do I need to be a professional?

My husband bought this camera for my birthday with the understanding it was very user friendly. Some how we lost our original settings and when we read the owners manual we were totally lost. So when you are in the shooting mode of the menu and it says "selects the iso from auto to ........400" what does that mean? what is an AF area or a histogram showing the luminance distribution of still pictures? A manual with a little, who am I kidding, a lot of advice on the right settings for the type of pictures you are trying to achieve would really help us "non pros." This camera seems very slow in the action mode. I took pics of my son's basketball game and not one picture ended up with a face like the viewer showed when I pushed the button. Very disappointed. our church X-mas program was pretty dark and with my flash on I only got black pictures. thank goodness for the delete button! But I have no pictures for the kids scrapbook of their X-mas program.