Natural Family Planning International

THE NFPI HOME STUDY COURSE FOR BEGINNERS and FOR MARRIAGE PREPARATION

What is it?  The NFPI home-study course is a convenient way for married and engaged couples to learn natural family planning or to take it for marriage preparation.

What’s involved? 
• Studying the NFPI manual, Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach.
• Learning how to observe, record, and interpret the signs of female fertility.
• Learning how to practice ecological breastfeeding.
• Learning the importance of the marriage covenant.
• Completing three tests based on the chapters of the NFPI manual.

Certificate of Completion.  When a person shows a working knowledge of NFP and Catholic teaching on this subject by the completion of the above, a course certificate will be sent to the person or the priest who wants the certificate. If a person fails to show a working knowledge of NFP and Catholic teaching on this subject at a certain date, NFPI is obliged not to grant a course certificate.  The subject matter is not intellectually difficult, and NFPI will work with students until they acquire a working knowledge as demonstrated by charting and answering the basic questions in the tests.

When to start.  For marriage preparation, you need to start at least six months before the wedding date.

Donation for the course:
 • Send a donation of $70 (U.S. dollars only) or more (payable to NFP International) to: NFP International; P. O. Box 11216; Cincinnati OH 45211
 • Or donate at the website.  Let us know by email the date of your donation.

•Upon receipt of the donation, the first test will be sent.
 
•Purchase a Becton Dickinson digital basal thermometer.  See Books/Thermometer at the And More section on the left side of the NFPI Home Page.

•Obtain Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach in one of two ways:
 1.  Purchase the manual at the NFPI Home Page.  We recommend the coil (spiral) edition because it lies flat.   
 2.  Download it from the NFPI Home Page.  Use 3-hole paper and a 3-ring binder.

•Download free charts from the NFPI Home Page.

The NFPI Home  Study Course is inexpensive  and is an easy way to learn natural family planning.  The NFPI manual is written in a simple question-and-answer format. 

Sheila Kippley

To teach Natural Family Planning, do you need an expensive PowerPoint projector along with an expensive spare light bulb?  We don’t think so.
        We have access to a PowerPoint program and projector, but we don’t use them.  Instead, we teach directly from our manual, Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach.   We sit at a table facing the attending couples at their tables.  All of us have the manual from which we teach.   When we asked our attending couples during the first few courses we taught if they would like us to use PowerPoint, we thought they would prefer the “modern” way, but the couples said “no.” They said it was much more personal this way.   We also use a minimum of electricity.
       In the past, we have taught with slides and we have taught with PowerPoint, but we have come to enjoy this simple teaching method. At the time we began teaching for our current pastor about two years ago, we read a review of a book which stated that PowerPoint is now boring and no longer holds one’s interest, that you can grab their attention more by writing on a blackboard or on a napkin!
       This style of teaching can be done even in poor areas that do not have electricity on a regular basis.   If somebody has a computer and Internet access, manuals can be copied from our website when the electricity, computer, and printer are working.  The manuals can also be purchased from the publisher in many countries.   Teaching can also be done outside during the day if natural light is needed. This way of NFP teaching requires little in the way of materials and money.  It requires no equipment.   It is “green.”

Sheila Kippley
Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach