"Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites" By Chris Heimerdinger

Morning Glory, We have loved listening to "Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites" while we are driving in the car. It is fun to watch you enjoy it like I did when I was a teenager. Right now we are listening to it for the second time so Dad can hear it too and you are disappointed whenever we walk instead of drive because you want to have the chance to hear the story.

It has brought up some fun learning opportunities. We had a little family discussion about what things in the book are based on fact (like Captain Moroni and his battles with Amalakiah) and theory (like the boys ending up in South America as the site of those ancient battles). I am glad we talked about that topic because it is easy to tell what parts of the story are fiction but when Garth, one of the fictional characters is used as the mouthpiece to state the "facts" from the Book of Mormon, some of the things he says are really opinion and not based on actual truths from the Book of Mormon itself. Without careful evaluation it would bey to "learn" something that isn't true.

The best payoff came this morning when you asked me to come over and guess why you had chosen a particular chapter for your morning scripture study today. You had chosen Alma 51 because you remembered Garth mention that chapter as the reference for the historical events which the boys go back in time to experience. You read the whole chapter and then exclaimed "before we listened to that book I had no idea there was even such a person as Teancum." I was really impressed that you remembered where Garth had mentioned the story was and that you chose to look it up and read it yourself. I love being a Mom!

Thank you for studying scriptures with me! I look forward to it every day. I love you!

Love,
Mom