The Plan of Salvation

I was terribly hurried this morning, so I didn't have time to study the scriptures. (Sometimes I have an awful time getting up in the morning.) However, I was quite fortunate last night to have the sister missionaries over for dinner. I was supposed to go on splits with them, but as I've had a cold and was feeling a little dizzy, I decided that wasn't so wise, and I even ordered pizza for dinner so I wasn't contaminating them with something I cooked. But I was still hungry for something spiritual, so I felt pretty blessed that they decided to give me a little longer spiritual thought and taught one of the discussions. When I was a missionary, it was the 4th, but they say now it's the 2nd. And I must say that I can very much see the wisdom in teaching the principle earlier. The outline of life really explains so many things and provides a good base for every other principle of the gospel. It was nice to see the visuals, too--the little laminated cut-outs that they laid out on the table. When I was a missionary, we used those too, but they weren't laminated--they were pretty cheap, and I didn't really think much more of them than that they helped the listener pay attention since they required an additional sense to listening. But last night, it was nice to have the visual, not just to keep my attention, but to see how everything fit together. I suppose the most interesting thing I noticed was at the end, when they moved the Heavenly Father and Jesus characters (which I unfortunately never had in my cut-outs) from the Pre-Mortal existence where we lived with Them, to the Celestial Kingdom, where we hope to live with Them, making it all the more clear that these are the same place in some senses, and what it signifies for us to make it to the Celestial Kingdom--wherein we also will be living in other Pre-Mortal existence, though obviously no longer our own.