Today, I enjoyed my church meeting quite a lot. One of the speakers at sacrament meeting was a returned missionary I've never met, but I know his mother. What a contagious spirit this young man had. He had such a genuinely happy countenance. I couldn't help but listen with interest to his talk. I love to be around happy people. He wasn't funny; he didn't tell a single joke. He just smiled and told of his feelings about Christmas and some of his mission experiences that reinforced those feelings. Great, great spirit while he talked!
Primary was busy, but fun. I had the kiddos in Sr. Primary make pictures for different lines in the song "Samuel tells of baby Jesus" and then taped them together and put them into my newly made "roller box." It was kind of crazy, but with some help we got it to work. I scrolled through the pictures while we sang the song. I think the kids thought it was fun. It certainly wasn't something I've done before. I will use this technique for future Family Home Evening lessons and maybe once a year in Primary or something.
I've been trying to think of things I can do to increase the spirit of service at our house. I want to do something to help us focus on Christ as well, but not the same things we've done in the past. It needs to be simple enough that I can arrange it all without a lot of fuss and even the youngest can participate. Not the straws in the manger-- too messy. A friend gave me an idea a few weeks ago, but true to form, I forgot to write it down, and now I'm not sure of the details. If anyone has a great idea, please send it my way.
I'd love for the week before Christmas to be more focused on Christ than on presents. I think you all know what I mean. I know that I need to get my Christmas life in order, too. I started reading The Life of Christ by Frederic Farrar this past week. It was one of my goals to have read it this year. Better a late start than not at all, right. It is a monstrously thick thing that will take some time. My hope is to at least read a chapter each night. So far, so good. My gift for the Savior for 2009? Right now I'm thinking about a couple of things. Stuff like reading each Ensign magazine cover-to-cover each month, going to the temple twice each month, and doing some act of service (besides taking care of my family) once a week. Anyone have something wonderful they are planning to do this coming year? I'd love to hear about it!
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After church today the kids were telling us about their lessons etc...and the next thing we were doing was drawing names out of Quinsie's purse. We didn't even know why we were doing it, but she told each of us that this was our secret friend, and that we were supposed to do nice things for them until christmas. I thought this was so cute, and so simple, but the fact that she did this on her own made it even that much sweeter!
We have a star wand (someone brought it home from Primary a couple years ago) that we place on someone's pillow when we've done a secret service for them. They're supposed to do a bit of service for someone else and pass it along. Currently they've been stuck in the same kids' room for days. We'll be doing good if we can just have everyone get along for the holidays. (It's gonna be a long couple of weeks.)
Stars were Gleaming
Each kid gets their own colored star, each service brings a chance to put their star in a jar on the table - at dinner you can talk about service (secret or not) and share that we all get to rejoice in the Savior's birth and resurrection and the more we act like him the brighter we shine - like stars in the night sky on the night of his birth.
They don't have to tell what service they did and it doesn't have to be at home -last week of school - make your teacher feel good, or at church, or in the neighborhood (Mark cleaned snow off of both neighbors driveways and sidewalks). The neighbor who has hated us, hasn't talked to us in 4 years - actually came out and thanked him for doing it. Mark did more in 1 act of service than we'd been able to do in 4 years of living next door to him.
I love the wand idea - I'm going to do that for the week of Christmas. I love it when the boys get so excited to not only do something for someone else, but to have nice things done for them.
To focus on Christ, I liked this idea from my friend's blog:
http://twelvemonthsinthecreek.
blogspot.com/2008/12/happy-12-days-of-christmas.html
It's easy and could be adapted however you want. Sometimes I find it easy to forget that, above all else, the scriptures will bring us to Christ.
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