““So how did you come up with these cards in the first place?” is the most common question I am asked. 

Well, I’ll tell you.

I have worked with Young Men in LDS Church organizations for most of my adult life.  I think that is largely due to the fact that I am mostly just a big kid myself.  Most recently I have found myself working as a councilor in the Stake Young Men’s Presidency of the Kaysville East Stake (Utah).  I work with the 14-16 year old age groups.  This is commonly the age during which a young man makes some really important determinations in life of who they are and what they plan to be.  Sadly, too many of them decide that being righteous and faithful is not in the cards for them.  (pun intended)

With that in mind, we as a presidency were challenged to come up with something that we could put into the hands of the youth every month that would encourage them to do what is right. We labored over this for some time because, as everyone knows, if you simply put a spiritual thought on a 3 X 5 card, that card ends up in the trash. We wanted to give the boys something that they’d want to hold on too and possibly refer to throughout their lives.

As I considered this task, I sat in a meeting with our Stake President where he spoke about the challenges we all face on a daily basis and the choices we have to make. In his talk he referred to the passage in the Doctrine and Covenants 27: 15-18, which is an almost word for word restating of Ephesians 6: 11-18 that speaks about putting on the armor of God.

BANG!  The lights went on in my head, and what eventually became these cards began to form. I knew that if I could create images of armor, make a card for each piece of armor and then have some kind of spiritual thought on the back of the card that I’d have something that the boys would be more likely to hang on too. At first I was concerned that there were only six pieces of armor, and we had been challenged to come up with 12 reminders but I quickly came to the realization that I could do armor from different periods of history and make unique messages for each one.

Quality artwork is a big deal to me. I have worked for over 20 years as a professional artist and I take a great deal of pride in my work. I have rendered these cards using 3D modeling and animation software to get a photo quality look and feel to them.

It took me nearly a year of working in my spare time to create the final products and I went through several revisions. I did a lot of research and tested the cards on several people before settling on what you see on this site.

When I presented my idea to the others that I work with their excitement was palpable. We decided to formulate an entire activity around the theme of ‘Putting on the Armor of God’ and used these cards as the central part of the activity.  If you’d like to know more about this activity click here.  Because we had to hit a deadline for this activity with these cards, they were unfortunately printed with a few errors on them. I apologize for this and hope that it doesn’t detract too much from the message.

I like to use the analogy of Ben Hur in describing the appeal of these cards.  When I ask you what you remember most from the movie Ben Hur you most likely will say “the chariot race!” Maybe some other action sequence.  But if I ask you to think about it, isn’t the movie really the story of Jesus Christ? It starts with his birth and ends with the events surrounding his crucifixion. The story is one of redemption and faith.  So it is with these cards.  The point is not to glorify war and violence, but to teach using powerful metaphors.

In all I have gotten a lot of really positive feedback on this little project. I am thrilled that it has had a positive effect on people around me. My children love them and I have gotten a lot of really neat comments from the young men of our stake.

I hope that you find these cards to be as much of a joy as I have had making them.

TONY

If you’d like to know more about me personally click here.