When I repent, I can be forgiven

Repentance. Such a great thing to teach children. It's such a beautiful apect of the gospel.

 

I like the idea of starting with the words cut out individually and piecing them together in to make the sentence "When I repent, I can be forgiven." (This is in the outline provided by the church.) If you didn't want to place them in envelopes you could stick them under random chairs and have them check. This is an immediate attention-getter, and I like it for that reason.

 

I like the story of the Prodigal Son. I think this is a good way to go, but I also really like the story of Alma the Younger. This came to my mind almost immediately when I was thinking this week over. I found an old friend article that tells the story for anyone who doesn't like summarizing themselves, you can find that HERE. I found a page on Sugardoodle (seriously, I love that site!) that is dedicated to this story. It has way too much to list but in short, it has links to clipart, lesson helps and a lot more that involve this story.  You can find all of that good stuff HERE.
 

This is the part I was really excited about. For this week I want to do a object lesson. Show everyone a penny that is clean and new looking. Tell them that this is them when they are born. Throughout their lives they make mistakes, they sin. If we don't repent we can't stay clean. Show them an old penny that is dirty. Pour some lemon juice into a clear glass and put the penny in. According to THIS site (I wanted to try this out before posting but haven't had the chance. It may be a good idea to that beforehand, haha), it will just wipe clean (You may have to soak it). Tell them that sin is like the dirt on the coin, and the repentance process is like the lemon juice. If we repent after we sin, we can be clean and pure like when we're babies (or after baptism). I thought the example of babies would be more universal because there are lots of kids in my primary who aren't 8 yet and therefore haven't been baptized.

Give each child a clean penny to take home to remind them of how they can repent and stay clean.

**Variations** Because I haven't tried this experiment yet, I am not sure how long it takes to soak the penny in the lemon juice to get it clean. If you do this at home first and it takes longer then 30 seconds or so, you may want to drop some dirty pennies in there before you do sharing time so they have time to soak and get clean. You can always drop a dirty one in and just pull a clean one out. I am going to have to test this to see if it works.

Sappy Time....

I, like most people, have a tendency to get overwhelmed with life. Sometimes this leads to me having thoughts of "what in the world have I done to deserve this??" I guess you could say in a "karma" sense of things. I consider myself to be a good person. I let people in front of me in check out lines, I try to do nice things for people I know that are going through a rough time, I respect my elders, I turn the other cheek, so where's all this bad karma coming from?

 

Then this morning, I was cuddling with my two year old, and I realized something. Despite whatever is going on in my life, I still have him. I was still given him by my Heavenly Father to watch over and teach. My Heavenly Father must love me A LOT to give me such a precious awesome little boy. Regardless of your religious beliefs, I think it's safe to say that children sometimes help parents see purpose in their own lives. And it just really hit me today that despite everything else going on in my sometimes crazy life I need to do everything I can to give my son the kind of life he deserves. I guess this post is more for me, to remind me of this when I forget.

 

Rant over.

Sharing Time: The Sacrament Renews our Baptismal Covenants

Each week we attend church we have the opportunity to partake in the sacrament. This is a time when we can reflect on our past week and focus on what we need to do better the next week. This is a reverent, sacred time while we await the bread and water to reach everyone. This week we are going to talk about why we take the sacrament.

Start off asking everyone if they did something special today. I'm sure you'll get a whole range of answers, but if no one says partake in the sacrament, tell them this is one of the most important things they do all week. Ask them why they think it is so important? You guessed it, this is because it renews our baptismal covenants! We've actually been told that Sacrament is the most important meeting we have all Sunday.

3 Nephi 18:1-11  is, in my opinion, a really good reference to read for this. I wouldn't have them read this all aloud in Jr. Primary, but it's not too bad for senior. It's just a little long for Jr. I would think. If you want to use this for Jr. I would pick out maybe 3 versus to read and just fill in the blanks before and after. I know I've said this before, but for anyone new, my primary is pretty small so we combine Jr. and Sr. for third hour and do singing time and sharing time together. I usually struggle to find a way to keep both groups engaged.

Now that we've gone over how important the sacrament is, I thought it would be good to focus on what our thoughts  and actions should be like during the sacrament. I've prepared a bit of an activity to get them thinking. I made word strips you can print and cut out (see my last paragraph about how to get these, I'm having technical difficulties at the moment). Draw a happy face on the chalk board and a sad face. Have a child come up and choose a word strip, read it, and figure out if it's a good thing to do during the Sacrament or a not very good thing. Tape it under either the smilie face or frown. I have 13 word strips so if you want to involve more kids, just think up a couple more things.

I also made a printable bookmark you can print out, laminate, and pass out for them to use in their scriptures. They can look at this during the sacrament to help remind them what their thoughts should be like.

 

 

I tried to upload a direct link to print these out, but it's not working. If you would like me to email the attachments to you directly, just comment leaving your email address and I will send them to you ASAP. Usually within an hour or two. I do have pictures above so you can see what they look like. Hopefully I can figure out how to get the direct links up again soon.

 

 

**Update 9/18/13 - I think I got the link up and working for these. This should take you to the Christ Bookmarks**

Sharing Time: If I Live Worthily, the Holy Ghost Will Help me to Choose the Right

I know that every week I say I'm so excited about this lesson, but this week I REALLY mean it, times 500! My nephew is getting baptized this Sunday!! So this lesson is so far beyond perfect, I can't even express it. I am excited to make this fun, spiritual, and educational. This is so important to the gospel of Christ. Soooo extremely important.

Last August I gave the talk on the Holy Ghost at a different nephews baptism. It was such a great opportunity to read and ponder about the Holy Ghost, it really helped to strengthen and develop my testimony even further on this subject.

What you need:
Scriptures
Some kind of fruit snacks (enough for everyone to go home with one pack and one pack for the lesson)

Start with scriptures, you can't go wrong. Have someone look up 3 Nephi 30:2, which is our scripture for this month. They should hear that so much during the month that they begin dreaming about it! ;) Ask the person who read the scripture (or even someone else), "When we are baptized we make covenants with Heavenly Father, we talked about these last week. Once we're baptized are we all on our own or does Heavenly Father give us anything to help us choose the right?"

I think it's good to emphasize that the Holy Ghost is a gift from Heavenly Father. I am going to pull my nephew to the front (you could do this as well, just do it with someone who was maybe recently baptized.) I am going to ask him if he received any gifts because he is getting baptized (I know he did, because I got him something! If they say no, you can say weeellll, actually you did...and go into the Holy Ghost from there). I then will explain that he is going to get something priceless from our Heavenly Father, the Gift of the Holy Ghost. He gives us this gift to help us choose the right when we are faced with temptation. We only get this gift after we are baptized. Before we are baptized we can be touched by the Holy Ghost, meaning we can feel the spirit, but it isn't with us all the time until after we are baptized and receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost is the best friend we could ever have. He will never lead us astray. He can never lie to us. He will only help us to make good choices. But if we choose to not live the commandments, he cannot stay.

Ask the primary children, "How does the Holy Ghost help us to choose the right?"

I mentioned earlier that he cannot lie to us. This means he will only ever tell us the truth. He will testify to us of things. This will help us to grow our testimony. There a lot of times when we read something or hear something and we can feel it's true. Probably the easiest example to explain to the primary children is when we read the scriptures and we feel the spirit. Or when someone is bearing their testimony and we're able to feel the spirit so strongly, that is the Holy Ghost testifying to us that what we are hearing is true. Have someone read Moroni 10:5.

The Holy Ghost can also comfort us. He is referred lots of times in the scriptures as "The Comforter." There have been many times in my life that I get panicked and stressed out about something, and I know the Holy Ghost has helped to calm and comfort me. This was especially true when my great grandmother died. She lived with us for a few years before she died, so I was really upset when I found out. She was the first person I've ever really known who has died, so it was something new for me. I could tell that not only was I comforted, but I felt that she was okay and that she loved me. I'm sure we all have stories along these lines.

The Holy Ghost will guide you in life if you allow him. Because he will let you know when you are about to make a bad choice, he will try to help you go down a correct path to make good choices. I say try because we all have our agency and will choose what we want. The Holy Ghost only encourages, he doesn't force.

Now it's time for the object lesson. I used this idea with my nephew for his Holy Ghost talk at his baptism nearly a year ago, so I apologize I do not remember where I read it to give proper credit. If anyone recognises this PLEASE comment below so I can link it up. I tried to find it and couldn't.

Call someone up to the front, open a pack of fruit snacks. Ask them to eat one, just one. Ask them what flavor it is. Let's just pretend they picked up a grape one, they will tell you it's grape (hopefully! haha!). Ask them, what if I told you that was orange? That's not what it is, but what if I tried to convince you it is orange. They will most likely remark, well it isn't orange, it's grape. The Holy Ghost cannot lie to us. If he knows a "fruit snack" is grape, he will tell you it's grape. He will never try to convince us it's "orange."

Send everyone home with a pack of fruit snacks so they can remember that the Holy Ghost will never try to decieve us or lie to us.

The other thing I think is important to discuss is that everyone feels the spirit differently. Some of us feel a burning sensation, others feel calm and comforted. Everyone is different and will feel it differently, its important to develop a special relationship with heavenly father so we can recognize the spirit and be able to use it when we need it. No one will be able to tell them how they will feel it, it's something they have to figure out themselves.

Tell them that all these wonderful things the Holy Ghost can do for us only happen if we live our lives in a way that he can be with us. If we do not, he has to leave. The spirit can not dwell in unholy places. You may want to go over some things that would cause the spirit to leave.

Close with your testimony. 

Here's a link for a Holy Ghost coloring page.