As I began my 9th grade school year I was excited to get started and be in the oldest grade in my middle school. I was excited for the classes that I had enrolled in and the prospect of leaving to go to the High Scool the following school year. I took classes like honors Math and English and was chosen to be a member of the top choir group and played city league basketball. I got my class schedule a few weeks before the first day of school and I saw a class on the schedule that I don’t remember choosing. The class was called “Release Time.” I thought about the title and then I realized that I had reached the age where I was able to go to the little church-like building that was next to my school. I was a new Seminary student.
I live in Utah, and unlike many other high schools across the county, I got to leave the confines of my middle school for a class period each day to pray, study the scriptures, and listen to Lessons from amazing seminary teachers. LDS youth from other states typically get up very early to go to seminary and then go to school, I counted myself lucky.
I remember the fist day in seminary when we started class and the teacher asked for a volunteer to say the opening prayer, all my classmates looked around the room waiting for someone to volunteer. It was strange to sit in a room with kids you had grown up with but had never been in a gospel setting with them before , it was a little awkward at first but The first day was an anomaly. Each day was filled with testimony, gospel topics, and fun activities with our teacher.
One on the most memorable activities of seminary was when we learned the Scriptures by memorization using scripture mastery cards. Each year we would memorize 20 or so Scriptures. One of the Scriptures was from the Book of Mormon in 1 Nephi 19:23:
“And I did read many things unto them which were written in the books of Moses; but that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer I did read unto them that which was written by the prophet Isaiah; for I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning.”
As we memorized the verse our teacher taught what Nephi was saying to us. He taught that even in his day, Nephi had a hard time understanding the words of Isaiah even though he had lived in Jerusalem and participated in the customs and traditions of the Jews. What Nephi is saying is that we need to read the scriptures and liken them to us. Liken means to think like people in the scriptures and put ourselves in their situation to see what they chose to do and how they thought and then applied what we learned to our day.
Times have sure changed since the day I walked into the seminary building for the first timep. Gone are the scriptures printed on paper (even though scriptures are still actually printed on paper but is not the day’s preferred medium).
I have changed from “flip and liken” to “swipe and liken” where I open the gospel library app, tap on general conference and do some random swiping up and down and with my eyes closed I select a year then swipe up and down with eyes closed again to select a talk from that conference.
Because of this exercise I have been able to get to know some of the lesser known general authorities and have enjoyed listening to their perspectives and testimonies. I do excited when I randomly select talks from Gordon B. Hinckley, Jeffry R Holland, and Richard G Scott. This activity has inspired me to listen to all talks from all conferences that were video taped and available in the gospel library. After a couple of years of this I am still listening to talks from 1980!