Book of Mormon Marathon

On Friday, March 7th we held a Book of Mormon Marathon.  We started at 3:45pm and ended at midnight.  Our theme was "Lengthen your Stride and Run unto Christ."  Our goal is for every YW and Leader to read the Book of Mormon by Evening in Excellence, held in November.  We wanted to kick off reading the Book of Mormon by having a fun night reading, having special guest appearances, being together and of course yummy food.

Everyone received an invitation, inviting them to this special night.  We knew Friday would be a busy night so asked the girls to come for as long as they could depending on their schedules.  We had girls come and go all night, but had a fantastic turnout.  Amberly Westover took on the whole event as one of her Value Projects and did a tremendous job...

Each YW received a goodie bag filled with a water bottle, snack size candy bars, red pen and pencil, a bookmark for their scriptures, a reading chart and a necklace. The necklace contains two charms and once the YW reads each book they get to add a foot charm. After 5 books they get a number charm with the total number of books read (5, 10, 15 number charms). 

Goodie Bag

Bookmark

Back of Bookmark
with incentives

Reading Chart

We started the evening with our first special guest, Maren Mouritsen (our resident Book of Mormon scholar) talking to the YW about the Book of Mormon and the amazing things they will discover as they read the book.  We then grabbed our blankies and pillows and snuggled in to start reading.  

Every hour we stopped to take a break and have another special guest come and talk to us.  Our guests included:  Return Missionaries, newly called Missionaries and two YW planning on serving missions.  Each testified of the Book of Mormon and bore witness of the truthfulness of the Book.  What an incredible spirit each guest brought to the evening.

We also had special guests come dressed as characters from the Book of Mormon

The Three Nephites (Ethan Coulter, Andrew & Noah Peterson)

Brother of Jared (Bishop Coulter)

We had pizza for dinner and enjoyed a fun popcorn bar for a late night snack.  We finished the evening with Maren coming back to answer any questions we had and talked about what we do now and where do we go from here to get the most out of reading the Book of Mormon.  We all left excited to finish reading.

To keep the girls motivated we have a reading tracker for them to mark off each Sunday and collect feet to add to their necklace.  Also, on the back of their bookmark there are additional incentives.  If they complete the book of Alma by July 23rd they get to have an outdoor movie and pizza party - if they complete 4th Nephi by September we will drive up AF Canyon and have a camp fire and roast marshmallows and if they finish the Book of Mormon by November 1st there will be a surprise celebration.

Finished Necklace

Reading Tracker