Short Attention Span Sunday School: Primary 5 Lesson 9 Witnesses See the Gold Plates

PRIMARY 5 LESSON 9 WITNESSES SEE THE GOLD PLATES

CLASSROOM PREP

Write on the board:

“Stand as ______ of God at all times and in all things, and in all places”

OPENING ACTIVITY

Show a bowl of jelly beans in different flavors and hand some out to each kid (no one eat them yet).
Can you tell with just your eyes what flavor this candy is?
You can guess but you don’t really know, right? Sometimes we have to experience things or feel things to know for ourselves.
Taste them!

What flavor did you get? Can you bear testimony of it?
Bearing your testimony is telling something you know to be true - you know your jelly bean was ________ so you can now bear testimony of it.

What about with the gospel, how do we come to KNOW, so we can bear testimony?

Just like with the jelly beans you had to experience something, you had to taste it. With the gospel we have a special sense, not taste or sight or hearing, but it's feeling the spirit of the Holy Ghost.

*jelly beans idea from Sugardoodle

LESSON

Who has been baptized? (all raise hands)

What’s the connection between Sacrament meeting and our baptism?

When we take the Sacrament, we first hear the prayers, right? Those prayers remind us of our covenants at baptism → to witness, to always remember Him, to keep his commandments

Let’s read in Mosiah 18:9

Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life—

There’s a word in there that we’re going to talk about today → WITNESS (write “witnesses” in the blank space on the board quote)

What does it mean to be a witness?

Post definition on the board: a statement or other evidence that something is true, a testimony, someone who gives a statement or evidence based on their knowledge, someone who bears a testimony

Were you a witness that your jelly bean had a particular flavor?

Could you write a statement of that knowledge?

So let’s talk about the translating of the plates.

(what follows is my own summary of what's in the manual - you can do you own summary or use this one - it's paraphrasing some of it and it's leaving out some details that I know they will not pay attention to as they are 8)

(there will be drawings for all of the following because my class likes visual aids so i will draw the scenes)

Last time we talked about baptism and the priesthood.

At this point now, Joseph is almost done translating the plates!

Did you know that in all this time with his different scribes, he was still the only one who had SEEN the plates? Remember they’re behind a cloth or in some way hidden as no one else was supposed to see them?

2 Nephi 27:12 says:  Wherefore, at that day when the book shall be delivered unto the man of whom I have spoken, the book shall be hid from the eyes of the world, that the eyes of none shall behold it save it be that three witnesses shall behold it, by the power of God, besides him to whom the book shall be delivered; and they shall testify to the truth of the book and the things therein.

So “the eyes of none shall behold it save it be that three witnesses shall behold it…”

→ what does that mean?

There was one thing the witnesses needed before they saw the plates:

D&C 17:2-3 → It is by your faith that you shall obtain a view of [the plates]...and after that you have obtained faith, and have seen them with your eyes, you shall testify of them, by the power of God.

So now we are going to introduce a new guy: David Whitmer

Joseph Smith has had the plates for 2 years but his translation time was only about 3 months of that

No one else has seen the plates!

He started to worry about their safety in Harmony, Pennsylvania

Oliver wrote to his friend David, who didn’t know Joseph, and asked David to bring them to a different city, Fayette, New York, where they would be safe and could finish.

David was going to do that, but he had to prepare his fields for spring planting. Remember these trips would take a long time since it was by horseback.

He went out in the morning to start plowing, and discovered someone already had done part of it! They did a good job, and left the plow in such a way that they knew work would continue the next day.

At the end of the day, David had done twice as much work as normal for a day!

David’s father, Peter Whitmer Sr, was impressed and thought it was a miracle!

David just had one more farm task left, he needed to add something called plaster to the soil, and went the next day to add that in. But his sister told him that the day before (the day he was plowing), their family had seen 3 men adding the plaster to the soil and doing the work for him! They were strangers. She thought they must have known David, but he didn’t! David immediately knew they were helpers provided by the Lord.

He went to Harmony and met up with Joseph and Oliver.

Joseph was finished translating and learned that three others would be allowed to see the plates.

Martin, Oliver, and David all asked if they could be the ones.

Joseph prayed.

The Lord said they should be humble and then they could.

They went to the woods on a summer day in 1829 to prepare to see the plates.

They knelt in prayer and each took a turn praying. No answer!

A light appeared above them and the angel Moroni appeared. He held the gold plates in his hands and turned the plates one by one so they could see the engravings on them.

They wrote about this in The Testimony of Three Witnesses (find this in the scriptures)

After this, Joseph returned home between 3pm and 4pm and Joseph told his parents, “Father, mother, you do not know how happy I am: the Lord has now caused the plates to be shown to three more besides myself. They will have to bear witness to the truth of what I have said...I feel as if I was relieved of a burden which was almost too heavy for me to bear.”

→ Why would this be such a relief for him?

A few days later. Joseph invited 8 others to view the plates. There wasn’t an angel visitor this time, but they gathered around Joseph and he showed them the plates. They touched them. They also wrote a Testimony of Eight Witnesses.

Joseph Smith Sr, Hyrum Smith, Samuel H Smith, Christian Whitmer, Jacob Whitmer, Peter Whitmer Jr, John Whitmer, and Hiram Page

So how can you be a witness of the Book of Mormon?

Study it, pray to know it’s true, live its teachings, and tell others!

REVIEW GAME: SAY IT OR SPRAY IT

We're going to play a review game and review everything we have learned so far this year

Game is called "Say it or Spray It": I'll ask you a question that you have to get right to "earn" the umbrella when I spray you! (simple spray bottle set to mist so it's a very light amount of water sprayed at their stomach or legs or just in the air near them - not aiming to upset a kid getting sprayed in the face of course!)

You can ask a friend in class if they know it and want to help you.

This game is from my chorister blog - it was a HUGE hit when we played it in Singing Time:

http://humyourfavoritehymn.blogspot.com/2013/02/sing-it-or-spray-it.html

Review questions for the game: (I wrote these up based on what I know they will likely remember and what they should remember going forward - they are only 8 so they may not have retained a lot of the details)

1. What happened after Jesus died? (apostles killed, scriptures changed, many left the church, no more prophets, priesthood keys off the earth)
2. What scripture did he read that told him to ask of God? (James 1:5)
3. Where did Joseph go to pray to know which church is true? (area in the woods later called the Sacred Grove)
4. Who visited him in the Sacred Grove and what did they say? (Heavenly Father and Jesus, no church is true)
5. How many times did the Angel Moroni visit Joseph Smith during that first night? (3 times, then one more time in the field the next day...could also be a correct answer)
6. How many years did he have to wait before actually getting the plates?
7. How did Joseph meet his wife? (he lived with her father, Isaac Hale)
8. Joseph was worried about his safety in Palmyra so he moved to what city in Pennsylvania? (Harmony)
9. Finally after getting the plates, how was he told to treat them? (protect them!)
10. What’s one place Joseph was inspired to hide the plates? (barrel, hollow tree, fireplace, in a loft but hid an empty box under a floor to trick the people looking for them)
11. What language were the plates written in? (reformed Egyptian)
12. Who first helped Joseph Smith translate? (Martin Harris)
13. When Martin Harris took a page of translated characters to a professor, what did that professor say? (they were the most correctly translated reformed Egyptian characters he’d seen)
14. Who was Martin Harris supposed to ONLY show the plates to? (his wife and some family)
15. How many pages were lost? (116)
16. What happened to the plates after Martin Harris lost the 116 pages? (taken back by Angel Moroni)
17. Who was a teacher that lived with Joseph Smith’s parents and heard about Joseph and wanted to meet him? (Oliver Cowdery)
18. Who did Oliver Cowdery ride with on horseback to meet Joseph Smith? (Sam Smith)
19. What heavenly being visited them to restore the Aaronic priesthood? (John the Baptist)
20. What 3 heavenly beings visited them to restore the Melchizedek priesthood? (Peter, James, John)
21. The Priesthood is the _____ of God (power)
22. Name part of the decision-making process we learned about from the Lord (pray, decide what you should do, ask if it’s right)
23. What kind of a feeling will you get when you know you’ve made the right decision? (warm, peaceful, etc.)
24. Name a fruit of the restored gospel (many good answers: baptism, bishops, priesthood, etc.)
25. Who sold part of his farm to help pay for the Book of Mormon? (Martin Harris)

TAKE HOME TREAT