Latter-day Saints Need the Old Testament

I always used to feel a little bit anxious when Sunday School cycled back around to the Old Testament My anxiety stemmed from two places: First, the sheer enormity of it -- it is more than twice as long as the New Testament. How was I ever going to read through the whole thing? And second, the seeming impenetrability of some of the language -- it was a maze of unfamiliar people, geography, and teachings. People joke about the Isaiah chapters in 2nd Nephi (of the Book of Mormon) being hard to read; for me, those were a piece of cake compared to parts of Deuteronomy and Leviticus.