It’s your column!  If you want to discuss church magazines till the cows come home, I will happily stand in the pasture and moo.  Here’s what our readers had to say this week:

While I have not as yet any suggestion about what to do with old and well-used Ensigns, it is a hot topic in my head right now.  We are preparing to move and I have 15 years worth of magazines that to me are sacred.  What do I do with them?  Husband says we can’t keep them, and he’s right.  They are all online now. 

Anyway, I’m writing to say how valuable it is just to know others have the same concerns.  I’m looking forward to the responses.

Thanks for the magazine!

Kate

Thanks for the letter, Kate. I hope all these letters give you some suggestions that will help you in your move.  I’m glad you’re enjoying Meridian, too — and with Meridian, there’s never anything to have to throw away!

This is a timely topic. My mother-in-law just died, and she never threw anything away. My husband, his siblings and their spouses were discussing the disposal of old church magazines just yesterday. My one sister-in-law said she just keeps the conference Ensigns and throws the rest away. I'm thinking that I want to keep the Ensigns, but I'll probably toss all my old Friends and New Eras.

I'm also thinking about emergency preparedness. These are the last days, and I expect the time will come when we maybe don't have access to lds.org. It's wonderful to use while we have it, but I'm thinking that I don't want to toss all my old Ensigns just yet.

My poor children! Some day they're going to have to clean out my house!

Cheri Christensen
American Fork, Utah

You make a good point, Cheri.  One day we may not have the easy access to the computer that we have now.  What a sad day that will be for the internet junkies in the group!  When that day comes, I will have to move to American Fork and borrow old Ensigns from you.

I suggest sharing them with investigators or new converts.  Try taking them to a homeless shelter or senior citizen home.  They would love to have new reading materials, I would think.

Lillian in Northern California

Great ideas, Lillian!  I would imagine rest homes outside the Intermountain West may be new ground for church magazines, and investigators or converts could certainly benefit from them. Thanks for writing!

I carry my church magazines with me to the barber, doctor, dentist, and other places, and conveniently leave them behind like a special edition pass-along-card.  This ensures that I have good reading material while waiting, and I can offer good reading material to those who follow. 

Marvin Lesher

That’s a great idea, Marvin!  Read them while you’re waiting, and “forget” to take them away from you.  A good church magazine beats the movie star garbage any day, so lots of people can benefit from your forgetfulness.

I have found that many waiting rooms need magazines!  I leave mine at the nearest hospital ER. 
If you decide to donate your magazines, be sure you remove or black out your subscription information.

I save the conference issues for a few years — and ones with special messages for me get put into my scrapbook/journal.

Sharon from California

Thanks for the valuable reminder to always remove or mark out subscription information from donated magazines, Sharon.  I also like your idea to keep articles that made a difference in your life in your personal journal.  Thanks for writing!

Last year before I left Dubai (United Arab Emirates), I decided not to pack up the Ensigns that I had collected since 1991. Instead I took them to church so that members could take what they wanted.  In the following weeks most of them had gone.  Many of our members are Filipinos, and although most of them subscribe to the Ensign there are some who don’t.  Many of these members were so happy to take home the magazines to read and to also share them with their nonmember friends.  

Elva
New Zealand

You make a good point, Elva.  Many of us just assume that everyone in our ward or branch subscribes to church magazines, but there are some who don’t.  It was a good idea to take them to church to see if anyone wanted them before recycling the rest. 

In fact, Julie Thornock of Grandview, Washington, has a similar idea to yours.  Here’s what she had to say:

I too have a hard time throwing them away.  But we have found a way to recycle them that takes the guilt away.  There are a few less active families in our ward who don't subscribe, but who also are interested enough to accept my last month's copy.  The conference addition is no longer an issue since you can pay a little extra to get a second copy.

Also, newlyweds appreciate the hand-me-downs as do those in chronic financial difficulties. 

A woman in our ward is way more organized than I am.  She cuts them up and saves the doctrinal articles in files.  Personally, I find it easier to get on-line and print it out than to take the time to file them.

Julie Thornock
Grandview, Washington

It never even occurred to me to pass the magazines along to some of the inactives we home teach, Julie.  Thanks for the suggestion!

Much to my husband’s chagrin, I have a four-drawer file cabinet full of files.  I go through the church magazines and tear out the articles, games, and sharing times I love the most and file them away in my file cabinet for future use.  My husband hates moving that file cabinet around when we move, but he loves it as much as I do when he has lesson to teach and talks to give. 

I also have three full three-ring binders full of the music printed in The Friend, New Era, and Ensign.  I realize that you can pull this off the internet, but there have been numerous times when the internet has been down and I have had just wanted I wanted at my fingertips. 

I can always find coloring pages to supplement my Primary lessons, and extra resource material for YW, Priesthood, and Relief Society lessons. I also have a great resource for pictures to use that are printed in the magazines.  If I have one or two copies of a picture I don't feel guilty using them as handouts or posters for lessons. And since my husband and I have to speak in sacrament meeting in two weeks, I'm sure that once again my trusty four-drawer file cabinet full of "old" magazine treasures will once again come to the rescue.

Sharma in Idaho

Thanks for good ideas, Sharma.  That file cabinet of yours is a real treasure — especially when the internet is down and there’s nowhere else to go for good resource information.

I am and have been for quite a few years doing the sacrament meeting program. I have kept all my Ensigns, from the time I became a member back in 1991, and scan the pictures from Ensign to use on the front of the sacrament program. I wish I had some of the Friend magazines but can’t find them. They also have great pictures and subject matter so that I have something that goes along with the talks that will be given.

It has been my pleasure to have a different picture every week (in January I started my 8th year). With a scripture or quote, I feel that this is my contribution and testimony to the congregation.  As I skim thru the magazines looking for a specific subject, it gives me time to learn and also be inspired my the Spirit of what I need to put on the front for that week.

Before the time that you could look up subject matter on the Church website, I got old Ensigns from the thrift store and cut out articles.  I put them into different categories and put them in a file cabinet.  At the time my husband was giving many of the lessons in the high priest group, and we would sometimes find pertinent articles from those in my file. I still sometimes use them because it is easier to thumb through those than the long list of articles that you can pull up on the internet — plus, they have pictures with them.

Linda from California

Your idea is an excellent one, Linda.  Ward programs can certainly benefit from having inspirational artwork on them — especially artwork that is related to the topic.

My only concern comes from copyright laws.  I don’t want you to be getting a notice from an attorney, saying you’re being sued for copyright infringement.  In fact, I’m so nervous about that, that I’ve taken your name and city off the letter so nobody can track you down. 

I also took the liberty of calling the legal arm of the Church to see what the copyright procedure is in these cases. Here is what they had to say:

When I received my patriarchal blessing it stated to read the scriptures, especially the modern day scriptures found in the church magazines.  So needless to say, I had over 25 years of magazines stored in magazine boxes when the magazines became available online. 

Still feeling a touch guilty not being able to get rid of them, I cut out the pictures and put them in plastic sleeves and into a notebook.  They are categorized into temples, prophets, general authorities, historic buildings, and so on.  The activity pages in the Friend can be reused over and over when placed in the plastic sleeves and using a dry erase marker.  I then didn't feel guilty throwing recycling the magazines.  My kids and grandkids have enjoyed the notebooks.  And no more guilt.  There were a few articles I cut out and kept that I read often and wanted for quick reference. 

A less guilty reader in American Fork, Utah

Good idea, Less Guilty!  It would be terrific to have a resource like that online for all of us to use (with the copyright information, of course).  I often need artwork for Meridian covers, and I have my fingers crossed that one of these days we’ll be able to get access to an archive like that through lds.org.  I like your idea for reusing the activity pages, too!

Here’s another letter from someone who uses the pictures:

It is true that our LDS magazines feel like old friends, and who can discard a cherished friend?  Just flipping through them brings to memory stories, scriptures and quotes that have helped guide our lives. 

I remember trying to discard my old Ensigns, but not being able to give anything away after Spencer W. Kimball became the prophet. After they announced that they were all online, I was able to get over this hurdle.  But now I am feeling those same twinges again, as our beloved Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley has passed.  And it will be a while before I can clean out my book case of these treasured "scriptures" of this truly inspirational prophet. 

I did find several uses for my old Ensigns, The New Era and the Friend that may be helpful to others.  When the magazines are about 3-4 years old, I go through them and cut out all the pictures that I think can be used later, and place them in a large file folder. I recycle the remaining pages. 

As a grandmother, I found a need for my grandchildren to have inspirational quiet books during sacrament meeting, ones that didn't cost a lot of money.  I cut pictures out of my old Friend magazines and used them to write a story.  Using a scrapbook method, I put these together and placed them in a 4 X 6 photo album.  Each one was different, some showing pictures about how we can treat our body like a temple, what we can do to follow the prophet, the steps for baptism, how we can prepared to be worthy to attend the temple, and have an eternal family, and so on. 

Since I love the quality of the picture searches, I just put them in a binder that the children can quietly look for hidden pictures and circle them.  The stories that use simple words and pictures also made another fun binder. The grandchildren also enjoy a little recipe book made from the simple recipes included each month.  The grandchildren can choose different ones to make each time they come to visit. 

But probably the best use of my old magazines was to recycle the pictures and use them in Primary.  I am currently the chorister for primary, and am a visual learner.  I find that most children also learn well when they have a visual picture of the words we are singing.  From my file folder of pictures gleaned from old church magazines, I am always able to find appropriate pictures that represent the songs we are learning.  I especially treasure the pictures of the Savior, and have even framed some of them, and they represent songs we have learned.  

From my file, I was able to immediately have pictures of President Monson that I used to discuss the new prophet, and to help the children know his face, and memorize his name.  These pictures are even more valuable as I teach the Primary songs to the nursery children.  They love to hold the picture of our new prophet and march around the room singing, "Follow the Prophet."  Now I don't feel so bad about letting some of these magazines go, because their value continues as I use them to teach the gospel to the small spirits that I love so much in my ward. 

Tawnya Lang
Kearns, Utah

What a creative person you are, Tawnya, to make up stories around the pictures you cut out of the Friend!  You must be an amazing grandmother!

I also like your ideas for using pictures to make it easier for young children to recognize the general authorities.  Speaking of making it easier to learn the names of the general authorities, have you heard the Apostle Song that’s going around the internet?   As a Young Women teacher who was floored when the teenage girls told me all the apostles looked just alike, I was delighted to be able to pass onto them a little song that gives a nugget of information about all fifteen of our top church leaders, to the tune of “The Beverly Hillbillies” theme song.

You may be able to leave them at doctor or dentist offices.  Recycling is good.  I kept mine for years in the back of the book case in magazine boxes — then when I was the ward librarian I discovered that they only keep the magazines for 10 years and then recycle them.  I got over the guilt and made room for other "things."

Anonymous

Good idea, Anonymous!  So far I haven’t gotten a nibble from my Catholic chiropractor, but I’ll mention it again.  It can’t hurt!

Storage for the various Church magazines and the "Church News" soon demands more and more space. It is difficult to discard the magazines, but sometimes they just take up too room.

We rejoice that we can see the magazines at www.lds.org in .pdf files. They look just like the actual publication, with the images and everything. For quick reads, the articles without the photos are okay but the .pdf files are wonderful.

Here are some examples of what we have done with these magazines:

• Use the older magazines with their images for art projects in Family Home Evening, Nursery, Primary Classes, and Sharing Time.
• Make a few albums to take to sacrament meeting to help the children think about the Savior, the prophets, families, temples, and suitable themes. (I once made a book of artwork from Church magazines reflecting the life of the Savior. We used it with our preschoolers and it helped our reverence during the passing of the sacrament.)
• Last summer my daughter and I made quiet books. In addition to non-religious images, we made pages with religious themes. These books were not going to the Humanitarian Center but to a sister in Eastern Europe. She gave them to the branches in our son's mission and it helped settle the children down during Sacrament Meeting.
• Include appropriate articles with a letter to missionaries or college students. The idea is to find some article that isn't too long but might help them. I particularly like the cartoon page in the New Era to send to our family's missionary.
• Find a Liahona article in a specific mission's language to send to a missionary. Use articles that are older than the date the missionary entered the MTC. In the beginning, I used simple articles from The Friend on themes like tithing and temples. This helped build vocabulary. Later I sent articles from the Ensign or New Era in English and the mission language. When a missionary is stuck with the Russian, he/she can read the section in English. After months in the mission field, articles can be sent in the mission language without an English version.
• Keep a folder of "coloring book" pages, crosswords, hidden pictures, and so on. Make copies of them for family activities. The same thing could be done with some of the activities and recipes found in The Friend.
• Save the special issues of the Church magazines. There have been issues on the Savior, service, missionary work, temples, and other valuable topics. These are all great to have on hand.

Hope these ideas might appeal to some of the other sisters.

Midwest Missionary Mom

Thanks for a great letter, MMM!  I didn’t realize that the .pdf files gave the pictures as well as the articles, and that’s a plus.  Also, your ideas were terrific — especially the one about making “quiet books” to send overseas.  What a compassionate idea you had!  It’s a terrific use for magazines that would otherwise be sitting unused in your basement.

I recently went through my stacks of used Church magazines.  I kept the conference editions and the Friend magazines and stored them in magazine boxes.   I went through the Ensign and New Era magazines and pulled out the pages that had interesting artwork, puzzles, comics, articles, and other things that might keep my kids' interest during sacrament meetings, and placed them into page protectors in a three-ring binder that we can take to church with us. 

One of my daughters is very interested in art and enjoys looking at the beautiful paintings that are featured in the Ensign.  My 9-year-old son enjoys the puzzles and comics.  I can place a couple of issues of the Friend in the binder, and we have enough to keep them appropriately quiet during the meeting.

Laura J. deLannoy
Yalecrest 2nd Ward
Salt Lake City, Utah

Thanks for telling us about the several ways you use church magazines to keep your children quiet and reverent in sacrament meeting, Laura. 

By the way, other readers also recommended making quiet books.  We also heard from Recycle, Reduce, REUSE in Texas and Terri from Connecticut (who uses her quiet books for church and FHE lessons).

I too have hoarded church magazines for years, even old Improvement Eras and Relief Society Magazines. (Am I a heretic if I admit that I really, really miss the Relief Society Magazine and its monthly serial books? Don’t get me wrong, I love the Ensign, but still miss the Relief Society Magazine).

I have had an idea the back of my mind for using them for a long time and finally began doing it a few years ago. I began going through them and cutting out the pictures, and sometimes some really good articles. Two years ago just before Easter I sorted through them and found the ones that had to do with Christ’s life. I then assembled two notebooks, one each family of my grandchildren. I put the pictures in plastic sleeves and then into three-ring notebooks.

Each notebook told the story, in pictures, of Christ from birth to Crucifixion through His appearance in the Americas, and then I  added some pictures about the sacrament and prayer at the end. I even found a picture portraying Christ creating the earth and used that to begin one notebook. Some pictures have captions and some don’t; some have a small paragraph about the picture (the one below the picture in the Ensign) and some have nothing.

I am not sure what the family that lives far away from me did with the notebook. I am in the same ward as the other family. The notebook is in their “Sunday Backpack” and can be looked at in church — especially during the sacrament. A lot of the time the older sister in a soft voice would tell the younger sister (four years old when I first gave them the notebook) about the pictures. Now, the younger granddaughter can tell you the story about all of the pictures, even though she cannot read yet.

When my grandson received the Aaronic Priesthood I made a notebook for him with as many pictures as I could find showing things the priesthood did — including one of Christ ordaining his apostles and one of King Mosiah anointing his son.  There were also pictures of confirmations, baptism, administering to the sick, and so on.  I told him to treat it like a priesthood Book of Remembrance.

I still plan on making Christmas notebooks, church history notebooks, Book of Mormon notebooks, a Joseph Smith story notebook, maybe one on baptism, and maybe a notebook about the prophets. Ideas are still coming to me.

The art work in the Ensign gets more and more beautiful all the time, so I find this a really good way to use it and teach my grandchildren.

Doreen from Everett, Washington

I really like your idea of themed picture books, Doreen.  I’m guessing a lot of readers will emulate your suggestions and come up with themed books of their own.  Thanks for writing.

I have been sending them to soldiers serving in the war. In my office there is always someone putting together a box for the guys at the front. They ask for magazines, movies, snacks, sunscreen, among other things. I generally put in a stack of ensigns and a batch of energy
bars.

Thomas Murphy
Huntsville, Alabama

What a good idea — to use them as part of a military care package!  I’ll bet those magazines would be passed around from member to nonmember at the front.  Who knows how much good they could do?  Another of our readers, Regina, also gives old church magazines to people who are sending packages to military personnel overseas, so there are at least two of you who haven’t forgotten the people who are fighting on our behalf.

I could not toss the magazines, but once I had accumulated several years worth when I was first married, I realized they were not usable in their current state and the pile was going to get bigger. The method I devised for dealing with them is at the end of the year I go through each magazine and save the “best” articles.  I know they are all good so I have to be brutal. 

I don’t keep the articles with good stories or News of the Church — I just keep the articles with real meat in them.  I also keep the indexes in date order and write the name of the file where the article is located.  Then I file them under topic.  Years ago the seminary program had a topical index system, so I use that system which gives me main topics and sub-topics.

I have taught many Relief Society and gospel doctrine classes over the years and found having a topical file to be very helpful.  If I need to speak on prayer for instance, I just pull out my prayer file.  These files have been very useful.  With the new ability to search lds.org, some folks wouldn’t need this, but I like having hard copies in a file that I can quickly look through to find what I want.

Arlene Butler
Ogden, Utah

Thanks for your suggestion, Arlene. And the advantage of your system over using the one at lds.org is that you know what articles are inspirational to you.  Your files are customized in a way that could never be done on a general website.  Well done!

I, too, had this feeling of what to do with the Ensigns that have been read. After saving them for a number of years, I ended up throwing them away when I moved and the church library didn't need them.  So now I read them from cover to cover and then remove the articles I want to save for reference or resource and save them for one year and then throw the rest away and even feel a little guilty doing that. 

Shirley Armstrong
Hudson, Wisconsin 

As long as there’s a recycling bin, Shirley, you shouldn’t feel guilty.  Dennis Martin (who is from a Seattle suburb, which makes him an expert!), will tell you why:

We live in the Seattle area, where recycling is king,  For our region, it is more than just politically correct; for some people recycling approaches being a religious rite.  I think for the used church magazines, the recycling program makes dumping them a little less painful — knowing the paper will live again in another useful form.  And one can feel good about having contributed to the saving of a tree and saving some energy.

And, getting rid of those old unused church magazines may mean you can widen the path through your hall.

Dennis Martin
Lakewood, Washington

Dennis, you mean there are other people besides me who have to shuffle down the path in the hall to keep from tripping?  Thanks for some comforting news!

Electronic Green in Oklahoma agrees with you to the point that she reads her church magazines online.  You can be edified and save a tree at the same time!

And finally, here’s a letter that will give you permission — if you want it — to keep every church magazine that comes into your home:

We have been married 41 years and have every issue except 14 of the church magazines, all arranged in boxes, (3 years in a box) and organized chronologically.  So what if it takes the top shelf of the study cabinetry?  They are great resources, and the "feel of a real magazine in hand" cannot be replaced by the "click of a mouse button" (as fast as computers and mice) are.