I am so grateful for
Primary teachers who reinforce the things that we, as parents, strive to teach
our children at home.
David's Primary
teacher helped the children in her class make a chain at the beginning of
December. Each day they were to take off
one link of the chain, and when all the
links were removed, they would know that Christmas Day was finally here. During that same lesson, she introduced the
church's "Light the World" initiative. She told the children that we had been asked, as a church, to do something to serve or brighten
someone's day, every day of the month of December.
David got so excited
at the idea of serving his family and friends.
He woke up that next morning and announced that he was going to sweep
the neighbor's driveway all by himself.
He was adamant that he had to do it alone, and that no one could go with
him, even just to be his buddy. We
finally convinced him to let a big sister tag along, and he did his act of
service. When he came home he tore off a
link of his chain and said, "Mom, my teacher says I have to do service and
then stick this on the wall." He
got some tape and stuck his link of paper chain on my kitchen wall.
Over the next few
days, he did a lot of acts of service, and stuck a lot of bits of colored paper
to my kitchen wall. Sometimes I would
walk in as he was taping one up and he would tell me, "Mom, I shared my apple
with Nathan, " or "Mom, I put Sophia's shoes in the
garage." By the middle of December
there were only a few links left on his chain.
He told me, "Mom, there are only a few days left until
Christmas. See, my chain is almost
gone."
He was a little
confused about the connection between his chain and being asked to serve. But no matter. My kitchen wall is a beautiful reminder of a
little boy's desire to serve this Christmas season. I love it, and may leave it up for a while,
even after Christmas is over.
