It has been on our hearts for quite some time to be more purposeful in raising our girls. Sure, we pray together throughout the day, we have family Bible times, and we correct and instruct our girls with love in the way the Lord has shown us in the Bible. But is that enough? Are we purposing in not only our hearts, but through our actions as well? So, we started a couple of new things that so far, are hitting the nail on the head. First, since moving back from Illinois, we wanted to start serving again at church. But instead of me serving in kids ministry, we wanted to serve together as a family. Christian and I signed up to serve and were assigned the coffee ministry. The first night we went alone and left the girls at home. Coffee ministry was awesome. . . but short. We were done within 45 minutes. We noticed the massive clean up that needed to take place after the evening service . . . and the few people there doing this big job. So, we came home and asked the girls what they thought about helping. Honestly, there were some mixed reviews. But, once we brought them with us the next week, they loved it. . . and they worked HARD. We are only signed up for coffee ministry, not clean up afterwards, and we are only signed up for once a month. . . but we go every week. We help out coffee ministry workers and then stay and help with the clean up and tear down. I don't share this to toot our horn, but rather to encourage others to serve as families and to share what has gone on in our girls hearts. They absolutely LOVE to serve at church. It's so easy to say that once the kids are older they can find a role to serve in. But why wait? The girls are blessing others . . . but more than that. . . they are seeing what it feels like to work hard and bless others in a role that is unseen. It is a sacrifice. We don't get home from church until a bit after 9pm. . . not too late . . . except for the fact that the Littles go to bed between 7:30 and 8pm. They know, that if they are cranky the next day, they may not get to serve as often. Serving is something that has become important to them. . . and it's slowly changing their hearts in little ways. :)
The second thing we started doing was Christian's idea. The girls are constantly memorizing verses in class at church and at home during their school; but we wanted to memorize verses as a family. So, we bought some frames and are going to be putting them all around the house with different verses in them. The plan is a new verse every other week - long enough to have the verse down, but short enough to not get ho-hum about it. So far we have two verses up. . . and typically, not a day goes by without one of the girls saying the verse aloud while sitting on the couch. We want God's Word to be on the tip of our tongue throughout the day. What better way to encourage that than to have it all over the walls? :)
Now, if we could somehow teach how to be purposeful in picking up after one self, I may be unemployed very soon.
