Latter-day Village Square

What???!!!  For real?  Shoes for latter-day saints?  ABSOLUTELY!

We got word that Zazzle had added a new product to their assortment of custom printable offerings - KEDS SHOES!!!!  They actually PRINT our designs on the canvas, then cut out the shoe and assemble it!  You know KEDS are quality shoes.

I couldn’t wait to design some LDS shoes!

Are these not the cutest CTR KEDS shoes????  I am so excited to offer the first LDS shoes on the market!  Kids can make a statement on the playground and be reminded who they are, every step of the day!

I have created this shoe in three size ranges -

• Toddler
• Youth
• Ladies

The shoes are quite customizable too!  You can change the binding colors, the shoelace colors, the rivet colors, and you can add your own custom text - put your name on your shoe!

I have also done a darling YW Motto shoe with the artwork of Lori Nawyn.

Come take a look at all our LDS SHOES!

Grettle Payne, one of our long-time seminary authors, recently discovered a hidden treasure in a storage unit she was cleaning out.  Some time ago we converted most of Grettle’s out of print seminary scripture mastery titles to PDF eBook format; those downloads have been selling very well. What she found was several hundred copies of her books, some even that she was sure were all sold out.

We are now offering two of those books as an exclusive sell out; hard copies of these two volumes are now available until they run out.

Scripture Mastery for Everyone, New Testament Print Edition regular $13.00, now only $10.00, save: 23% off until supplies are gone.

Scripture Mastery for Everyone, Old Testament Print Edition regular $13.00  now only $10.00, save: 23% off until supplies are gone.

We will continue to sell the download versions of these books; they are cheaper and have no shipping charges, but for those who prefer hard copy versions, now is your chance. Order now while we still have these in stock!

Like the seeds in the parable, some of the things we have tried at LDV have worked fabulously, and some have fallen by the wayside and shriveled up and blown away.  I put a lot of time into setting up a Zazzle storefront and adding products to it.  So I was thrilled when the first orders started coming in.  I admit it, I like to check orders and see how they are coming, and see who is ordering what.  I started to notice a name repeating again and again.  This was pretty exciting because it meant someone had ordered, received and liked their Zazzle purchases enough that they came back again and again to order new items.

I contacted this customer and asked for some feedback about her shopping experience.  Here is what she said:

I am a seminary teacher and always looking for new and creative ways, that the kids haven’t already seen or heard, to get excited about seminary and their religion. You might remember the old stripling warriors (mama’s boys), Nephi, Moroni, David and Goliath posters, well by the time I came around and started teaching, many of the kids had had siblings that already had these posters or tee shirts. I was so excited to see something fresh and new and with lots of color come out. On the Zazzle t-shirts take the time to read what is said about sizing. Most of my girls like their shirts a little on the “baggy” side and with a little length. I think the shirts are great. There are SOOO Many selections of T-shirts to get. The Bella costs more but I personally like the fit. These make great seminary bucks gifts, the mugs I have personalized with each of the kids names on them.

I think our youth out in the mission field (so to speak) want ways to express their religion and are proud of it. Many (I see them out with their shirts) would take the SM verse in Romans 1:16 to heart. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

LDV- keep up the good work and know that there are many like me that love what you do. Thank you.

~Angelle W. in Colorado

Angelle is not the only repeat customer in our Zazzle Store, so I am thinking that this seed fell on good ground and I hope to nourish it by steadily adding new great designs!

Just having a Zazzle store is a way of letting our light shine, since it is not an LDS website, lots of other people see our high quality LDS products that reflect our values and beliefs.

~Debra

I just added a number of new products to our Zazzle store that I wanted to tell you about.  I had to create a couple new categories for these products:

• LDS Greeting Cards
• LDS Postage Stamps
• Added several products to our Home Decor Posters category
• Added several products to our Accessories category

Recently, Zazzle increased the percentage we can earn for referring people from LDV to our Zazzle store, or to any other products sold on the Zazzle website.  This has made the whole Zazzle system more attractive to us.  The more we sell, the higher the percentage we earn.  Pretty simple marketing technique.  So for the first time, I decided to browse the Zazzle website for other products I thought our visitors might be interested in, it now being worth the time it takes to create a new product if we can generate some sales.  I did a search for LDS products.  There were 34 pages of products with probably 10-15 items on each page.

I have to admit, most of them were not that great.  T-shirts with silly phrases and no added images.  I figure anyone can design their own custom t-shirt with whatever message they want.  They weren’t very professional or clever and I wasn’t going to bother with them.  But I did find some items I liked and thought you might like as well.  So I have put them in our store.

• LDS Postage Stamps - these are so cool!  They are actual USPS Postage Stamps with custom images on them.  The ones I found had beautiful photographs of temples.  These are great for wedding announcements!  These designs have to be pre-approved by Zazzle according to some rather strict guidelines by the USPS.  They come in sheets of 20 in three different sizes.
• LDS Greeting Cards - I found several different photographers who had a variety of nice cards, including beautiful temple photos.  These are high quality greeting cards that come with an envelope.  You can add your own personal message inside.  These are sold separately or you can save by purchasing in quantity.
• LDS Temple Posters - There were more, but I chose the ones I liked the best.  These are really beautiful and high quality posters.  With Zazzle, you can select the size and the type of material you want it printed on, and you can, if you desire, usually add your own text.
• Young Women Values Totebags - I found a set of very fun canvas totebags with a big fun image and YW Value on each one.  I thought the designs were cute and would be appealing to YW and their leaders.

Warning - Zazzle is a big public company that has certain standards of non-discrimination they both must and choose to abide by.  What this means is that on the one hand, they cannot allow inflammatory, discriminatory products to be sold, but on the other hand, they cannot discriminate themselves against any vendor who may have differing political, social, religious, gender etc views.

They enforce this not by pre-approving all their products - they do this by randomly reviewing products and by answering complaints that may be sent to them.  I found an anti-mormon vendor with products that were clearly anti - not just pro something I disagreed with.  I reported the vendor and the products and explained why they were discriminatory against latter-day saints.  Zazzle has removed those products from their site.

You have to understand that many valuable services that are available to one group, are also available to another group.  The same printing company may print political campaign posters for two opposing candidates, for rival businesses, and so on and so forth.  A bookstore may sell both pro-life and pro-choice books.  It is called freedom of the press, and though sometimes that means people with very different views than mine have a public platform to express themselves, if I remember right, our constitution protects their right to do so, as do our 13 Articles of Faith.

A visitor to LDV recently filed a trouble ticket with us stating that they were about to purchase one of our beautiful New Testament posters from our Zazzle store until they discovered some offensive products sold by Zazzle.  I did a quick search and found a vendor selling anti-mormon products, wrote to Zazzle who has since removed those products.  But I cannot ask them to, nor would they be bound to remove other products that may offend but are not strictly discriminatory.  I hope you understand the difference.

Zazzle offers a service that we have been looking for, at prices that are better than most places, and we are happy to be able to now offer many more of our designs on a wide variety of products than ever before, thanks to Zazzle’s custom / print on demand service.

If you see something that is clearly discriminating against your religion, you can inform Zazzle.  But you have as much right to find and purchase products that please you as any other consumer.  So I hope you will.  And wholesome products will become top sellers, rather than impossible to find.

~ Debra

The September Seasonal Collection is now available in the Club!
http://latter-dayvillage.com/pages/VDDClub.htm

This month we are featuring a quaint Thanksgiving Collection by Nicole Whitehead, along with a fun wheat character set that Nicole designed.

The extra project is a fun Scarecrow Quick Page by Alvina Kwong.

The Club Sampler free clip of the month is a ready-to-print Acorn Fun Thank You card by Serene Heiner.

http://latter-dayvillage.com/pages/ClubSampler/index.html

I hope you enjoy these fun designs!

Debra

I wanted to let you know that the September VT Bookmark is now in the Sampler Knowledgebase This bookmark features images of the Houston Temple and one of the statues from the Nauvoo Women’s Monument along with a quote from Russel M. Nelson that I particularly liked. Please feel free to share this with all your RS sisters.

Online information about the annual General Relief Society Meeting this month can be found at lds.org

Don’t forget that our Relief Society Lesson Handouts for the second half of the year are available in our store for instant download. We have gotten some wonderful comments from those who have been using them to
supplement their lessons.

A fun little gift for visiting teachers or those you teach is our Visiting Teaching Magnet, now available in our store.

If you have had successful events or created useful resources for RS that you would be willing to share, please send me an email with the details and attach any documents you have, and I will upload them to the KB for everyone to enjoy.

Thanks,
Debra Woods Hamilton

There are so many great themes this year for New Testament study in Seminary!  We’ve had product lines for two great NT themes for over a month, and now we have added a new one!

“LET YOUR LIGHT SO SHINE” from Matthew 5:16 is one of my favorite scripture references and happens to be one of the Seminary Scripture Mastery Verses this year!

I tried my hand at designing a logo for this theme.  I wanted to use a lighthouse, but I also included a number of other “light” symbols.  You can see stars in the black night sky, and there are sun icons as well as two eyes in the borders of the image.  I also used arrows because the light points the way we should go.  I wanted to depict the contrast between darkness and light in the design, so I used a black sky.

Once when I was teaching the Primary song “I Am Like a Star” I had a neat discussion with the children.  I turned off the lights and turned on a flashlight that had a star cutout on the end.  I asked them why they could see the little flashlight glowing, and they said it was because it was dark.  I reminded them that we only see stars at night because it is so dark.  Even a little star shines bright in that black sky.  We sang the song and I asked them to listen for what it was that helped us shine like a star.  The words go like this:

I am like a star shining brightly
Shining for the whole world to see
I can do and say happy things each day
For I know Heav’nly Father loves me.

The reason we can shine like a star is because we know Heavenly Father loves us.  In this world of darkness, we shine like stars because of that special knowledge.  Those who do not have that knowledge can see the light shining from us and are attracted to it.  We can share that light with others by helping them learn that they too are children of God, and beloved by Heavenly Father.

I had that in mind the whole time I was designing this logo.  Also, I am an actress, and by nature, I have no problem expressing myself in public - but sometimes I’ve been accused of being a show off or big mouth (that was way back when I was a kid, but I still remember and feel self-conscious about it) so this scripture always brought me a sense of vindication and relief that expressing myself wasn’t such a bad thing.  I’ve taught drama classes for kids many times, and directed a number of children’s shows and youth plays.  I love getting to the end - the big performance - and watching the children who initially were shy and afraid shining like stars on that stage.  It tickles me to no end when one of my most resistant students ends up stealing a scene once they understand how great it is to hear the audience responding to them.  I’ve seen many a little life turn around from such an experience, and I love it!

I don’t know what it is about letting your light shine that makes it glow all the brighter - but perhaps it is like the parable - if someone had a candle and put it under a bushel, it would eventually go out, wouldn’t it - for lack of oxygen?  When you remove the bushel, and let it shine for all those around, the flame will actually increase, won’t it, when it gets that exposure to fresh air?  Yes, it surely seems to me that when we let our light shine it gets brighter - from my experience with performing, and also with sharing testimony.  As we share our testimony, it grows.

So there is a super metaphor in this scripture/theme.  But it didn’t stop there.  I also looked up “light” in the online scriptures - narrowing it to the New Testament.  There were MANY references and they were all interesting and powerful.  Of course the Savior is the “light of the world!”  to mention just one.

I created several products with this logo so far:

• Poster
• T-shirt
• Mug
• Totebag
• Keychain
  
• Sticker

SEE ALSO OUR OTHER NT THEME PRODUCTS

• Armor of God
• Fishers of Men

I recently read an interesting blog post about BYU football (I am kinda nuts about football, mostly college football, primarily BYU or Wyoming football [OK I confess, I also cheer for anyone playing the U of U]). But at least I immediately recognized the article as having an application for seminary teachers. The writer, Dick Harmon, sports columnist for the Deseret News, is a longtime friend of mine, from when we both lived in the same Orem, UT ward. We both had very young families, were very interested in sports (he professionally) and so we hit if off as friends. I later wrote a weekly college football prognostication column for the Provo Daily Herald where Dick was the sports editor. I used a home-written computer program to predict college football games and spent many Saturday nights in the Herald office watching the college football statistics come across the sports wire. I also did some stringing for the Herald, covering high school basketball games in Utah County. But I digress.

As I read Dick’s blog about BYU football coach Bronco Mendenhall and his use of memory techniques (found here http://deseretnews.com/blogs/monthly/1,5553,19,00.html?bD=20080809&sc=dmn),

I could not help but think how the same principles applied to teaching seminary.

Dick had noted behavioral scientist Paul Gustavson comment on Coach Mendenhall’s technique for impressing principles on the minds of his football players. He wrote;

“Dick,

Research indicates that the three strongest facilitators of long term memory are:

1. Emotional experiences (e.g. running to the top of the Y and then Bronco talking about goals. Like the first year he said that the view from the top is different from the view from the bottom. Being in LaVell Edward stadium watching the last 12 home victories etc., many that you have written about)
2. Music The use of music is powerful. Many of our children learn their alphabet by singing the ABC song. At Bronco’s fireside the team sings the Sons of Helaman song (I know that it goes by another name) the Haka is a war chant (type of song).
3. A metaphor is the third strongest facilitator of long term memory. Christ taught in parables and all parables are metaphors. Bronco uses lots of metaphors such as being flag bearers and the flag with everyone’s signature on it.
   

I believe that this coin and its symbolism/metaphor is about being a flag bearers and who they represent. I believe that the coin was to be given at a significant emotional experience point (run up the mountain to begin camp. I don’t know if it was at the top of the “Y” or somewhere else that he told me that he was going to give this to the players. I think that they might be like dog tags that members of the services have signifying who they are and who they represent.

Hope this background helps. Bronco does the best job of any leader that I know leveraging these three facilitators of long term memory. “

So how can these three facilitators be applied in a seminary setting and will they be effective. Since it has been a couple of years since I taught seminary, here are my thoughts organized around what I should have done better then or what I might do better if the opportunity ever comes again.

1. Spiritual experiences. Make sure students and teacher have daily spiritual experiences. Follow the spirit in preparing and leading your learning discussions. Share you r testimony frequently and personalize your students learning environment by using spiritual experiences from your own life or theirs. If you are in tune, spiritual experiences will happen; those will tend to stay with your students longer than anything else. Leverage them; get your students to record their thoughts and impressions in student journals.
2. Music – use soothing prelude music to set a proper learning atmosphere. Sing hymns frequently, even if acapella, especially those that directly correlate to a scripture passage. Use music to teach and practice scripture mastery; if you get those verses into memory with music, they do not leave nearly so fast.
3. Metaphors. Use object lessons to bind learning to specific memories in your students minds. As a fifty-something, I still remember object lessons learned in my first 9^th grade seminary class. Yearly themes can be metaphors you reinforce with every lesson. Objects students take home become a visible library of learning and application.

So there you have it; football and seminary. I hope my observation makes some sense for you as you guide your young charges through their spiritual discovery of the New Testament.