Thursday, January 14, 2010

Wikipedia

Jack was asked to give his first talk as a youth speaker in Sacrament meeting last month. His topic was Jesus Christ's birth. Jack's always been extremely independent, never asking for any help on schoolwork, science fair projects, reports, etc. Everything he does is always his own work without any parental assistance. Sometimes it's a little more obvious than others, like when a poster project is quickly done with sloppy writing on the title and subtitles and the other students have their stuff all typed up nicely and pasted on their poster. The nice thing is that he's always gotten perfect grades and he knows he earned it, not his parents.

Obviously he didn't ask for any ideas or help with his talk or act nervous (completely opposite of me who has an extreme fear of public speaking). I kept waiting for him to start working on it during the week. Nothing happened. Then Saturday night he spent about 5-10 minutes on the computer and announced his talk was done. I asked him what he was speaking on. "The Nativity". Perfect!

On Sunday morning about 15 minutes before he needed to leave to church to start getting the sacrament ready, I asked him if I could read his talk. It was a very different Nativity Story than I'd expected. It was an unbiased, historical, non-Christian view of Christ's birth and life. I asked him what references he had used to write his talk. Wikipedia. I started laughing and panicking a bit. I showed his talk to Gavin who had the perfect solution. He opened up his scriptures to Luke 2 and had Jack read this account of the nativity story. Jack had found his talk. He read Luke 2 and gave his personal testimony of his Savior and it was amazing!

7 comments:

embellish IT! said...

this made me chuckle! i completely understand those independent children as i have them. i have made them that way but sometimes it bites ya!

Vennesa said...

LOL! So glad you read it through first. :) Jacob gave his first talk last month: Prayer.

Emily said...

That is so funny! Good for him for trying... love that!

Kristin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kristin said...

Love it. Piper (at 4) always asks if she can talk in Sacrament meeting. Why don't they realize how scary it is?!

heather said...

V--I'm so glad I read thru it first, too. Almost didn't since I wanted it to be his thing. But it had things like "some people think his life was a myth, etc." I wonder what the reaction would've been if he had just given that talk. He now knows all about www.lds.org and to use that site as a reference and NOT wiki. Love that our boys are old enough to be deacons and youth speakers!

Tausha said...

What a cute kid. Sounds like our Cody.