Happy New Years Eve! Each year on this blog I post a retrospective on the events of the year. Normally I am profiling trips I’ve taken or big events that … Continue reading 2018 Year in Review
Month: December 2018
Christmas RS Lesson
Today I had a wonderful experience. I got to teach Relief Society (Women’s organization at church) for the first time in a long time. I had the choice of any talk from General Conference and I decided on one called Try Try Try by President Eyring. Here is the talk if you would like to read it (I think it would be encouraging to those of any faith).
The main thrust of the talk is about overcoming hard times and never giving up hope. Naturally it being Christmas time I decided to relate the talk to this time of year. I created a powerpoint to walk through the lesson, which I don’t always do but it just felt like the right approach this time.
Then I created slides of important quotes from the talk and questions to ask the class:
Then just for fun I added in some famous quotes from Christmas movies.
I was a little nervous going into it because technology can go very wrong and I am a bit rusty teaching (I was a Sunday school teacher for over 5 years in my late 20s so I was basically a pro!). The RS presidency went above and beyond to help me and were amazing and several of my friends came to listen to my lesson, which was very sweet.
To my relief it all went very well. Everyone made great comments and we had an uplifting discussion. I feel very inspired!
Here is the full powerpoint as a video. Feel free to use it as a family home evening lesson or anything else that might be helpful for you and let me know how it goes.
Merry Christmas!
Rachel’s Holiday Update 1
It’s 3:20am and I should be sleeping but alas I am just not tired so I figured I might as well update my blog. I should have updated it sooner but I have been in over my head with podcasting. Today I literally watched my 50th Christmas movie, both Hallmark and other networks and amazingly enough I am still on board for more holiday films! The Hallmarkies Podcast has been doing great this year with us making the top 120 TV and Film Podcasts on Itunes and getting over 16k listens in the month of November! Wow! I am still blown away by all of that. It has been an insane amount of work but I am so proud of what we have built.
We have a new merch store for the first time which is so much fun! You can get all kinds of holiday and Hallmark inspired gear:
https://www.teepublic.com/user/hallmarkies
I’ve managed to have a little bit of fun doing other things for the holidays including setting up my traditional holiday decor. Each year I have a memory tree that is full of ornaments that symbolize different parts of my life:
My memory ornament to symbolize this year is all about podcasting and I found this adorable headphones ornament! I was so excited!
I also fulfilled my dream of getting a white tree (4 ft) for my office. I love it!
I also have already kind of celebrated Christmas. My brother and 2 nieces came into town for a weekend and so they came to my house and we had a baked potato bar, exchanged gifts and had a great time!
It was a really great time to be together and celebrate Christmas. My parents are going to be gone for most of this month so I’m planning on just working on my podcasts as much as I can and do a few fun things (Thursday I am going to see Christmas Carol at Hale Theater).
The one crazy thing about the podcast is there is always more work to do. There are people to contact for interviews, movies to watch, notes to prepare, the list goes on and on. Never a dull moment! I want to be ready to reach out to sponsorships in the new year and maybe develop a patreon account but I want it to be done right and not just thrown together. I’m very excited to see what the New Year has in store for our podcast and to have survived Countdown to Christmas 2018.
Also we have 2 hour church coming in January which I am over the moon excited about! Yay!
How have you guys been? I hope the beginning of your holiday season has been going great!
Rachel's Musings 