What is a testimony?

I received this activity idea from a reader and thought it would be fun to share.  Thank you for sharingJenna!

We had a lesson on testimonies, what testimonies are and what they aren't, and I shared with them a summary of the General Conference talk from April 2012 from Elder Donald L. Hallstrom:  "Converted to His Gospel through His Church".  

We played the Left-Right game, and then the girls finished up by writing their testimonies in their journals (which we asked them to bring that evening), or in their Faith in God booklets, or on a separate sheet of paper.  

Here is the Left-Right game that we used (I wrote it myself, based on a Christmas Left-Right game that I found online).  Everyone is free to copy, of course : ).



"Testimony Left-Right Game"

To play the Left-Right game, everyone sits in a circle, and passes the item or items to the person on their left whenever they hear the word LEFT in the story, or to the right when they hear the word RIGHT. When you're doing it at Christmastime it's a fun game for a White Elephant gift exchange, but since we weren't dealing with gifts, I just brought 15 stuffed animals to have fun passing around.  We were in our pajamas that night just for fun (I got that idea off of your blog, as a fun back to school idea), so  thought the stuffed animals would be a fitting addition .  The girls didn't "win" anything, but they had fun passing the different animals around and seeing which one they ended up with.  

One more thing--if the girls ended up by accident with two stuffed animals in their hands because of someone passing wrong, we had them toss one over their shoulder to eliminate it.  It added a few extra laughs.

The leader reads this story for the "passing instructions":

Testimony meeting was almost starting, and Sister RIGHT was late getting into her seat.
Brother RIGHT, Susie RIGHT, and Billy RIGHT were already sitting reverently with their arms folded.
"I can't find my scriptures," Sister RIGHT whispered--I thought we had LEFT them in the car."
"I LEFT them RIGHT by the front door like you asked me to," Brother RIGHT whispered back.
"Oh well, it should be all RIGHT, I can see if there are any LEFT to borrow from the library for my class today."

Just then, the first counselor in the bishopric got up to begin the meeting.
"Our bishop LEFT town for a family emergency so he LEFT me in charge of conducting today.
We will sing our opening hymn, Choose the RIGHT, followed by an opening prayer. 
We will then enjoy sharing testimonies with each other until there are just ten minutes LEFT of the meeting."

Billy RIGHT, Susie RIGHT, and the friend sitting on Susie's LEFT went up to the stand RIGHT after the prayer and bore their testimonies.
Everyone felt the Spirit. As they LEFT for home RIGHT after the meetings, they all agreed they had started their week off just RIGHT.


Jenna Lovell
-Myerstown PA