Book 2 encourages us to develop skills of presenting Baha'i concepts to local families and introducing Bah'ai themes into conversations. Some find that the Sanchez' don't live in their neighborhoods, and sometimes the participants do not practice giving the presentations. The skills to be developed in Book 2 relevant world wide, so how do we make it come alive. Consider these thoughts from Newfoundland:

In Unit 1 "The Joy of Teaching"we were struck by the many ocean images and did a simple art activity to express our understandings of one of these quotes, the power and beauty of the ocean, the pearls treasured in its depths. Next time we plan to visit nearby Cape Spear to directly experience the power of the waves crashing on the rocks and contemplate the vastness and immense wealth hidden in our North Atlantic seas.

For Unit 2, "Deepening Themes," we decided to develop a local equivalent to the Sanchez family. We were concerned that just changing the name of the family was not enough -- the scenario would remain somewhat artificial and encourage us to slip into a theoretical mode of thinking. We wanted it to be realistic, and challenge us to think about the kind of family we would be deepening here.

So our study circle of 10 participants divided themselves into three groups, each consulting about a typical Newfoundland deepening situation and analyzing how we would introduce to them the particular topic. We soon found ourselves with 3 quite different profiles: one a single mother with 3 children, another a retired fisherman and his wife living round the bay who had decided to open a tourist home, and third a couple in Nain, Labrador, he a retired school teacher and his Inuit wife much respected for her knowledge of native culture. We discussed aspects like hospitality, how to arrange a visit to that home and how to introduce the topic.

After we studied each of the topics in Unit 2 we would role play it in one of the situations we had developed, practicing how we would present these ideas to this particular group of people. We soon realized that here in Newfoundland such 'talks' would actually be teaching not deepening so two of our participants gave fireside talks on two of the topics.

Now imagine our surprise to find that we are indeed teaching a retired couple round the bay who run a hospitality home where we have several times overnighted on our way back and forth to Summer School! And just tonight a single mum with 3 children has declared her faith in Baha'u'llah. As in our scenario she was primarily interested in having her children attend Baha'i classes, then attended firesides and a Book 1 study circle to better understand what her children would be learning.