Meet a Real Mormon!

The Church has a number of official websites. The one I want to share with you today is primarily meant for church members, so if you want to learn about the church the way we do, this is the place to go. It is a pretty transparent source. Let's take a look around.

Start at LDS.org. This is the front page of the site, and changes periodically to show featured items.

For the moment, look at the top in the dark blue, to the left of the welcome, for a list of links. Hover on Gospel Library and choose Lessons. That takes you here to the Lessons Homepage.

This section contains the actual lesson manuals used by the church currently. Yes, if you visit one of our congregations on Sunday, you'll get one of these actual lessons. Now each teacher, naturally, teaches the lesson his or her own way and there are some "Choose your own lesson" weeks, but essentially, this is what the church really teaches its members from week to week.

Look down the page until you see an orange lesson manual and the word Primary. Click. This takes you to the page for the children's organization, called Primary. The Primary serves children ages 18 months to age 12. Click on any lesson manual and find out what we teach our children.

As an example, click on the orange manual, Primary 1. This is for the littlest children, ages 18 months to turning four by the end of the year. The children who are three going on four are in the Sunbeam class. Younger children are in the Sunbeam nursery. Click on lesson 5, Jesus Christ is the Son of God and read it over.

Now see how we teach a similar lesson to the next oldest group. Go to the Primary 2 Manual, to Jesus Christ is Our Savior. This lesson is taught to children ages 4-8, and is part of a year on the Bible. You can see they get much more information now.

Finally, check the New Testament lessons for the oldest children. Read this lesson: Jesus Christ in Gethsemane. These children spend an entire year just on the New Testament, and they are really digging into the doctrine now!

Go ahead and explore the lesson area to find out what is taught in each of the various classes. No secrets here!