and reading: Two family members said that this method helped them retain more as well. Hearing and reading simultaneously cemented the passages in their mind better than either alone.
• Note that you can speed up the MP3 recording. At one point, we had some family members listening to it at nearly 2X speed. That sounds fast at first, but you get used to it. It's still quite a bit slower than you can read silently but speeding it up makes for a quicker read than the regular voice, and it's still understandable.
• To make the event feel more like a family activity, do what we did: read 1 Nephi 1 and Moroni 10 aloud together, making sure every single person gets a chance to read a few verses. That let us officially start and end the Book of Mormon as a family.

Our Book of Mormon marathon was an amazing, bonding, and testimony-building experience for our entire family.

And get this:

The kids loved our Book of Mormon marathon so much that they want to make the marathon an annual event.

Just a sneaking suspicion, but I'm thinking we just landed on a new family tradition.

Mission Possible: Family Scripture Study

We’ve all been there—we’ve heard the weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the War in Heaven. It’s daily family scripture study.

Trying to get the family together to study scriptures—and have it become something other than a verbal wrestling match—sometimes feels like an Olympic event, surpassed in difficulty perhaps only by weekly Family Home Evening.

While there are no perfect solutions, below are ten tips you can use to make family scripture time a more uniting, positive experience.

1-Adapt the time and place according to the changing needs of your family.
It’s easy to get into a rut, thinking that 6:30 am is the only time to get in the scripture reading. (Granted, it might be.) But try to find other opportunities as well. It’s not uncommon for a family’s schedule to change from year to year, so be flexible and adapt.

If early mornings used to work but don't anymore, try dinner time (even if you’re not all gathered together 7 nights a week—even 3 or 4 nights counts). What about right after nighttime family prayer? For years I read scriptures to the kids immediately before cracking open the nightly storybook.

2-Listen to audio scriptures together.
In today’s high-tech society, we have more options for immersing ourselves in the scriptures than ever before. You can now download the scriptures from the Church website onto you MP3 player and listen to them in the car as you drive the kids around to their activities. You can also purchase audio scriptures on CD, but that can is much more expensive.

3-Pause for questions and discussions.
Beware of the “we’ve got to finish the chapter” trap, or you might miss out on poignant questions and the opportunity for sacred discussions. It’s helpful even with older children to take a break mid-chapter and recap what is happening, who is speaking, or what doctrinal concept is being taught and what it means.

Reading this way does use more time. But it’s all right if reading the entire Book of Mormon takes you three years, verse by verse. The point isn’t how quickly you get through it, but that your family learns, grows, and feels the Spirit along the way.

4-Use the Gospel Art Picture Kit
Young children especially are visual learners, and they thrive of seeing images of scripture stories they’ve heard. Help them to learn better by pulling out selections from the picture kit and reading the condensed story written on the back. For slightly older children, have everyone look up the scripture references listed and read them aloud.

This is particularly helpful in learning scripture stories from parts of the Standard Works that aren’t read quite as often and therefore aren’t as familiar to children, such as those from the Old Testament.

5-Take advantage of Seminary and Institute materials.
These lesson manuals created by the Church are excellent, with lots of background and clarifying information, commentary, and glimpses into cultural and other contextual details that help students of all ages understand the scriptures.

Going through one of these manuals as a family can be a great support for current or future seminary students, and provide wonderful Family Home Evening material as well.

6-Take turns reading.
It’s easy for one parent to do all the reading aloud. It’s quicker that way, right? But it’s important for all family members to be connected to the scriptures, to feel as if they are also part of the experience. Even small children can sensed the Spirit as they “read” with help.

Some families rotate around a circle reading one verse at a time, while others do a set number of verses before trading readers. In this case, a preschooler may still do only verse or so while someone else prompts them with the words.

7-Make connections.
To help family members have a big-picture view of the scriptures, it’s helpful to map out time lines, major historical figures, and events as you read and connect them to other scriptures you’ve already covered. For example, finding the places where the Book of Mormon intersects with the Bible, or track the battles in Alma, the relationships between prophets, or major groups of people within the Book of Mormon, like Zeniff’s people and the Ammonites and how they connect with the Nephites and Lamanites.

8-Use in-scripture resources.
Remember all the resources located in the back of the scriptures, such as pictures, maps, the Bible Dictionary, Joseph Smith Translation, and Topical Guide.

For example, the maps can help you keep track of Christ’s travels through the Holy Land during his lifetime, putting the Gospels into context. Using the Bible Dictionary and triple combination Index can refresh your memory and clarify people, events, and principles, including obscure cultural references that you might be unsure of, like various Jewish feats listed in the Bible, that make more sense when they’re explained.

9-Get everyone their own set of scriptures.
Even if your family has a tradition of buying a nice set of scriptures on a special day such as a baptism, it’s worth getting an inexpensive set that younger children can hold and consider their own, even if they can’t read yet. Personal ownership creates a feeling of responsibility and specialness associated with scripture study.

10-Don’t force it.
When contention breaks out (and it will at times), don’t panic. Let everyone cool off. Forcing the family to finish a chapter tonight—or else—will only breed further unrest. Instead, pause for the day. But most importantly, always be sure to come back tomorrow. Make regular scripture reading a family habit, and you’ll all reap the rewards.



When counseling the Saints the read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year in August of 2005, President Hinckley made a promise that applies as much to family scripture study as it did to his challenge:

“regardless of how many times you previously may have read the Book of Mormon, there will come into your lives and into your homes an added measure of the Spirit of the Lord, a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to His commandments, and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God.” (“A Testimony Vibrant and True,” Ensign, Aug 2005, 2–6.)