The Lesson on Following Counsel of Priesthood Leaders - What I Did

 Aight.  So one of the things I did was a suggestion on the online manual:


Invite the youth to read Ephesians 4:11–14 and Doctrine and Covenants 1:38; 21:4–5; 124:45–46 and answer the following questions: Who are these verses talking about? What is the message? Why is it important?

I tweaked it by handing each pair of students (I have eight kids in my class) a slip of paper with the scripture reference and those three questions written under it.  I gave each pair a pen so they could write the answers to the questions on their slip of paper.  I gave them a few minutes to read the scripture and answer the questions, and then I had each pair present what they learned from their scripture about following the counsel of priesthood leaders.  After each pair presented, I jotted down the main idea on the board.  It ended up looking something like this:

It's Important to Follow the Counsel of Priesthood Leaders

1.  Priesthood leaders strengthen and unify the church.

2.  The Lord speaks to his children through priesthood leaders.

3.  It's important to listen to priesthood leaders with patience and faith.

4.  You are blessed if you listen to the counsel of priesthood leaders.

I wanted to really emphasize that you should listen to priesthood leaders with patience and faith, and I came across this little gem on lds.org - a mini-play based on the story of Naaman.  I knew my lounge-loving teenagers would complain about doing the blocking and moving about that the original play called for, so I cut out the blocking and had them just stay in their chairs (they were grateful.  Heaven forbid that they move around) and read their parts.  One kid got into it (he played the part of Naaman) and he tromped around, emoted, used gesticulations, etc.  It was really cute.  Everyone else was content to lean their chairs back against the walls (Yes, we still have issues with leaning our chairs back) and read their parts.  Here is my cut-down-and-cool-enough-for-teenagers version of the Naaman play:

 

 Sorry; I was out of black ink.  So I had to get creative.

Part of the lesson talks about how priesthood leaders pray to receive inspiration to counsel the people who are under their jurisdiction.  For example, fathers pray to receive inspiration for their families, the prophet prays to receive inspiration for the church, etc.  The lesson suggested the story of when the four sons of Mosiah asked their dad to go on missions.  We were reading a tonnnnnn of scriptures during this lesson, so to break it up a bit, I had them read the comic strip version of the story.  It's found here. 

Here's my copy that I scanned:

Alright, dude, I'm out.  'Night.