This section is a little longer because it goes over the discussions, such as they are. They have not exactly been done away with, where you go in with no plan other than to listen to what the Spirit says. Some structure is helpful.
There is still the point of reducing the chance that someone will feel that they should memorize the lessons, always give them in the same order, and in the same way. One thing that I was interested to find is that they give examples of different discussion lengths, so if you have five minutes or fifteen minutes or forty-five minutes, these are different ways of handling it. In that way, just by building in adaptability, it encourages adaptability.
I remember talking once with my mission companion that we would want to give the missionary discussions in a series of Family Home Evenings any time there was a child approaching baptism, because it's important to know the basics, and studying them in this manner helps you fit things together. It's not that you don't cover the material through primary and then mutual and other things, but actually putting the basics together over a short span seemed important.
One other change that I notice is that while the discussions always built upon each other, there is less assumption now that people will have the basics of Christianity and what's in the Bible down. This feels very natural to me. Most of the Lao people were Buddhist, and so we did go over extra material when talking about prophets and scriptures and the Atonement. Fifty years ago, most adults in the United States had probably been through Sunday School with some congregation. Today, that's just not very likely.
And, of course, it builds upon what we have been getting at earlier, that you need to know the material. You need to know how everything fits together, and then adapting is easier. Things come to mind more easily. Questions will be asked that you have already thought of . It's good.
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