my oldest will turn 12 soon

and in my church when a boy turns 12, he has the opportunity to be given the aaronic priesthood.  this is a big step for him and we wanted to make sure he understands what this means and what is expected of him.

a friend of mine posted a "12 days of priesthood" on her blog that i thought was a really great idea.  nathan and i had decided to implement the idea of a "gift" each day leading up to his ordination.  we also wanted to focus our family home evening lessons on the priesthood leading up to the big day.

so, a couple of weeks ago we sat down and had a pow-wow just the two of us to discuss what this would include. this is the list we came up with for family home evening topics.  nathan and i will take turns teaching the topics and nathan got us started with, what is the priesthood?  i may or may not post what we did for a few of these fhe lessons.  we'll have to see.

july 8 - what is the priesthood?
july 15 - what are my duties as an aaronic priesthood holder?
july 22 - how does worthiness affect priesthood power?
july 29 - what are the keys of the priesthood?
august 5 - how does the priesthood bless me?
august 12 - how was the priesthood restored?

a lot of these questions were covered in the "come follow me" lesson in june.  you can find the lesson outlines here and here.  these were the topics that we chose, they are by no means all inclusive, but we felt that they covered the basics and would provide jared with a good foundation.

we also decided the we wanted to do our own version of the "12 days of priesthood".  this is what our outline looks like as of right now.

• day 1 - letter from grandpa h.  his testimony of the priesthood and how it has helped him and how he has helped others.
• day 2 - letter from grandpa c.  same as above.
• day 3 - a framed picture for his bedroom of something gospel related.  i am thinking either a picture of his favorite book of mormon prophet or a picture of Christ.
• day 4 - letter from grandma c.  her testimony of the priesthood and how the priesthood has helped her and blessed her.
• day 5 - an inspirational gift.  i am going to give him a "hold to the rod" keyring.  you can see what this is here, but it is a terrible picture.
• day 6 - fhe lesson on how the priesthood was restored.
• day 7 - priesthood line of authority bookmark.  we requested nathan's line from the church 
• day 8 - for the strength of youth book, fulfilling my duty to god book, and true to the faith book.
• day 9 - letter from mom.  my testimony of the priesthood and how the priesthood has helped and blessed me.  plus whatever else i decide to write.
• day 10 - date with dad.  they'll go somewhere great and discuss any questions jared may have and how he's feeling.
• day 11 - a new suit.  (this will be just in time!  the one he has now is getting a little snug.)
• day 12 - today's the day.  his gift today will be his ordination to the aaronic priesthood.

we may do some tweaking as the days get closer, but i tried to take into account weekends and family home evening nights.  i've already given the grandparents a heads up so that they could start thinking about their letters.

see more about our 12 days of priesthood by clicking here.