New Month, New Challenge

1 Nephi 1:1 - "I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents ..." 

I like setting goals for myself, as you may have noticed. Most recently, I had a goal to slam down 50,000 words in a novel in a single month. I also have goals to have said novel completely prepared for publication by the end of the month, to finish transcribing the fourth volume of my mission journals before the semester's end, to finish Jackalope by the end of March, and to finish all of my journal transcriptions by the end of July, among others.

I really liked defining this yester-November as the month in which I completed my first NaNoWriMo, and coming into December, life was almost looking pretty bland. As a stroke of genius, however, before yesterday was out, I decided I was going to do a speed read of the Book of Mormon throughout the entire month, starting from the beginning and working to the very end.

Screenshot from the Gospel Library App. I reached the end of 1 Nephi 11 yesterday.

The Book of Mormon's full title is read as, The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

The beginning paragraph of the introduction reads, "The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God's dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains the fulness of the everlasting gospel."

I read the Book of Mormon and the Bible, particularly from the Four Gospels, every day during my personal scripture study. Neither give a complete understanding of Christ's ministry without the other. I know a lot of my readers haven't read the Book of Mormon themselves, but I know for myself that it is God's word, written by prophets contemporary to those any Bible scholar is familiar with.

So, as I complete my own self-imposed Book of Mormon speed read this month, my challenge to the veterans out there is to share your own testimony of this inspired book! And for those of you who haven't read it, I invite you to give it a try! The full text is free online! Right here!

Happy reading! I love you all!