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I served in the Costa Rica San Jose mission.

columns and stickers

I have a hard time memorizing things. I can get the gist of an idea but when it comes to specifics, I’m a lost cause.

This was a problem in Costa Rica where formal addresses don’t exist. All addresses were simply directions from a given landmark. 500 Meters east of the bakery, turn left go down until you see an orange house, turn right at the orange house and it’s the first green house you see.

Needless to say I was lost almost always.

But that wasn’t the only problem I had due to my inability to memorize things.

I had a really hard time remembering where things were in the scriptures.

Let’s say we were teaching a lesson to either a member or non-member, if I had a scripture I wanted to share, it was always hard for me to find the scripture on time.

Until I started properly marking my scriptures.

As far as I’m concerned, this is the best way to mark your scriptures.

And I say that with all the authority given to me as a blogger for The Cultural Hall.

Which probably isn’t very much.

So these are my mission scriptures.

columns and stickers

And this is how I marked them up.

Step 1: Create this chart

columns and stickers

I’m sorry that picture is blurry. I literally couldn’t get my camera to focus.

Nonetheless, as you’ll notice I took some small office label stickers and made rows going alongside that black protective cover.

Step 2: Colour and label each sticker accordingly.

columns and stickers

If you look closely, you’ll notice each row of stickers is a different colour. Not only that but each sticker has something scribbled on it.

The colours correspond with specific lessons from Preach My Gospel.

columns and stickers

columns and stickers

columns and stickers

columns and stickers

columns and stickers

 

Each sticker has the name of a different point in each lesson.

Now that you have the chart made, it’s time to move on to the next step.

Step 3: Draw columns on your scriptures.

columns and stickers

As you can see, I took pencil and ran it across the pages as seen above.

The columns are as wide as the stickers in the chart.

Step 4: Mark your scriptures.

columns and stickers

If I found a good scripture that dealt with a specific lesson I marked it in it’s corresponding colour. So if it dealt with the first lesson, I marked it in blue. If it dealt with the second lesson, I marked it in orange. Etc…

Step: 5: Tab the appropriate column.

I had some coloured tabs, each of which matched the could schemes I was already using.

I put the appropriate tab on the page where I marked a scripture. Where I place it on the page was determined by the column and the sticker it was in.

columns and stickers

columns and stickers

Step: 6: Use them.

Now whenever you need to find a scripture you just need to know the topic of the scripture. You then find the appropriate column, look for the appropriate coloured tab and turn to that page and BAM, the scripture is right there ready for you to share in a church lesson, in your personal study or any other time you might need a scripture.

Full Disclosure

I do not claim to have invented this method. For all I know this is all old news.

As you can see, I also have stickers on the top and bottom of the protective page as well. The top stickers are all attributes of Christ. The bottom stickers are the opposites. So I could study love or hate, faith or doubt and obedience or rebellion.

You could obviously choose whatever subjects you wanted to but I feel like Preach My Gospel is a pretty comprehensive list of topics to study.

Now that you’ve seen read this, you too are ready to mark your scriptures in a highly efficient way as well.

I feel like proper scripture marking will create more meaningful discussions about the Gospel and Christ. With methods like this we don’t have to rely on our poor memory to half recite something we think is a scripture. This leads to more spiritual conversations and less poorly articulated paraphrasing.

Now go on and enjoy yourself and mark up your scriptures.

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