Melva Gifford

Thank you for visiting today’s blog. Today’s theme is parroting our Sunday school answers by how we live.

Teaching embellishments is devoted to ways of how we can teach important principals to our students, our family, or maybe even sharing God’s gospel with our friends without preaching. We could do so by example. I hope these lessons can be of use to family devotionals, youth ministries, and family home evenings.

At church today I heard a very interesting comment about the usefulness of expected answers in Sunday school. And of the encouragement for us to live our lives in the same way that we answer the questions we give in Sunday school.

How many of us have experienced the following scenario. We’re in a Sunday school class with fellow adults or teens and the teacher expresses a certain gospel principle that we are familiar with. The teacher asks certain questions and we give the type of answers that are expected. For example, if we were teaching the first commandment of: You shall have no other gods before me, we might be asked what other gods might be in competition to the one true God?

Our stat answers might be
1. Faith in our own intelligence,
2. The pursuit of career or money, or
3. The pursuit of fame, or
4. Having other interests that take more about time.

Each of these can interfere with our pursuit in establishing a strong, personal relationship with Heavenly Father. All of these are answers might be expected to be given in a Sunday school class.

One might wonder how this can be useful to a student. Here are some ideas. When parents teach their kids arithmetic, they may first teach by repetition and memorization. The child learns that 2+2 = 4. As the child begins to mature we might give them little toys or pictures on an iPad where they may drag-and-drop icons that represent 2+2 = 4. As a learned the first principles of math, they can then learn additional concepts. They can start developing their logic and deductive skills to determine that 2+2 = 4. As they mature further, they gain more developed knowledge by moving up to 2×3 = 6. And so a progression of knowledge and experience gives children the ability to grow in their knowledge.

So it is in Sunday school that we learn the important principles of God’s gospel, such as faith, obedience, repentance, etc. We may have learned these principles in our youth, if we have gone to church throughout our lives. We learn by repetition that is then embellished by our personal experiences. We observe how faith has become a part of our lives through our deductive abilities of cause and effect. We see a few personal experiences that our faith in God can be rewarded by observations of seeing his influence in our daily lives.

Often the simple lessons need to be learned through repetition, because often the basic principles of the gospel have the strongest effect in all aspects of our lives. On top of old knowledge, we learn new aspects of some principles, year after year.

Even our perceptions blossom by observation of cause and effect.

As we become more mature in our knowledge of the gospel. We might touch upon principles that are more complex. Because we have gained a testimony that we can trust God’s word, we find that we can use similar principles of trust and faith in concepts that are new to us. In the us. We combine old knowledge with new knowledge to increase our familiarity with all of God’s principles.

If you would like to give some feedback of how you have found how Sunday school has helped you in your life and your growth with your relationship of God, please feel free to share it. Fellow teachers, what techniques do you use to make known well-established principles of the gospel come across in a new and fun way to your students. So they don’t disengage from hearing the same or same OS Sunday school?

I had a positive experience while acting as a judge for a story telling competition at Thunder Ridge Elementary in Saratoga Springs.

I had an adventurous time finding the place. My GPS unit couldn’t find it. I had hoped we would have good roads this morning. No such luck. On the way to the school, there was an accident so I had to get of the highway and find an alternative way. Bob’s instructions were good, but I kept overshooting the places I was supposed to turn. The roads were so slippery that my breaks wouldn’t work well and I couldn’t stop in time to make a necessary turn so that took time as well. I didn’t get at the proper place until about 9:20 instead of 9:00. geesh. They started at 9:30 so I’m glad I wasn’t any later.

There were sure a lot of greet tellers. Two nearly got perfect scores in my opinion. The other judge, Teresa, is a BYU professor. She seemed to like the same ones I did. We had been asked to be prepared to give advice on story telling to the contestants. I realized that what I had prepared was geared more for adults. The advice I gave instead was much more simplified.

It was a nice experience. In future I need to learn to give more comments at the bottom of the judging forms. The other judge did very well on providing written feedback in addition to our grading different criteria with points. My comments were a little more sparse in comparison. I think it is neat that the schools encourage story telling. They gave me a $20 book gift certificate. Hummm maybe I should start up reading… ha ha.

Before you can USe something, its ALways good to first see it in PERson.
In PERson, ALways see it, before USe it = PerUsAl

Okay, that’s a stretch. Let’s try this.

Want to see what beautiful landscape for sale in the country of Peru?
SalPeru or PeruSal

Okay, I’ll stop now. Memorizing is probably the great idea but it’s those misarranged letters that nab me every time. Maybe we’ll see if one of these visual images can help.

If you have idea on how to remember this word, please feel free to share it.

Today’s topic for my blog of Tasks, Errands and Projects Oh My, I’m going to discuss the topic of storytelling. What I feel is a list of good criteria when presenting a story on stage in front of a live audience.

This Friday, I’m going to be a judge for storytelling contest for Thunder Ridge elementary. I’m looking forward to this opportunity. Before I review their judging criteria for what makes a good story. I thought I would provide a list of what I personally look for when determining a quality story. Afterwards, I will provide some links to other people’s ideas of what they look for when judging storytelling. I hope this information will be of interest and use to you.

My criteria for good storytelling:

– Is the idea original or is it an old idea with a new twist?
– Does the story contain content that the audience can take away for later reflection?
– Can I sense passion behind the story?
– Does the story teller establish a rapport with their audience by eye contact or initiate any interaction?
– Is the presentation given clearly and without mess ups?
– Does the character in the story undergo a change from beginning to end?
– How does the teller express voice, tone, body language and stage presence in the story?
– Does the teller successfully moderate their story according to the responses of the audience with speed of speech, pauses for dramatic affect and improvising when inspired?
– Does the story initiate a mood of suspense, humor or some other prevalent emotion throughout the story?
– Does your story match your target audience?
– If multiple characters are introduced in the story is there distinct actions or voices for those characters?

Here are some other recommendations about story telling and judging story telling:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_criteria_for_judging_in_a_storytelling
http://www.uowdubai.ac.ae/competition/documents/Wollongong_Cup_Traditional_Storytelling_Judging_Criteria_08.pdf?PHPSESSID=5f32c6389a506950c19e6efd531e640f
http://www.storyarts.info/Rules%20and%20Application%2013.pdf
http://www.windsoressexhomeschooling.org/speech-rules/storytelling-judging.pdf
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/19665293/STORY-TELLING-CONTEST-_Individua
http://www.mshsaa.org/resources/pdf/Storytelling%20Ballot.pdf
http://ebookbrowse.com/wollongong-cup-original-storytelling-judging-criteria-08-pdf-d323489712
http://www.bcfineartscenter.org/art-tell/art-tell-storytelling-2011
http://www.kystory.org/progs-and-activs/youth-forms-dir/Judging%20Guidelines%202008.pdf
http://www.storyarts.org/classroom/usestories/storyrubric.html
http://www.nafsa.org/_/file/_/storytelling.pdf
http://www.uiltexas.org/files/constitution/uil-ccr-section-1474.pdf
http://massmouth.ning.com/forum/topics/story-slam-rules-pr-what-is
http://mystatefilmfestival.com.au/Portals/_default/Skins/MSSFF/documents/JudgingCriteria.pdf

As you can think about your favorite storytellers, or you are a storyteller, what do you feel are some of your criteria in determining if the story was successfully presented? Please feel free to give your recommendations in the comment section of the blog. If you have a sample of your own storytelling on your blog or website please feel free to provide a link. It’s always great to promote the talents of another person. Thank you.

I hope today’s lesson can be of use to youth ministries, family devotionals, family counselors, and family home evenings. Please feel free to use any of these entries in any way that would help promote the caliber of your family unit.

For my teaching embellishments blog, I’m always excited to reference the ideas and talents of other people. There was a wonderful image that was used at church this week of how the use of a ladder can be compared to a man cannot serve two masters. When one is painting and doing construction work on a house, a ladder is leaned against a particular wall to get access to where you need to work. A ladder can be placed against the left wall or the right wall and be functional. It cannot be leaned against both walls simultaneously.

Just like a ladder needs to have one purpose, so we as individuals need to have only one master that being God or Satan. Our choice of who leads us is illustrated by our word choice and our actions in our associations.

The steps of a ladder could be compared to our levels of progression of living their lives.

There are many people that have a favorite sports team. It’s obvious where their passion lies. You can sometimes see it by their attire, their conversation and their participation. They will know the members of the favorite team and their stats. They will know important points of history of that team’s career. So we as individuals who endeavored to live Christian lives would talk the talk and walk the walk. That is, if we are sincere in our efforts and if we are not just a once-a-week Christian.

Our choice of how we live our lives is a very popular theme in church or in our efforts to repair a relationship. Please feel free to share some ideas of how you think someone could more successfully live a moral life.

It was another great LTUE symposium. Got some good taping of panels done. LTUE is going to try to make some things available on the internet and YouTube. I always make a big writing decision every time I go to one of these. A friend had a cancellation on her Banquet dinner Sat night so I had the chance to attend.

Tracy Hickman was the MC and he did a wonderful short speech about the significant of Science Fiction and Fantasy on our society.

Here are some wonderful quotes:

No book lives until it is read.
**
It doesn’t matter if you’re published; it matters if you’re read.
**
The only constant is change.
**
The reader is the author’s portion in meaningful experience.

My batteries are recharged. I’ve typed up two thirds of my notes I took during the symposium. Email me if you want a copy.

I just came up with an idea of how I might remember how to spell this word. Why not use the meaning of the word to help us determine how to spell it? To me, variety means a selection of different options. Please observe, this word has three different vowels. Nothing repeats. We have an A, I, and E. This is a variety of vowels: vArIEty We’ll see if this helps.

If you have a better idea on how to spell this word, please feel free to share it. Thank you.

I’m always looking for topic to make a list from them. I heard on the radio that it was national transplant day. I thought I’d provide some links that gives more information about transplants. I’m the recipient of a kidney. Several years ago, my life was changed by the generosity of someone else. A man who had put on his driver’ s license “donor” and as a result, when he lost his life. I got one of his kidneys.

But before I go down the path of my personal experience, I’d like to give you some links for additional reading and then I’ll provide my personal feelings at the end of this entry.

Fun facts about organ donation:
http://organdonor.gov/whydonate/facts.html
http://health.discovery.com/convergence/giftoflife/facts/facts.html
http://organdonor.gov/index.html

The process of organ donation:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/161751-what-is-the-process-of-organ-donation/
http://donatelife.net/understanding-donation/organ-donation/
http://organdonor.gov/about/organdonationprocess.html

Transplants for kids:
http://transplantsforchildren.org/tourforchildren/Transplants_for_Children/Transplants_for_Children.html
http://www.massgeneral.org/children/services/treatmentprograms.aspx?id=1630
http://rwjms.umdnj.edu/boggscenter/products/documents/TransplantPampletFINAL6-11.pdf
Now for a personal note:

I started down the path of kidney failure about a decade ago. I was put on dialysis for 18 months and I fared better than many. Many people with kidney failure, feel cruddy. I felt okay and only found out about my condition through a doctor. My condition was monitored for several years until my numbers dropped to the level that required me to go on dialysis. Compared to many people. I’m not much of a TV watcher, so I found sitting in a dialysis room for several hours, three times a week, to be quite boring. Even though the nurses told me not to jerk when they would put the needles into my arms, I had a hard time complying.

Because the kidneys are not working, patients are encouraged to not drink. There are several foods that patients are prohibited from having. Two of my favorite foods are tomatoes and milk. They had a lot of potassium.

Do you remember those CD holders that can hold 100 CDs in one container? Since I couldn’t drink much water, I started the habit of eating ice during dialysis. My reasoning was that since they drain out excess liquid from my body while cleaning my blood. I could eat ice. Sometimes if too much liquid was taken away from my body during a session. My legs would go into terrible Charley horses. I have a low threshold for pain and even though the aides would press against my feet to try to help combat the Charley horses, it wasn’t enough. So I would stand up next to my bed trying to take care of them and end up passing out.

I would regain consciousness with several people surrounding me with concerned expressions on their faces.

I was on dialysis for 18 months before I had the opportunity to get a kidney. I almost didn’t get it. There are usually three people that are given the option to have a kidney because they are the closest match for that specific kidney. If the first person on the list doesn’t respond, then as I understand it, the kidney goes to the next person.

The call came to my home on Sunday, but I wasn’t home. Two friends and I had gone to the LDS conference center to attend regional conference. Even though I had my cell phone with me, it was turned off. After the conference meeting my friends and I had a nice leisurely lunch. I finally got home in the afternoon, only to find out the several hours were spent trying to contact me. My roommate told them she know how to contact me, and so she couldn’t help. Once I knew about the kidney, my sister and I rushed up to the hospital in Salt Lake.

It was so exciting to think that I was getting a kidney. I looked forward to not having to take dialysis. God bless the family of the man who put down the name donor.

In the hospital, I decide to give my new body part a name. I call my kidney, Henry. I told the nurses and they were quite amused by this. Apparently they told another patient and so they named their kidney, Henry II. It is my private hope that the tradition has continued clear up to Henry VIII.

The major humor of this event was of friends putting up a big sign welcome home, Henry in the front of my house. I’m single. Think of all the people in my my neighborhood, seeing that sign. Some of them may have wondered if I was getting married. It’s a great sign. I still have it.

I invite all readers to this blog to please put donor on your driver’ s license. It’s amazing the number of lives that one person can influence not just during our lives, but also perhaps in our death.