Persuasive Speeches round 2

This was an  amazing week for speeches.  I was a little surprised to have to do two weeks of speeches.  I wasn't sure that I would see a big difference.  But the speeches came out awesome.  Alison in my group did a fantastic job.  She looked so professional and you could tell that she had really worked hard.  Alicia had also come a long way.  She was kind of all jumbled last week and was way over the time.  She really organized her thoughts well and she did an awesome job.  My speech was still lacking and still had to be significantly chopped way back.  It was amazing to me to see such a difference in the speeches.  I have really enjoyed meeting with my group this semester.  They have been some fun ladies.  It's kind of sad to say good-bye to them.

the moral of the story is that the more practice we have the better the speeches have become.  This is a good lesson for future speaking assignments.  My patriarchal blessing is very specific about some things in my life and I'm pretty sure that it involves public speaking.  I need to remember the things I've learned in this class and learn to implement them.  I can be better at slowing things down.  I need to appeal to my audiences, adding a little humor.  I could benefit from practicing more, working to make sure that I'm in the time window allotted.  This has been a great class with some great tips in public speaking.

Our Terrible American Diet

Well first of all, it was very insightful to do the research for this speech.  It made me want to literally move my family to some remote house and live off the land and create all of our own food.  The Americans today have just become some busy that everything seems to be a grab and go mentality.  But all that food is disgusting, hard to digest, laced with chemicals or preservatives, mislabeled just to make us feel better.  According to my research, it seems that cows are given growth hormones even though the gallon of milk says that they aren't.  The milk jug says, "Our cows have not been treated with rbST."  What they don't tell you is that they are given rbGH, which seems to be the same thing as rbST.  Interesting.  Another interesting fact is that because the cows are producing more milk than Americans can drink so a few years ago they had the cow industry slaughter their dairy cows to try to adjust.  With the cows producing more milk they are more likely to have get a breast infection called mastitis and could be on antibiotics more than normal, which could still have some residual in the milk that we drink.  Don't you want your own cow?  Genetically modified fish will soon be on the market.  Why do we have to mess with nature just so that we can have the better and the best product out there.  My husband and I struggle with weight.  Part of it is my fault because I like cooking but I would blame the rest on our American diet.  We can't get rid of all the chemicals that are being used today.  And the preservatives in food have some alarming side affects.  It is all actually quite disturbing.  I just found that all interesting.
Now to the subject at hand.  We had to give our persuasive speeches today to our group.  It was very insightful to get my groups feedback.  I ran a little long so I need to shave some time off my speech.  I hopefully changed my opening line to be more of an attention grabber.  I have become more comfortable in an online environment because for my other class I've had to have a lot of online presentations.  I feel that my speech had a better flow today than in the past.  I also liked to have my speech written in bullet form.  It was easier to read.  It seemed that I was more natural when I was with my group.  I might try next week to record my speech during our meeting hoping I will be more natural.  I will have to see how my timing is, because maybe I will need to redo, if time still needs to be cut.  It will be interesting to see how we do next week as a group.  Our speeches should be more polished.  It will be interesting to get their feedback again and see how it changes over the week. 

Conflict vs. Contention

This was an interesting week of learning.  (Do I say that every week?)  We learned about how we can have conflict, and will have conflict, but we have to be careful not to take that conflict and escalate it to contention.  We all know that contention is of the devil.  So it is a fine line.  We can choose to disagree appropriately.  We had some good reading this week.  We read And Nothing Shall Offend Them, by Elder Bednar.  I remember when this talk was given.  I remember how bold and confident Elder Bednar was in going to inactive members and point blanking them as to why they weren't coming to church.  Once he found their issue, he then pointed out that they were letting this one small incident impeded their learning, not allow them to take the sacrament weekly.  When he put it that way they could see that their decision was kind of foolish.  I hope that he had a good retention in his stake following those kinds of visits.  We as members, if so inspired, should also be able to ask the same of our visiting teaching sisters or others in our ward so that we can help bring them back into the fold. 

We also heard a personal account of Elder Scott's first experiences with the quorum of apostles.  He was amazed to see conflict among the brethren.  In my mind you think of them as one "perfect" body of men that are leading the church and that everything just comes together so neatly.  But it is nice to realize that they are men just like us, with their own views and experiences.  I've heard that many times they aren't in agreement.  It isn't until they are all in agreement that something is actually put forth to the general public.  That is a lot of opinions.  However through their disagreements they are able to perfect the idea, or add to the idea.  They are great examples of counseling together to reach a unanimous decision.

And finally we had to read a talk by President Monson titled School Thy Feelings, O My Brother. There was a couple of good quotes from this talk. "Anger doesn't solve anything.  It builds nothing, but it can destroy everything."    "A man's a fool who takes insult that isn't intended."  "To be angry is to yield to the influence of Satan.  No one can make us angry.  It is our choice.  If we desire to have a proper spirit with us at all times, we must choose to refrain from becoming angry."

For our Group meeting this week we had to talk about the story in Alma 60 & 61 about Moroni and Pahoran.  Moroni was frustrated with the lack of supplies and support from the government.  He wrote to Pahoran a very bold and powerful letter, even accusatory.  Luckily Pahoran, knew that Moroni was telling the truth, was desperate for supplies and that he was a good leader.  Moroni's letter even came as an answer to Pahoran's feelings.  I would encourage everyone to take the higher road like Paharon and be Christ-like in our dealings with our families and others that we are in communication with. 

A few good quotes

Improving our Relationships

I really like this quote from Elder Kendrick.  We had to read his talk this week titled Christlike Communication.  This caused me to really think about my communications with my family.  Are they where they should be?  I know that I could be so much better.  I feels like recently I've become so distracted and only half listening to those in my own family.  I've even noticed that I'm texting more, and texting when someone is talking to me.  I hate when people do that to me and here I have found myself doing it.  It isn't intentional.  I need to put some blocks on my phone so that I only have a small window when texts come in.  I also felt bad today because my toddler son, who spends way to much time in front of the TV because of my school work, we played a fun game of bouncing a ball into a net.  He liked the activity so much that he wanted to do it as soon as he woke up.  I didn't have the time to do it with right then.  He still would love it if I would go and do it.  It's little things like that are starting to become alarming.  I need to put more emphasis on the little things in my life. 
We also read a talk by Elder Holland titled The Tongue of Angels.  He reminded us the importance of bridling our words.  I don't think we understand the power of our words.  Are we speaking to a child appropriately?  I have a sister that never screens her words and has offended many people because of the things she has said.
We also learned about love languages this week.  That is always an interesting subject.  My love language is quality time and physical touch.  The quality time is not hard to get, it's just planning the time.  It's the physical touch we struggle with in our house.  That isn't my husband's love language so it is hard to feel that love when he isn't willing to fill my love tank.  I on the other hand could be better at trying to fill his love tank so that maybe his tank will be full to fill my tank.