We're Reading the Book of Mormon....Slowly

A few years ago a family in our ward finished reading the Book of Mormon together.  The parents challenged the kids to all get up and share their feelings about the experience in testimony meeting.  We were inspired by their testimonies.  My husband said, we can do this!!!  Thus began our family scripture reading.

I wanted to share what we do for our family scripture reading.  It has been working well for us.  After dinner my husband gets our family's Book of Mormon.  We sing a scripture song to get us in the mood, and say a prayer. Then everyone reads one verse.  If the children are too young to read then we say the words from their verses and they repeat them.  We read 6 verses a night (6 in the family and one baby who can't talk yet).  After we're done reading...and discussing the scriptures my husband writes in our Book of Mormon the date and the names of each person to read each verse.  When we have visitors their names get written in the book too.  It's fun to look back and see where we were last year, and who was reading.

It's been at least 2 years and we just got to Alma.  The mother of the family who inspired us to read the scriptures like this warned us this could take 4 to 5 years.  I've never read the Book of Mormon so slowly and it's wonderful!!!  When you really really slow down you see things you would have missed ordinarily. It's like taking a walk on a road that you've driven on your whole life.  You will notice things you never noticed before.  It also helps that we have to explain every little thing.  Talk about getting down to the nitty gritty!

We just instituted a new policy with our scripture reading.  When Tim gets out the scriptures I get out a tupperware of skittles.  After each scripture, everyone who didn't talk during that verse gets a skittle.  The person who read also gets a skittle.  Our 2-year-old gets a skittle for just staying in her chair, she can talk if she wants to.  (Baby steps to reverence.)  This is working now.  In a few weeks we'll probably have to try something new.  That's the way it is with kids.