2018 Book of Mormon Challenge

This is what President Nelson shared on his Facebook page today:

My dear sisters, you may remember that during the October general conference, I extended four invitations to you:

1. Participate in a 10-day fast from social media and any other media that bring negative and impure thoughts to your mind.

2. Read the Book of Mormon by the end of 2018.

3. Establish a pattern of regular temple attendance.

4. Participate fully in Relief Society.

I hope that each of these invitations has brought you closer to the Savior. If you have struggled with any of them, please don’t be hard on yourself. You can start today. The Lord is happy with any effort we make to draw closer to Him.

I promise that as you prayerfully study the Book of Mormon, the heavens will open for you. The Lord will bless you with increased inspiration and revelation.

As we begin our home-centered, Church-supported curriculum in 2019, you sisters are a key to the success of this new, balanced, and coordinated gospel-teaching effort. Please teach those whom you love what you are learning from the scriptures. Teach them how to turn to the Savior for His healing and cleansing power when they sin. And teach them how to draw upon His strengthening power every day of their lives.

I am eager to hear about what you have learned as you have focused on these four invitations. I invite you to please leave me a comment below about your experiences.


***

This is my comment which is now lost in a sea of comments. I'll never find it again unless I share it here:

I decided to highlight all the references to Jesus Christ in pink. Even though I'm sure I didn't do a perfect job, there were many references and it was sometimes difficult to disambiguate! I also decided to do the same highlighting plan through reading the entire standard works. I was already reading the Old Testament, so I started this highlighting pattern in Hosea, where I already was.

I had to research who the LORD (Jehovah) is and how we know that it is Jesus Christ. I became very interested in discovering more about how many references to him there are in the Old Testament. I downloaded a tool called Wordcruncher. It allows you to search the scriptures with statistics and computer algorithms. There are over 6,400 references to the LORD in the Old Testament. That's an average of about six per page!

Ezekiel had been really difficult to read and understand, but with this new understanding of who the LORD is, suddenly Hosea became rich and full of meaning.

I also read the book of Mormon aloud in Czech, the language of my ancestors, which I am learning. I did my same highlighting plan there, and will continue to do so through the standard works. I am a much better Czech reader now than I was in September. I frequently noticed different and interesting points from reading it in Czech. It was deeply valuable to me personally.

I also wrote down questions and observations on index cards. There are enough questions that I can answer one/day for the next year. I decided to do so and write my answers on my blog so my friends can read about what I'm learning.

I am very sad that the Czech text of the Bible is not available digitally through the church website or apps. I want a Czech language Bible with all the McKonkie chapter headings and all the same footnotes. When will this finally come? There aren't a lot of Czech speaking latter-day saints, but they would surely treasure this. I would.

What I would treasure even more is to own and read a copy of the same translation of the Bible which my Czech ancestors knew. It is surprisingly difficult to discover which one that is. The best guess of about 20 different native Czechs who I've asked is Bible svatováclavská. I will keep looking.

(I feel like there's no way it'll be possible for you to actually read this comment. I also feel like my comment is nowhere near as heart-wrenchingly moving as the other thousands - and perhaps it will be millions - of comments. It was a deeply valuable experience for me to follow your invitation. It caused me to really feel that there is a place for me in the church. It wasn't something I mentally doubted, but emotionally it can be really difficult to feel that I am allowed to be free to be my nerdy researcher self. This experience showed me that not only is there a place, but there are actually others like me who are passionately interested in searching the scriptures in similar ways to me. I discovered a completely new passion and deep, nerdy interest. I also discovered the field of study I think I want to pursue for my advanced degree someday: corpus linguistics.

There were many other blessings in my family. My children saw me reading the scriptures. There was less contention. My husband and I had many long discussions about the scriptures. He listened to the book as an audio book. I could continue to echo what others have said already, but I'll let you or your assistants get to the next comment. Thank you for this challenge.)