Welcome back to Primarily Scripture. I am Cindy Young, and this is week two of my series called The Power of the Pencil, and we are talking about ways to mark your scriptures. Last week we talked about highlighting and underlining and using colors to mark your scriptures. This week we're going to talk about annotating. And if you've never heard that word before, it's about to be your new best friend. To annotate means to write a note or an explanation. Now, this is different than journaling, and we're going to talk about journaling next week, but annotating is even smaller than that. Annotating is a condensed way of journaling, so I want you to think about short phrases or single words. If you go onto my website, you can download this week's free worksheet and it has a bunch of suggestions for how you can annotate your scriptures. So the first thing that has been really helpful to me is labeling or tagging the stories that I read as I go. And what I do is I write in the very top margin of my paper scriptures, what is going on on that page. So in last week's reading, I have written at the top of the pages, the names of the different plagues, or one page says Passover. This helps me to be able to find the stories quickly. If I'm looking for the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, then I can just flip through and find that part of the scriptures very quickly and very easily. This helps me to not only find it, but it also helps me to review the stories in my mind and not forget what I have read. How often have you asked or been asked, what did you study, and the answer is, oh, I forget. Well, this helps to enlarge your memory like we talked about last week, and will help you to be able to remember it a little bit better. And that happens because you're activating even more parts of your brain and body as you interact with the scriptures, but also because it's written down. And so if you don't remember, you can just open it up and flip through and be reminded of these stories. This week we are in Exodus chapters 14 through 18. Where the Israelites cross over the Red Sea on dry ground; we get the story of the Lord giving them manna to eat in the wilderness. And while these stories are very important, they take up relatively a small amount of space in the scriptures, and so writing at the top of your page where that story is, will help you find it and will help you remember. Okay, so the other way that you can annotate is to write notes in your scriptures. I like to find a word or a phrase or a verse, and then I'll write something short in the margin about that. Sometimes it's as small as just the word, Wow! If there's something amazing, God does a miracle, or somebody shows a huge amount of faith, I will just write WOW in the margins. And that's enough for me to feel like I'm interacting with the scriptures, and the next time I read it, I remember that feeling and I can build on it from there. Often principles are taught in the scriptures without naming the principle directly. Someone will act in faith, and it never says the word faith. Or they will have courage, and it never says the word courage. And so if you identify those principles, you can write it in the margin. If you're reading digital scriptures, for instance, in the Gospel library app, then you can still do this. You can create tags or notes. I use notes more for journaling, and then I do one word tags for things like faith, courage, repentance, prayer. And the tags are amazing because then I can go back and click on a tag and it shows me all the verses that I've read and marked about faith, or about prayer, or about courage, and it's a really fantastic tool to use. Now writing short questions is another great way to annotate your scriptures, and you don't always have to write the answer to it. Almost every week on the worksheets, there's a page that has a selection of scriptures, and I have questions written in the margins, things that you can think about. And the reason that I do this is to help you see how helpful it is to have questions and thoughts written in the margins. And if you pay attention to how I mark those verses on those worksheet pages, you'll see that I usually do not highlight the entire verse; I will underline a phrase, and then using the same color that I used to highlight or underline, I will write a question in the margin. I usually leave room for you to write your thoughts next to that question, so that you can experience making annotations and making little notes. Sometimes it's hard to put your thoughts into concrete words. It's a very worthwhile exercise to do- to try to get those thoughts to coalesce into a coherent sentence- you don't always have to write the answer, though. Writing down the question is, all by itself, a way of activating your brain, and you're thinking about those things. For instance, This week, page two of the worksheet covers Exodus chapter 14, and this is when the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea on dry ground. This is such an amazing story and we know this story. But there's so much more to studying the scriptures than just knowing and understanding the story. What else can we find? What other lessons can we learn? So let's look on my worksheet- verse 13 says this, "And Moses said unto the people, fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you today, for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever." And I didn't highlight that entire verse- on the worksheet I only highlighted"fear ye not stand still and see the salvation of the Lord." And besides underlining that phrase, I also circled the words "stand still." The question I wrote in the margin is this, I wrote,"what does this mean to me?" The phrase, stand still is an instruction to us. So what does that mean to you personally? How do you stand still? Does it mean physically coming to a stop? How do we spiritually slow down and still our hearts and our minds so that we can see what the Lord is doing? And why is standing still an important part of seeing God's hand in your own life? Maybe you're like me. I get so busy that sometimes I'm just going from one task to the next and I forget to slow down and take stock of what the Lord is doing in my life. So for me personally, standing still means taking time to pray and taking time to read my scriptures- and to actually look at my life, and look for the times and the ways that the Lord has influenced my life, my family, the people that I love around me. And if I personally don't stand still, then I will often miss it. By underlining and circling together and then writing a question in the margin, it really helps me to see and understand this principle, and I learn it a little bit deeper. I wish I could remember the name of the sister missionary that I had in my home. This was probably two years ago, and we were talking about scripture study, and this sister missionary told me that she loves, loves to have a pencil in her hand while she's studying. I wish I could remember her name, and if you're listening and this was you, go ahead and reach out to me and I will credit you in the show notes. But this sister missionary said, when she started using her pencil, actively using her pencil as she studied the scriptures, her reaction was, "oh my goodness, am I suddenly amazing at scripture study!?" And that is my experience too. It is so true! I definitely feel like having a pencil or a pen in my hand changes my scripture study experience 100%. It absolutely does. Do not discount the power of the pencil when you are studying. It will help you go from passively reading the scriptures to actively engaging and learning and studying from them. And it will turn into this two-way communication, because the scriptures will say something, and then you'll interact by circling, and then you'll pause and you'll think, and you'll write something, and the spirit can speak to you even more. And it just grows from there. Now, like I said, last week, when I first started marking my scriptures, I thought, I'm never going to find enough things to mark for my scriptures to look like some people's do. And the same goes for annotating. You might read an entire page or two and only find one or two places where you feel comfortable annotating- making a note or writing a question. That is okay! That is how we start! Just write anything. Make it your goal to write at least one annotation or note every time you read. There is no wrong way to do it. As long as you are pausing to think and writing down some sort of note, then your scripture study will improve. It's such a simple and effective way to up your scripture study game. The apostles and prophets do this- they write notes in their scriptures. Now, if you don't want to write your notes directly on your scripture pages, Elder Bednar recommended using little sticky notes. I've tried it and I love it. I've also used bookmarks that I can just slip in. You can also buy paper scriptures that are in the large print, and they have bigger margins, which is more room for writing, and you can buy journal editions of the scriptures that have even bigger margins, and sometimes even lines in the margins, so that you can write your thoughts and your notes. All right, so that's it for this week. I hope you'll annotate your scriptures. It can be something as small as a single word, but annotating your scriptures will help you go from reading to studying your scriptures. I'm Cindy Young and I'll see you next week, right back here on Primarily Scripture. Thanks for tuning into primarily Scripture with Cindy Young. Don't forget you can subscribe to the newsletter and download free worksheets on the website, primarily scripture.com. And if you like the channel, be sure to subscribe, like, share, and leave a review. See you next time.