Likening Joseph Smith to Ourselves

What does Joseph Smith's example teach me about learning the gospel?
Joseph Smith sought spiritual knowledge while acting as the Lord's instrument in restoring the gospel.  He pondered the scriptures, asked inspired questions, and acted upon what he learned.  As we follow the Prophet's example, we can receive answers to our questions and inspiration to guide our own lives.

Introduction
Normally we spend the first 5 minutes or so journaling about our topic for the day...today however, I found a really cute handout that I'm centering my lesson on. Please visit the amazing site, The Red Headed Hostess to find the original handout. (I'm not entirely sure how to link to her page, if you could help out that would be awesome! I want to give her full credit for her awesome work!)

This past week I went out on a lesson with the sister missionaries in our ward and met a sweet older lady who was having some confusion and wanted to give up on the missionaries coming over.  She didn't want to come to church this week, but I think we finally convinced her to.  I told her that I teach the 14-15 year old youth Sunday School and she asked to attend.  I told her I would LOVE it if she came to my class and genuinely hoped she did.  For this reason, I wanted to solely use the handout below and just look at the definition of what the Apostasy is and really dive into the events that led up to it.

 If I taught Seminary and truly had the time, I would love to have the youth in my class put these events in order on their own and have them think through what led to the Apostasy.  However, due to the fact that I only have about 30 minutes, and I planned on having an investigator with us, we will work on the bottom portion together.

I will cut the events into strips and we will discuss each event and put them in order together.  I still plan on giving the class a copy of this worksheet and they can fill in the back once we decide the proper ordering.

Ideally, if I had enough time, I would love to watch a short little video on applying Joseph Smith's example to our personal search for truth.  As a class, we made a goal to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year.  In trying to continue to encourage my class to have their personal study time, I will be sending a link of the video to each of the youth with the following journal prompt, "How can the prophet Joseph Smith's example help me in my personal search for truth? How am I doing on my Book of Mormon Challenge?  What can I do to improve my studies and desire to learn?"

Origin - MormonMessagesYouth

**The woman who has been investigating the church wasn't feeling well and didn't make it today.  However, we still had a great discussion and I was able to show the video still! :)  I was a happy teacher!