President's Russell M. Nelson's Challenge to Join the Lord's Youth Battalion with gift ideas: Battalion Bites & Shield of Faith Ornament

Last summer President Russell M. Nelson and his wife Wendy gave the most amazing talks to the youth. This year in seminary we are studying the Doctrine and Covenants. When the scriptures refer to Israel, gathering, or following the prophet I like to remind the youth of the prophet's challenge that he gave to them.

I played back portions of his talk. To hear it click here.

Here are his challenges to the youth:

Then I handed out this printout and we discussed how they were doing. I was thrilled with the answers that I got. Most of the students had taken the challenge seriously and shared their experience.

Battalion Bites Candy

Here's a fun treat to go with your lesson or activity. I bought these Halloween Peanut m&m's on clearance. Lucky for me the m&m colors also worked well the camouflage colors.

This size of m&m is the 3.27 oz share size.

I made this print out and glued it over the m&m picture. If you would like to use it right click on the picture. Copy and paste it, or save it into your pictures. Size it to fit a full sheet of paper.

I glued it on rubber cement. The regular school glue stick will not hold after it dries. The process I used was cover the print out in glue, especially the edges. Then cover the m&m's in glue, especially the edges. Then put another coat of glue on the print out's edges. Center the print out on the m&m's and press around the edges.

Cheap Armor of God Pins

If you are like me, I am always looking for a cheap, but nice gift for my 20+ seminary students. Unfortunately Deseret Book does not offer dollar store prices.

I found these pins on Oriental Trader for only $7.19 a dozen. The only problem I had with it was the cross. It just made me uncomfortable to give to LDS students. I decided to try to paint over the cross with fingernail polish. The only black polish that I had was gel, so I gave it a try. I put 2 coats of gel polish on each one. Then ended with a clear coat of gel polish over the entire middle area.

In between each coat I put it under the gel light.

They came out great. You can't even tell there was ever a cross on the pin. A wonderful and cheap gift for my Seminary Youth Battalion!

You could probably do the same thing with regular nail polish, I just didn't have any. Let me know if you try it.

Shield of Faith Christmas Ornament

I found these cute metal Shield of Faith crests on Oriental Trader for only $6.95 a dozen. I thought that they would make a nice Christmas ornament for Christmas gifts.

I bought some ribbon. I tied it in a loop and glued it to the back side of the metal crest with E6000 glue. I didn't want to use a glue gun because I didn't think the glue would hold.

After the glue dried I turned it over and used the same glue to add the ribbon. I placed the ribbon so that it was on both the metal and the ribbon. That way it is more secure and hangs straight. I added the picture of Christ over the cross. I got the picture off of google images. I printed it out on my computer with the smallest setting that prints 35 tiny pictures per page. Then I used a heart punch to cut out the face of Christ. I think they turned out really cute!

Armor of God Gift Package

For Christmas I decided to give my class all the the pin, the ornament and the m&ms into a cute little gift package. I bought some cellophane bags at Walmart. Then I used a piece of my brown cardstock and cut it to fit inside the bag.

My bag was 4 inches wide, so I cut the cardstock to be just a little bit under 4 inches. I poked some holes into the cardstock and used the twist tie that came with the bags to hold the ornament. The pin I glue gunned above it to hold it in place. Luckily I kept the little plastic bags that the pin came in so that the pin could be removed easily. I put the m&ms and a little plastic army man on the other side.

Once the bag was full I printed out the printout below. I cut them out, folded them in half and stapled them to the top of the bag. As you can see, I have a Christmas version and a non Christmas version. I did the math and the entire package came to about $1.60. Not bad when you have over 20 students to buy for!

Click on the image below to make a

Missionary Handbook Printable.

Here's another printout from my Seminary Missionary Handbook idea

For one of my lessons I had my class listen to one of President Russell M. Nelson's last conference talks Becoming Exemplary Latter-day Saints and write down the things that impressed them. Here is the handout that I used: