I recently started an college program called Pathway. It's kind of a "jumpstart to college" program through BYU-Idaho. Sometimes my assignments call for me to make posts on a public blog where it would be OK to discuss religious topics. Since this is my blog, this is certainly an OK place to discuss religious topics. So here I am.

We'll start with some background. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or a Mormon. I was raised in a family that attended the Mormon church and am grateful for the foundation in Christ and His teachings that this has given me. My family has been through some ups and downs to say the least and I am currently the only member of my immediate family (other than my mom) who still goes to church. My wonderful husband was raised in the Mormon faith and shares my strong testimony that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Christ's church on the earth today.

As part of the Pathway program I am taking two classes. A General Studies class and a religion class that focuses on Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is a book of scripture that compliments the Bible. If you would like to learn more about the Book of Mormon you can visit Mormon.org or click on this link. Each week, I meet with other students in my area to discuss what we learn online each week. We take turns leading the meetings and learning from each other. Today my post will be about my Religion Class.

This week we read 1 Nephi 15-22 and our student leader went a little bit rogue in his teaching methods. He brought in a object lesson that was not outlined in the options for discussion in the teaching material, but I guess that keeps things interesting. He brought in kefir, which is a powerful probiotic that you can grow at home. He specifically grows water Kefir. Here's a link with similar information to what he taught us.  After he taught us a little bit about kefir he asked us to compare kefir to aspects of the gospel and the gathering of Israel that we had read about this week. Here are some of the things we discussed.

1) You must feed kefir specific things one of them being pure water. We noted that it's important to put only pure things in our lives.

2) You must feed kefir the correct things for it to grow. Similarly, we must feed ourselves the correct things spiritually (learning through scriptures, prayer, modern day revelation etc.) in order to grow.

3) If you feed kefir correctly it will grow so abundantly that there will no longer be room in the original container for all your kefir and you will need to either throw some of the excess away or share it with others, so they can grow their own kefir. The same is true with us. If we feed ourselves spiritually our faith will grow, so that eventually we will have an excess that we can share with others. We can either let that excess go to waste or bless others by sharing it.

While the lesson deviated from the typical lesson plan it was neat to learn in a different way. I appreciated our student leader's creativity and passion for teaching and sharing what he knew. He also gave out twelve kefir grain starts to those that wanted them (see the scattering of the twelve tribes of Israel). Here is a picture of my new kefir grains. We'll see if I keep them alive!