Cindy: 0:05

Hi, friends! Welcome back to Primarily Scripture. I am Cindy Young, and I'm so happy you are here with us today. And today we've got special guest Randall. He is 11 years old. He's the president of his Deacon's quorum. That is awesome. And he loves, I wrote it down, soccer and baseball. How are you today, Randall?

Randall: 0:24

Good!

Cindy: 0:25

This week in Come Follow Me, we are reading Alma chapters 32 through 35. And this includes Alma's lesson about faith. About how you have to plant the seed in your heart. So Alma taught the people about faith, and then he also taught them some other things, and then Amulek stood up and started teaching them. And one of the things Amulek started teaching them was about prayer. Do you remember why he needed to teach them about prayer?

Randall: 0:51

Because, um, with prayer, it's one of the only ways you can communicate with God, pretty much.

Cindy: 0:58

Yeah, and the Zoramites at that time had decided that you could only pray if you climbed up a tower, and stood at the top and said the exact prayer that they told you to say. And so then when Alma and Amulek went and taught them, the poor people were like, Oh, they won't let us pray. What can we do? We can't pray! And so Alma and Amulek were teaching them that you actually can pray without climbing a tower.

Randall: 1:23

Yeah.

Cindy: 1:24

So if we look on the worksheet, Alma chapter 34 verses 18 through 27, Amulek gives some instructions about how we should pray. Which of the activities on this sheet did you do?

Randall: 1:36

Um, I did "Same But Different."

Cindy: 1:38

Oh, I love that one. Will you read those instructions and then we can talk about it?

Randall: 1:43

As you study, look for different ways that we can do the same thing. Can you find at least three ways you can pray from these verses? Hint, there's no wrong answer and lots of right answers. Do you do this with a study buddy and compare what you found.

Cindy: 1:57

Awesome. So did you find at least three different ways?

Randall: 2:00

Yeah. So one of them was, I found it inside verse 26 and it says, "But this is not all; you must pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness." Um, so I could see he wasn't actually like using closets but what it was talking about mostly was that sometimes you might need your prayers to be private, and away from other people because it'd be kind of awkward to say it out loud.

Cindy: 2:29

Definitely. I've had prayers like that where it would be a little bit awkward around other people. Okay, so did you call that, like a, a private prayer?

Randall: 2:39

Mm-hmm. I said pray privately, parentheses meaning alone. Why? It helps you focus on your prayers and make them better.

Cindy: 2:49

Yes! Oh, that is a great insight. When you come up with just that little insight of the why, that's exactly the kind of thing that I like to write in the margin of my scriptures. Even though it's on the worksheet, I'm marking it directly in my scriptures, because let's face it, you're going to lose the worksheets, but you're not going to lose your scriptures, okay?

Randall: 3:09

Yeah.

Cindy: 3:09

So mark it in your scriptures, and then I'm going to get a pen, and I'm also going to write in the margin. What did you say?

Randall: 3:18

Pray privately, meaning alone. Why? It helps you focus.

Cindy: 3:23

Okay, so I'm going to write in the margin, praying alone can help you focus. How many words is that?

Randall: 3:31

Um, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Cindy: 3:34

Something short like that is the perfect thing to write in your margins so that you can remember the lesson. Highlighting the verse is great, but writing down the lesson is even better. Okay, what else did you find?

Randall: 3:48

Verse 27. And it says, "Yea... cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of others." So you need to, um, have your heart to be full when you pray. Because you kind of need to be inside your prayer, kind of feeling the spirituality of it when you pray.

Cindy: 4:13

Yes, I love that. Letting your heart be full. Have you ever prayed just in your heart?

Randall: 4:20

Um, yeah. At night, I sometimes, um, I like to pray, um, inside my head. Even though I feel like I should probably stop doing that because it isn't as good as actually saying it out loud. But, that kind of goes against the quiet place thing.

Cindy: 4:36

So there's a time and a place for all these different things, and nobody can tell you what is the exact right way to pray. But if you feel like maybe you should change up your prayers,

then here's a tip: 4:45

pray about it, and see what the Lord thinks. Because the Lord knows what kind of prayer will help you the best, and the Lord can help you with that. Oh, there's one more thing in that verse that I wanted to point out. Do you see the word continually? What does continually mean?

Randall: 5:03

Continually, it means, like, do it over again.

Cindy: 5:07

If something continues, is it stopping?

Randall: 5:10

No.

Cindy: 5:11

So is this saying never stop praying?

Randall: 5:15

Yep.

Cindy: 5:15

Do you ever pray when you're playing soccer?

Randall: 5:18

No, but I do pray before the game that everything will go good.

Cindy: 5:23

Having a prayer continually in your heart is really hard to do because the world is just so busy, right? We've got to eat our breakfast. We've got to go to school. We've got to play the game, do our homework, all these things. So as you practice it, it'll get easier. But having a prayer in your heart as you're playing soccer can be like, Okay, Heavenly Father, help me to be alert. Heavenly Father, help me to be ready. Help me to not hurt anybody. You know, whatever you need to say in the moment.

Randall: 5:52

It can give you like a little, um, piece of the Lord's power and strength,

Cindy: 5:57

Yeah! So we've got continually praying in our hearts. We've got private prayers. And what's another way that we can pray?

Randall: 6:07

So, I got mine in verse 19. It says, "Yea, humble yourselves, and continue in prayer unto him." Um, that means like you need to humbly pray yeah, that it was short but simple, but it really stuck out to me in that verse.

Cindy: 6:21

The short but simple things that really stand out are actually the most important. Do you know why?

Randall: 6:28

Because short and simple things, they could help you, they like give you pointers and kind of like it helps you remember stuff better.

Cindy: 6:36

Yeah, I love the short but simple things. You can remember the message quickly, it's easy, but the most important part of that is that it stands out to you. The Holy Ghost will make things stand out to you that are messages for you. And I think that's really cool. Like, just the fact that it stood out to you means the Spirit is speaking to you!

Randall: 6:59

Yeah, because um, I sometimes can feel those kind of moments.

Cindy: 7:03

I love it. And exactly why the scriptures are here, right? So that we can

Randall: 7:07

yeah,

Cindy: 7:07

find those messages! Awesome! Okay, so we can go through a bunch more stuff here, but let's look at a different activity. First page of the worksheet talks about analogies. Alma taught that faith is like a seed and we can plant it in our hearts. And then as we nourish it, it will grow and our testimonies will grow. So on the front page, it says, make your own analogy. Will you read that activity, make your own analogy?

Randall: 7:32

An analogy, is when you compare an everyday item or activity to something else, and you use that to teach a lesson. Alma did this by comparing the word to a seed. Read Alma chapter 34 verse 32 then think of an analogy that shows the importance of being prepared to meet God before we get to heaven. Share with a study buddy.

Cindy: 7:53

Okay, so I'll read that verse.

Alma 34: 7:54

32 says, "For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors." Okay, this is the time that we need to prepare to meet God. Can we think of an analogy about how being prepared is important?

Randall: 8:16

So I came up with a camping list. When you go camping, you bring tent, chairs, food, and a flashlight normally as kind of the basic stuff. But when you go to heaven, you bring scriptural knowledge, priesthood, prayer, and family relationships, like memories of stuff that on earth.

Cindy: 8:35

That's awesome. So have you ever been camping without any of those supplies?

Randall: 8:40

No, because then it'd be really hard to camp, especially without food.

Cindy: 8:44

Oh, for sure. So one time my family went camping, and we get up into the mountains, and we're all set up. We've got our tents, and we've got our sleeping bags, and we've got a fire going, and we go to make dinner, and we pull out a couple cans, like chili, that we're going to heat up, and we didn't have a can opener. We had cans of chili. We had no can opener. Were we prepared?

Randall: 9:12

No.

Cindy: 9:13

We weren't. So we can think that we're prepared sometimes. We go, oh yeah, it's fine. I'm a good person. I'm ready to go to heaven. But we need ordinances. We need to establish our faith. We, there are things that we need, right? We should always be preparing. And if my family had taken a little more time, we probably would have remembered that can opener. I love that analogy! There are a lot of other analogies that our friends at home might come up with, so I hope you think really hard and think about a time when maybe you weren't prepared, and how that affected you. And then you can take that and apply it to spiritual things, and what are you doing today to prepare yourself to get to heaven?

Randall: 9:53

Mm-hmm.

Cindy: 9:53

Awesome. So good! There's so many things that you can learn in the scriptures. And what I learn might be different from what you learn, and different from what somebody else learns. And the way that you find the lesson that's for you, is by reading it yourself. So I hope all of our friends at home will go open up their scriptures and study. You can find study ideas on the worksheet, but your primary resource, the main thing should be the scriptures. So when you study the gospel, be sure you're studying primarily scripture. Randall, have a fantastic day. I'll see you next time.

Randall: 10:29

Bye!

Cindy: 10:31

Thanks for tuning in to Primarily Scripture with Cindy Young. Don't forget you can subscribe to the newsletter and download free worksheets on the website PrimarilyScripture. com. And if you like the channel, be sure to subscribe, like, share, and leave a review. See you next time!

Randall: 10:49

We have Wilbur - he looks exactly like that cat. First, oh, sorry, And we're all done.