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Follow up: Service & Gratitude

11/15/2016

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​Class member:  We have put up a gratitude tree where we add leaves and when the missionaries were over they added to my trees.
 
Class member:  That’s all my husband talked about was change percentages this week.  He said ‘that’s the best thing ever’. 
 
Class member:  I am overwhelmed, just knowing that I need to do it.  I don’t want to fight everyone about that.  Sometime’s Mom has a great idea and everyone fights about it.  Challenge them to come up with the idea. 
 
You can say the prophet told us to take care of the refugees.  Have an idea in the back of your mind. 
 
Class member:  Last year to go along with the “beware of pride” we decided that we would get someone in our family to the temple each week if we could and did family history at home if we couldn’t.  Our family wanted to still do the temple service again this year.  It can’t help, but help you come out of pride a little bit.  They help each other work on family history too and finding names.  They looked through our budget and decided what we could do to help out with a family missionary that was out.  They looked at what they could cut out (eating out, entertainment, etc) to use that money to help care for the missionary.
 
Class member:  We talked about maybe we could invite some of the single invite them for dinner or to a band concert or something. 
 
These are fabulous opportunities. 
 
One Thanksgiving when most of my kids were coming home I took $10 for each grandchild.  I said you have from now until Christmas to do something amazing for someone else.  For the Christmas Eve program you can share what you did.  I would prefer you wouldn’t just hand it to someone on the street corner.  They came up with creative things.  One bought lunch for someone at school that needed it.  Someone else had done a “Pay it Forward”.  That was a fun experience.
 
One thing my kids remember the most we always picked a family in a different ward.  The kids were to get 3 things for one of the people in that family.  They had to get something to eat, something to wear, and something that was fun.  They had to earn their budget.  I was more generous paying for jobs that time of the year.  On a FHE we would all go shopping.  We came home and had a huge wrapping party.  On Christmas Eve we would do the ditch and run.  It was really snowing hard.  We ended up with 2 trampolines that year.  We decided we were going to give one of them to this family.  The oldest kids weren’t out of high school.  We were trying to put up a trampoline in the middle of the road ‘quietly’.  We had to carry it down the road to this house.  They carried the trampoline to the front door.  To watch that family open the door and see what was there it was amazing!  They talk about it and talk about it.  They are all doing it in their families. 
 
We’ve almost been caught a couple of times.  It still is magical.  We’ve done missionaries that will write and sent our missionaries big boxes that they could hand out to children. 
 
Class member:  My sister-in-law is on his mission in Guatemala.  He was in such a scary location.  His Mom just felt the need to help the best they could.  They ended up taking their 5 kids to Mexico last year from Christmas.  They told them that going was Christmas.  They helped build an orphanage. 
 
Up front it looks like another job on the job list.  You have to have faith first and do it before you see how it changes the lives of your children and you.  If you want to do something really hard to the Twelve Days of Christmas. 
 
Continue to think about it and maybe you can make part of your Thanksgiving discussions. 
 
Class member:  We finally finished our family mission statement.  We wrote it in a poem form.  I have 3 boys right now. 
 
Class member:  I read over all the notes…the Service Continuum.  How do you help the kids to get from the “I won’t” to the “I have to” to the “I want”?
 
Teach it in a FHE.  Give them an empty chart.  You only have to move from one step to another.  Help them to say “I want to” or “I will”.  Verbalize when you are walking up to the next step.  A lot of times our kids are on the “I won’t” then they look at perfection and they feel defeated and so do you.  We need to help them move up a little at a time and help them fill value.  Give them opportunities to serve.  Do family service projects.  It needs to be hard, but they can have fun together.  Service is physical!  They have to do it on all levels.  For the family for each other. 
 
Class member:  My family did service projects each year, but I didn’t get it until I was an adult.  I remember how hard it was as an 8 year old child to give away candy. 
 
All of my kids were at a science fair.  We were coming home and dressed nice.  We drove past an elderly man in the ward and he had leaves everywhere in his yard.  We didn’t have a lot of leaves.  His yard was a blanket of leaves.  They said, “Can we stop and rake leaves”.  We pulled over.  They raked the yard and they were filthy when we got home.  They had fun in the leaves.
 
You have to be creative and make it fun.  Consistent little ones can be more powerful.  It’s learning to live in gratitude which attitude produces service.  You can do service and it’s a ‘job’.  If you have service based on gratitude it is filled with joy. 
 
We should get involved in community service projects.
 
Class member:  A lot of the schools have leadership projects.  You can always go with them.  If you are looking for ideas. 
 
The bottom line is that you have to look for them.  You have to want to teach service intentionally. 
 
Class member:  There is a website www.justserve.org
 
Mom, you are the one that has to do it and you have to find these opportunities to serve. 
 
Class member:  Malary was getting ready to go on her mission and she asked Nate who works at the MTC what she can do to get ready to go on her mission.  He said the best thing you can do is to go down once a week and serve at the soup kitchen.  You need to be comfortable with reaching out to those not in your bubble.  We need to get our children out of their comfort zones for people who need service and not in the ‘church’ circle. 
 
My challenge is…don’t just let service be just at this time of the year.
 
Class member:  There is someone in our ward who takes the little kids to all the widow’s homes and give them a rose on Valentine’s Day.  
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    Carleen Tanner

    Notes from classes and other information will be posted here.  Also you can order syllabus and CDs from the store or check out the "Traditions" that class members have shared.  You can also ask a Parenting and/or Marriage Question.

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