Teaching Primary kids the D&C (a svithe)
because twenty twenty-five ain't that far away
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I was asked to run a teacher training for the Primary teachers today. This is the outline I prepared for our discussion.
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When I was a kid, if you went to Church every Sunday, you got 96 hours of Primary every year.
Kids today get 48.
Two days a year instead of four.
And that impacts what we're able to accomplish in Primary.
The way I see it, Primary has two main purposes. The first is to teach kids about Jesus. Prepare them for baptism and other ordinances, explain the atonement, expound the doctrines. That's what the manual is about. This is important stuff. The most important.
But the other purpose is also important. The other purpose of Primary is to teach kids how to be Latter-day Saints. What it means to be part of this community. How to participate; how to throw in; how to mourn with those who mourn; how to show up and accept a calling; how to serve with our heart, might, mind, and strength—to know how it FEELS to be a Latter-day Saint.
There’s a story about the young Joseph F. Smith I think about a lot. Keep in mind, when he was a kid, his father and uncle were murdered by a mob, and his entire community had been driven across a continent. So he’d seen some stuff.
Joseph F. Smith was 19 when he returned from his mission in Hawaii. As he traveled from California to his home in Utah, he was confronted one morning by a “wagonload of profane drunks … , shooting their guns, yelling wildly, and cursing the Mormons.” One of the drunks, “waving a pistol,” came toward him. Although Joseph “was terrified, he felt it would be unwise and useless to run … , and so he advanced toward the gunman as if he found nothing out of the ordinary in his conduct. ‘Are you a [bleeeep] Mormon?’ the stranger demanded. Mustering all the composure he could, Joseph answered evenly while looking the man straight in the eye, ‘Yes, siree; dyed in the wool; true blue, through and through.’ Almost stunned by this wholly unexpected response, the gunman stopped, dropped his hands to his sides, and, after looking incredulously at Joseph for a moment, said in a subdued tone, ‘Well, you are the [bleeeep] pleasantest man I ever met! Shake. I am glad to see a fellow stand for his convictions.’ So saying, he turned and walked away.”
While the idea of being a “true blue Mormon” has become an internet thing (with all that that implies), what would it look like, in your opinion, for our kids to be “dyed in the wool; true blue, through and through” by the time they enter adulthood?
[discuss]
I read something recently that said “the D&C is often neglected among the Saints as far as serious devotional study goes,” and I have to admit: I felt really accused by that. The D&C itself, the actual scripture, is mostly just a bunch of boring Thus sayeth the Lords. Which I know is a terrible thing to say, but in the Bible and the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price, the revelations are integrated into the stories. You see Jesus climb a mountain and then he gives us doctrine. You watch Alma travel from town to town, giving his variations on a theme, and different peoples react in different ways.
All that is left out of the Doctrine & Covenants. And I think it’s our job, as teachers, to add it back in.
It’s especially important this year because while last year Nephi and Abish and Moroni taught us how to be Christians, the people in this year’s stories will teach us how to be, specifically, Latter-day Saints.
And, as pointed out, we have half as much Primary to accomplish this task. So let’s tell the kids some stories! Emma cleaning the floorboards is just as important as God saying don’t smoking so you can run and not be weary. In fact, they are the same thing.
I have two main recommendations, but we don’t have a lot of time, so I hope they will work more as a place to start. There’s awesome stuff out there.
Both my recommendations come from the Church, which means you can access them for free online. They also both come in handydandy book form which, I mean—who doesn’t like carrying a nice book around? Books are real. Kids see you with a book (he editorialized) they can see what it is. They see you with a phone, well, then Snapchat and Candy Crush look exactly the same as the scriptures, right?
THING NUMBER ONE: Revelations in Context
[summarize]
THING NUMBER TWO: Saints (all the volumes—not just the first)
Like Revelations in Context, the first volume of Saints covers much of what’s happening as the Church is being formed and the Doctrine and Covenants is being built.
But don’t sleep on the rest of the volumes! Just because something didn’t happen in New York or Ohio or Missouri or Illinois doesn’t mean it can’t teach a useful lesson. Here’s a story I read in volume three that I really love:
Elder Wells spoke German well, and Elder Pratt spoke fluent Spanish. But Elder Ballard spoke neither language and seemed overwhelmed by his new surroundings. Everything about Buenos Aires—the language, the warm December air, the stars in the southern sky—was unfamiliar to him.
The missionaries spent their first days in Argentina visiting with the German Saints…. [On] December 12, 1925, they baptized Anna [and] Jacob [Kullick] and the couple’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Herta….
Once the South American Mission was officially open, the missionaries and members worked together to share the gospel with their neighbors. Herta Kullick, who knew Spanish, sometimes shared the gospel with her Spanish-speaking friends at school….
In January 1926, Elder Wells returned home because of ill health, so Herta became responsible for helping Elder Ballard and Elder Pratt communicate with the German Saints. Elder Ballard would prepare a message for the Saints in English, Elder Pratt would translate it into Spanish, and Herta would translate the Spanish into German. It was a complicated—and sometimes very funny—process, but the missionaries were grateful for her help.
During their meetings, the missionaries often presented slideshows using a projector they brought from the United States. Thinking her friends might take an interest, Herta invited them to attend the shows. Soon, nearly a hundred young people—most of them Spanish speakers—were appearing at the Saints’ rented meetinghouse, and the elders organized a Sunday school to teach them.
Parents of the youth, curious about what their children were learning, started meeting with the Saints as well. At one meeting, more than two hundred people crowded the meetinghouse to see slides about the Restoration and hear Elder Pratt teach in their native language.
(Incidentally, there are now 484 wards in Argentina.)
How could this story be used in Primary?
[discuss]
(Before we move on, let me mention that the Church historians have very strict rules in writing Saints. They can’t say a December rain was cold unless that have a letter or journal saying the December rain was actually cold. Also, it’s written at the same difficulty level as popular fiction—and honestly, it’s as fun to read—so really anyone—including kids in senior Primary—can read and enjoy it.)
Finally, surprise, THING NUMBER THREE.
Don’t forget, as you teach the restored gospel, that you yourself are a Latter-day Saint. Stories from your own life—including childhood—are relevant and useful and twice as interesting as stuff from a thousand years ago. What stories do you have about the Word of Wisdom or the Three Degrees of Glory or the sacrament that you can share? Because you do have them. They’re inside you. Somewhere.
The first Come, Follow Me lesson of 2025 suggests this question: What does the phrase “the heavens are open” mean to you?
For our last couple minutes, lets answer that question. And let’s generate some stories from each of our lives that we can share with the kids on our first week with the D&C.
As we head into that, let me just say that I love Church history—I love the men and women and children that started this journey we continue today. And I promise that as we bring their stories—and our stories—to the kids in our classes, they will feel the Spirit as they learn that being a Latter-day Saint is a really cool thing to be. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[discuss]
previous svithe on thusbstack
previous svithe on thutopia
view the full uncropped version of “i will uphold thee” by elspeth c young