The Origins of Book of Mormon Battles for Boys
"Bored Boys"
Young boys do not keep interest for very long. Come Follow Me lessons every night can be quite the struggle. Yet, there is so much in the Book of Mormon to keep the interest of a young active boy. So, I started coming up with some creative ways to keep his six boys' interest in the scriptures.
So I started writing and narrating what I thought were the stories that were most appealing to young boys. I noticed a pattern very quickly that they were all the amazing battle scenes of the Book of Mormon.
I started having fun with the recordings and added a score to each recording. And as is the case with many side-projects, the ideas started snowballing and next thing I knew I was recruiting friends and my own sons to do some of the voices on the episodes. And then, when I started adding sound effects, I really started to have fun: There's nothing like searching "tearing gooey flesh" into a sound effect site to get just the right sound!
I have found that the attention span of the average boy is quite short. when testing these episodes on my boys, I found I could not keep their attention for more than 10 minutes- especially since I was using only audio. So, I kept each episode to about 10 minutes.
Once I finished the six episodes, I started playing them for my sons. They really seemed to enjoy them. I played them for friends who had young sons and they reported back that I may have something parents of young boys would be very interested in.
Boys play with swords and have mock battles. They're interested in that sort of thing. The idea is to use that interest to encourage their curiosity in the Book of Mormon. The goal is to get them to open that book and start reading it, for themselves.
Raising LDS Boys
According to a Father of Six Boys
My whole adult married life I have been in Young Men's callings, almost exclusively. Perhaps the Lord was preparing me for becoming a father of six sons. Through my experience in Young Men's callings, I noticed a lot of boys just lacked any sort of ambition in life. They didn't want to DO, well... anything. We had very rich YM leaders in the ward who were willing to take the boys practically anywhere to do practically anything and they would just shrug.
It took me a while to realize that the digital forces in the world, such as video games, movie streaming and pornography was responsible for sucking all God-given ambition right out of any young man that consumed it.
So, when we were pregnant with our third son, my perspective as a father started to change. For some reason, that's when I felt some pressure to know how to raise strong young men. (Little did I know we were only halfway done creating boys!)
I felt it would be my duty as a father to get my sons outside, away from screens, doing things that made them create, destroy or sweat.
I was not much of an outdoorsman up to this point in my life, other than the rare campout in my young men's callings. However, I now felt compelled to become something of an outdoorsman. I made friends with the most outdoorsy guy in the ward. He literally taught the "Wilderness Survival" course at the local community college. He let me come along on any fishing, backpacking and camping outings he planned. He was nice enough to teach me everything he knew. I took that knowledge with me on scores of high adventure campouts throughout the western US.
I noticed the young men that were physically fit seemed to be the most mentally and socially advanced. So I decided to hit the gym and learn everything I could. I made a professional bodybuilder be my gym partner and teach me everything he knows. I used this knowledge to create my own home gym. My boys would see me working out consistently and started to join in on the workouts. One boy at just 9 years old even competed in a bodybuilding competition and won the "Best Poser" award!
The point is to get kids outside, sweating, using their imagination- instead of sitting in front of a screen all day. That's the idea behind these podcast episodes. Hopefully they're inspired to go outside and re-enact the battle scenes and eventually I hope they're inspired to open the Book of Mormon and start reading it for themselves.
Upcoming Exciting Projects!
This is only the beginning
We will be releasing the first three episodes very soon. The next three will be released early next year.
However, we have other ideas for products we plan to sell for parents who struggle to keep boys reverent during sacrament meeting. Please be sure to follow us on your social media of choice for exciting updates on those projects!
We need your consent to load the translations
We use a third-party service to translate the website content that may collect data about your activity. Please review the details and accept the service to view the translations.