November 2012 Week 3 Sharing Time: I can teach my friends about Jesus Christ and His church.

I haven't posted on here in so long it feels like. About a week and a half ago my son got sick with an upper respiratory infection. He got an antibiotic, but of course my husband and I still got it, and worse then he did. So I have been in a coughing fit with a fever for about a week. Just when I thought, "I'm feeling better," my son threw up all over me. It looks like it's just a stomach bug, but somehow that doesn't help me feel any less helpless. I feel terrible for him. He doesn't like the bland diet he's on and he doesn't understand why he doesn't have the energy to get up and play. It hasn't been fun, but I'm hoping it won't last more then another day or two. So long story short, I appreciate your patience as I write this next sharing time, as it will probably be written over a several day span. I'm hoping my thoughts are coherent. 

Like I mentioned in my previous post, missionary work is something really close to my families heart. We are fortunate to have great missionaries. We have both a senior couple and a pair of full time Elders and we are lucky to get to work closely with them. 


If your Primary didn't make missionary badges on any of the previous weeks, I still think it's an awesome idea. I will be doing it for this week. Even if you did it on a previous week, you could pass them out to anyone who was not there, or maybe if kids didn't bring them in. Here you can find links and ideas on how to do this. 


I want to open it up to the Primary to share stories of how they've shared the gospel. See if anyone has a story about how they've taught a friend about Jesus or the gospel. This can be as simple as a time they've invited a friend to church, answered a question about our Church, Christ or even just religion in general. It can also be a time they shared their favorite scripture story in church. If you don't have anyone raise their hand, share a story from your youth. You could also dive right into the story I talk about in the next paragraph. This will give them a chance to think of something.

In the outline it says to share the story about the boy sharing the articles of faith, and the older man being so impressed by this. I LOVE this story. I heard it when I was a young girl, and it has always stayed with me. In fact, I'm grateful the outline gave a reference for it, because I never could remember where I heard it from. Here is a link to the November 1975 Ensign article that has the story in it.  I think this story illustrates the concept of being a missionary now so well. I also love that it's something that anyone can do, even the sunbeams. Also, memorizing the Articles of Faith is something they can do now to prepare for a mission later in life. With the age lowered for young men and women to serve missions, they have less time to prepare. That makes preparing while in Primary that much more significant.

In the outline it wants us to work on The Articles of Faith. I really like their idea for an activity. If you wanted to do something different, I had a few ideas for that too. 

1. It thought it would be fun to prepare a punch board. In each area you could have an article of faith with a couple words missing. Whoever's turn it is has to fill in the words to complete it. For the Junior Primary you could focus on the first 5 or 6 Articles of Faith. This way, they have a better chance of actually memorizing one, or knowing which words to fill in.

2. Another option with the punch board is to not only put Articles of Faith in the holes, but also stories from Christ's life. For example, one hole could say "Tell the story of when Christ walked on water." To me, this would be neat because in order to teach our friends of Christ's church and about him, we need to be familiar with his life. 

3. Another idea is to have them divide into groups and make a little skit about an opportunity to share the gospel. Assign each group a location (for example: school, a friends house, soccer practice, cub scouts, etc) and have the group come up with a scenario that they would have the opportunity to share the gospel. To incorporate the Articles of Faith, you could have them choose which one would be good to know for that scenario. Then they can share their skit with the rest of the Primary.