Speaking and teaching

As my concerns about COVID have risen (again), it would be easy to decide to safely avoid church. Instead I keep getting pulled in more, teaching a lesson in Young Women's and giving a talk last Sunday. Those are things I enjoy, and where I hope I can contribute.

Dealing with that has mostly combined the precautions I mentioned last week, like wearing the KN95 masks and not getting too close to anyone. (I do take of the mask while speaking and teaching, but attempting to maintain a six foot distance.) 

Prayer doesn't hurt.

This post, however, will be more about my philosophy of teaching and speaking once I am there.

My primary goal is for people to feel the spirit. If that is present, people will be able to hear what they need, whether I say it or not. Regardless, I do not want to say anything that is not helpful.

One thing that I have accepted is that I can't really write talks. There was a time where I would really struggle; no matter how many thoughts I had, when I tried to put those thoughts onto paper they just wouldn't flow. Eventually, somewhat influenced by Elder Matthew Cowley, I stopped fighting it. 

(I also can't really write out stand up comedy routines, which is somewhat similar, but not exactly.)

I am not necessarily recommending my method to anyone else; it can be pretty stressful. However, I do recommend making the presence of the spirit your primary goal, and maybe some of the steps I do take can be helpful for that.

The first thing that I do is study the material. 

The lesson was Come Follow Me for July 10th: "Why Is It Important to Follow God's Living Prophets?"

I read over what was in the manual, and the related Old Testament selection, 2 Kings 2-7. I read different parts at different times, and more than once. 

Similarly, my talk was on "The Trek Continues!", a talk from Elder M. Russell Ballard at the October 2017 General Conference.

I had about two weeks to prepare for the talk. I did not read his talk every single day of preparation, but I read it at least five times, possibly more. I also remembered some other talks from Elder Ballard that seemed relevant, so I looked those up and read them as well.

(It probably was helpful that I finished teaching the lesson before I was asked to speak.)

Along with the studying, there was also extensive journal writing. For the lesson that primarily occurred the night before the lesson, but for the talk there was a solid week of journal writing on different areas of the talk. This included an initial session where I broke down what things I wanted to write about.

A big part of the journal writing is formulating the hints of thoughts I have into something more cohesive. A bigger part is getting out everything I want to say.

I have lots of thoughts that I think are interesting and relevant. Maybe they are for me, and maybe they would be for some people, but the people who are there at the time should be the priority during that delivery. I might be able to guess, but even if it is a congregation made of up mostly people that I know well (which is not the case), I don't know who will be there that day.

The journal writing is in case I need to express something that does not need to be expressed to those listening.

It can also be helpful for not speaking for 45 minutes when you are supposed to speak for 12.

The journal session the night before the talk brought in the other sessions and how they built on each other to sort out the order they should go in. 

Once speaking, obviously some of the things that I wrote about came up. Many didn't, and that was fine. Memorization is not the only way that memory can be a benefit.

There are some things where I cannot rely on memory.

Some time ago, when I was asked to give a talk in the singles' ward, I was advised to use three scriptures and mention the Savior at least once. That is a rough guideline, but I held to it. Having markers in the scriptures I might need and pulling them up at the time worked.

With the subject being a conference talk, I felt I needed to pull from that. Having the whole talk up there didn't seem helpful either. 

One of the journal sessions was going through all three Ballard talks and pulling quotes, then pulling a Brigham Young quote that I kept thinking of, and also four different scriptures. That came to two pages.

I ended up reading quotes from two of the Ballard talks and one scripture, and I think that was okay. I had more than I needed, but I had what I needed.

I am at peace with what I said. Sure, there are nerves, but a talk can be overwritten. I will never forget when one man's talk - years ago - was him reading a story he had written about a girl who heard Samuel the Lamanite preach, and then was widowed and had a blind son at the time the Savior visited the Americas, and her bonding with a man whose (dead) wife had persecuted the prophets. I will never forget how inappropriate and not-spiritual and how egotistical it was, but also proud he was of his story, that was not an appropriate church talk.

I have a more inspiring story. 

Once when I was helping throw a bridal shower, I interviewed the groom for a game. He told me what he first noticed about his fiancee, but also that it happened during a talk by David A. Bednar, who was visiting our stake conference. He started thinking he should really get married. He looked around, saw her, and asked her out.

Some time later I was visiting teaching at the family history library, and Elder Bednar there that night. He was speaking to the youth about college, as he was still over Ricks College/BYU-Idaho at the time. I ran into him and mentioned that, which I thought he would find interesting. 

He did, but he also did not remember saying anything about marriage. I hadn't remembered that either, but we gave the credit to the spirit. 

Later, I remembered Elder Bednar pointing out that our stake president had spoken in two sessions, and his talks were slightly different in each. He knew that was due to different people needing to hear different things, which Elder Bednar used to stress the importance of listening to local leaders. 

Well, our bishop at the time was urging the men of the singles ward to pursue marriage pretty consistently. I am not sure that it helped that much, honestly, but that time, maybe it did.