In a recent primary-age lesson on keeping our bodies healthy, the Word of Wisdom came up. (For any readers not familiar, the WofW is, in a nutshell: No coffee, no tea, no alcohol, no tobacco. Eat healthy.)
The bit about tobacco came up, and one boy said, “My dad uses tobacco.”
Awkward silence.
“That’s that hot sauce you put on food, right?”
Collective sigh.
It was adorable.
The funniest thing I’ve heard a kid say in church was when an clueless quorum advisor had a teenage boy tied to a chair with rope as an object lesson. He had listed such bad habits like smoking and drinking, then he asked the kids what other bad habits might serve to tie up the boy in the chair. There was silence in the room. I made eye contact with the third adult who was present. We both thought “oh, no,” and, sure enough, a kid blurted out, “masturbation.” I couldn’t help but laugh, mostly because the quorum advisor had teed it up so perfectly.
Our approach is very simple- we detail the mandate Joseph was given from the Bible, then look at how well he did to fulfill that. We discuss Twelve Doctrines that his followers are known to believe in and compare those with the purpose of his mandate- The Book of Mormon.