One of the most requested topics this year on my speaking circuit has been a lesson in which I list a hundred ideas for training our kids to be servants. Service oriented kids grow up to be productive adult servants in the kingdom and it’s those people to whom the Lord will say, “Come ye blessed of my Father,” according to Matthew 25. So it matters if I’m making a real effort, as a mom, to put the heart of a servant in my child. For this reason, I’ve decided to devote a post, every now and then, to a service suggestion—a simple idea for moms to make their homes busy service centers for young hearts and hands. I’d love to hear from those of you who try them. So here goes:
Make for Missions
I hope your congregation has a hands-on type view of foreign missions. By that I mean that representatives from your eldership and some of your members actually go to the sites and see for themselves what’s going on. This approach is a great idea for at least two reasons. The first reason is that your elders will be sure that the money you are sending, as a church, is being appropriated properly–that sound doctrine is being taught by faithful stewards. The second is that those faithful missionaries need your visits to encourage and bless them as they strive to spread the borders of the kingdom in those difficult areas.
And when they do go, there is a great opportunity for your kids to participate in the good that’s going on. Suppose your kids were to make cards to go in the suitcases of the traveling brethren. Imagine an elders’ wife sneaking your kids’ cards of encouragement in the luggage of the traveling elder for him to find when he gets to the foreign land. Or what if your kids made a card for the foreign congregation to go on the bulletin board there? Suppose they included pictures of the children in your church for the kids there to see on that bulletin board? It can do more good than you know–on both ends.
Maybe your children are artistic and would like to make book marks or beaded bracelets or refrigerator magnets for your representative to hand out to members in the foreign church. Maybe you have a teenager who could even crochet a baby blanket to send over for the expecting preacher’s wife in your mission field. Perhaps your son could make up a few bags of candy for the children in a particular class in that tiny foreign church. The ideas are endless. The items you suggest to your children just need to be very small and very lightweight, since the recent imposed charges for extra luggage on flights have taken effect.
At West Huntsville, our elders go to Ukraine, Colombia, Argentina, and India. Bookmarks will be going to Argentina in January and then, later on in 2012 hand-crocheted scarves will be headed to the freezing Ukraine. I know both will be welcomed. The children in your church or family could just write colorful little notes of encouragement for the missionary family and fold them up to fit in a zippy bag in the traveling luggage. Then, after the representative arrives in the foreign country he could put the notes in a “happy jar” (purchased there to avoid breakage and save weight in travel) for the mission family and tell them to draw out a note each day and unfold it and read it aloud at their family devotionals. You could even try to have enough notes to provide one for every single day between visits by the Americans. (If your work is in a country where there is a language difference, you could find a translator to staple the translation to each of these little notes, but be sure you go ahead and send the original writing and/or artwork of each child, as well.)
The mission families will be blessed. But there will be a blessing just as big in your home, too!
PS. If you live in the Ellijay, Ga. area, you can go hear Hannah Giselbach speak on purity to moms and teens at the Ellijay Church of Christ (hlcolley@gmail.com for info) or, if you live in the Huntsville, AL area, hear Peggy Coulter at Mastin Lake Road (sparksremarks@hotmail.com for info). You’ll be blessed at either.
