I was in Gospel Doctrine on Sunday and enjoying a wonderful lesson — well prepared, excellent participation from the class, beautiful spirit, learning new things — all of the things I hope for when I attend. Then there was a HINT of a disruption. Not a major problem, just a glitch. Our teacher started to tell the story from Luke 19 about Zacchaeus, chief among the publicans. Now the problem was that she didn’t know how to pronouce the name “Zacchaeus”. The fact is, neither did I. At least I had a different pronunciation than she did, and several others had a different pronunciation than I did. Finally a vocal member of the class prevailed and that was the pronunciation we went with.

I don’t want to overstate this little disruption. It was far from a skirmish. Barely even an issue. I’m not certain how many in the class even noticed. I noticed because I have been thinking about this some in the past few weeks since we started uploading audio clips from the Sunday School lessons onto LDSClip.com. I have listened to the material nearly every week, but this week I read instead. Listen to how wonderful it sounds from the most recognized bible narrator in the world, Alexander Scourby.

As a Gospel Doctrine teacher, I want to have as little disruption as possible. Something as simple as HEARING someone pronouce the name of Zacchaeus properly before I have to pronounce it in class, gives me great confidence and minimizes unnecessary distractions. I have also heard from a Gospel Doctrine teacher whose class is getting along in years and they struggle reading. He downloads the clips to his iPod and uses them in class so EVERYONE can hear them read clearly and well.

Since the reading assignments are so short, my new goal is to make certain that I read AND listen every week. It will be fun to see what I pick up when I do that!

Both of our sites, www.ldslibrary.com and www.ldsaudio.com, have affiliated with a site called LDSClip.com. this is a site that contains small snippets of spoken audio for personal use or for convenience for Gospel Doctrine teachers and students, Priesthood and Relief Society teachers and students, and even Family Home Evening. They can even be used to email a scripture or thought to another person. Right now LDSClip.com has a small but growing number of clips in the library, mostly scriptures pertaining to the Gospel Doctrine lessons. There is also a great clip to go along with the lesson on the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is from Robert Millet’s book “When a Child Wanders”.

Soon a tool will be included that allows users to clip thier own audio files and include them in the ldsclip library.

As this catalog of clips grows, this will be a more and more useful tool.

Well it seems like it is time to revitalize the blog here at LDSAudio. We have had a fascinating, challenging year, and are emerging with confidence that our little web site is surviving and appreciated by Latter-day Saints all over the world! We survived a difficult year and now we want to begin to thrive! Our goal with our weekly emails and our site is to do more educating about good music and other entertainment, about new digital technologies and applications, and broaden the kinds of products opportunities we provide.

in the near future we will be providing:

• Digital Sheet Music (you may have seen our beta site — we will be releasing an update soon)
• LDS Ringtones
• An iTunes affiliation
• Weekly Artist Spotlights
• Podcasts
• LDSClip.com — small clips from scriptures, talks and books for uses in lessons, family home evenings or to send to a friend
• Lyrics for all of our songs that will be searchable
• ways to make it easier to give an LDSAudio gift
• Links to LDSLibrary.com
• Links to other relevant blogs
• Calendars of events, concerts and items of interest

Which of these is most useful to you? Do you have other things you’d like to see? let us know.

Neal