The Best Scripture Mastery Tool EVER.

I am a LDS seminary graduate. I never skipped seminary to get an early lunch. I learned a lot and have great memories from seminary.

But...

I never learned the scripture masteries.

Or, to be accurate, every year I learned the first 2 or 3, and then the rest fell by the wayside.

{For those of you who are unfamiliar... LDS seminary is a four year program for high school students to study scriptures and gospel principles each day. Classes are either held before school, or if you are lucky, like I was, you can get release periods to go. Each of the four years, there is a list of 25 scriptures to memorize. I was bad at it.}

I blame it on all the time I spent playing the piano -- I memorized hundreds of pages of music a year, and I just don't think there was room for anything else in my overworked brain.

However, as part of my 25 goals for the next 25 years, I want to memorize the scripture masteries. I think I can manage 100 scriptures in the next 25 years. And, fortunately, I have found the best resource ever to memorize them.

LDS.org has a seminary page with a fabulous memorize program. First, you can go through the words, blocking out phrases until you can do the entire thing from memory.

Then, you can have the verse presented with only the first letter of each word, and you can still block out phrases until it's memorized (I find this step the most effective). 

The next step is to fill in the blanks with missing words. This can be tougher than it looks, especially with myriad "thees" and "therefores."

Finally, you type the scripture and then fill in the text when you are done -- the perfect way to check. 

I've also been using the "Understand and Apply" feature in my scripture study. I think it is a great review of basic gospel doctrines, and I love the cross-references provided for each scripture. I initially thought these would be quick reviews, but I have been spending days on each scripture. 

The last activity is a finding exercise. I haven't used that one yet, but it looks like it will be great once I get around to it. :) 

I love the way the Church is using technology to spread the Gospel and help us learn. I think I would have done much better at the scripture masteries if this had been around when I was in high school (it's getting sad to think about how long ago that was). Do you memorize scripture? What works for you?