Ann Marie's Primary Talk

Little children in our church get the opportunity to give talks in front of all the children every once in a while. It is a great experience for them to get used to public speaking and to be able to learn how to think through a church topic and put together a talk on it.

Ann Marie got the assignment to speak today on how repentance and forgiveness strengthen us and our families. She is six years old and a bright kid. So I made her write her own talk. I wanted to see what she would come up with on her own.

At first she just made up a fictional story about repentance and forgiveness. I asked her to add a scripture story in there too. She did the rest and I typed as she dictated. I did help her tie her talk back to the given topic in the second to last sentence but other than that ... here is repentance and forgiveness through the eyes of a six year old:

One day there was a girl named Martha she had a brother named Andrew. And that day she was writing an email to her friend and Andrew came in and messed it up and left the room. Later that day, Andrew felt bad so he went to apologize to Martha. Martha apologized too and she forgave her brother. So she got to finish her email. So every time you a mistake you should apologize too.

Once in the scriptures there was a man named Alma he was wicked. Every time they told him to be nice he would be mean and tell people the church wasn’t true. Then one day while they were on the way to tell people the church wasn’t true an angel appeared. He said that Alma’s father had been praying for Alma to not be wicked. And while the angel was talking Alma fainted. So they took Alma home to his father and put a wet cloth on him. Two days later Alma woke up. He didn’t feel wicked anymore. He had a change of heart from hard to soft. Then he went to the church and apologized because he had been telling people that were in the church that the church was not true. He repented for all his sins and he always always always teached people about the church. He soon grew up to be a prophet.

So every time we do something wrong try to repent like Alma did. To repent you have to pray and ask Heavenly Father to forgive you. After you pray you will have a change of heart and you will not want to do bad things anymore. You should also apologize to the person you were mean to. Then you should be extra nice to try to make up for being mean. When we repent we are following the example of Alma and we set a good example for our little brothers or sisters. Repenting and forgiving makes our family stronger and happier. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ AMEN.