Lesson 12

I cannot believe it is Lesson 12 of English already! The time has certainly flown!

I started out by reading the readings for the week, which are 'The Angels May Quote From It' by President Spencer W. Kimball and 'On a Hill Far Away' by Annie Dillard.

'The Angels May Quote From It' is what I picked to write my Discussion Board post on
Everyone has experiences in their lives, whether it be a long life or a short life, and nobody wants to be forgotten even after they are gone. We write down experiences as we have them so that our posterity can know about us and so that we can be remembered after we are no longer around. We have many great lessons and revelations from the past because the Lord had the foresight to know that we would need the counsel of yesterday to make decisions for today and tomorrow and commanded people to keep records.

We cannot change what happens in our lifetime, nor can we change the past, but we dishonor history's value if we do not take the time to write things down, as we are meant to learn something from every experience we have. If we omit details or simply don't write things down, how are we going to teach the people of tomorrow how we coped with things in our day? As the world continues to evolve, life will become more complicated than it already is, yet the people of tomorrow will most likely face problems very similar to the ones we face today.

By keeping records of our experiences, we are showing people how we handled our problems and perhaps providing an insight as to how they should handle their problems. If it weren't for people listening to the Lord and keeping histories of both the gospel and different periods of time, we would never come to a knowledge of the gospel, nor would we have any understanding about the Atonement and what it can do for all who come to pass. Writings teach us about our divine and temporal heritage and about how important it is for us to live up to the legacies we have been bequeathed.

The written word also teaches us about what can happen if we don't take such information seriously. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ aspire for us to learn out of the best books and we wouldn't have those books if people didn't listen to promptings to make personal histories and histories concerning their beliefs. Without people writing histories, we would have no written witness of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, as the scriptures wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be able to gain a sense of self, a sense of joy, and a sense of who we are and who we can become because of the Atonement.

I then read a page on Paragraph and Essay Development called 'Showing and Telling.'

Once I finished the reading, I turned my attention to the Grammar Lesson for the week, which was on capitalization. I read a handout and watched a video on it before I did the quiz. I took the quick twice and got one wrong both times, which is 90%, as I thought 'philosophy' had to be capitalized.