4th Sunday in Advent: Songs & Service

This Sunday, we talked about songs and service.   We talked about songs in our parent discussion topic and sang ‘Away in the Manger’ together so that it would be familiar to the little ones on Christmas Eve.  We sang some fun Christmas action songs as well.  We also talked about  service by making a service project!  I am so proud of all the parents that were able to participate in this service project, as well as all the parents that may get an idea to do this on their own: we made Blessing Bags.

Blessing Bags are bags of necessities – food, hygiene supplies, etc. to give out to the needy and homeless among us.  I requested at the beginning of the month that each family bring in 10 of an item from a list below (10 pairs of gloves or 10 packets of hot cocoa in one box or 10 granola bars, etc.).  Most of these items can be found at the dollar store and/or in a multi-pack.  I brought in extras as well because the point of this project was that we all pack 1 of each item into 10 Ziploc bags and each person gives their bag away sometime when they encounter a person that may need it.  Some ideas of supplies are: granola bars, cereal bars or snack crackers, peanut butter packets, beef jerky, little boxes of raisins, peanuts, applesauce cups or squeezers, fruit cups, juice boxes, trail mix, gum, mints, bottled water, hot cocoa mix, instant coffee packets, hand sanitizer, baby wipes, tooth brush, toothpaste, washcloth, hand towel, soap, comb, nail clippers, socks, gloves, hand warmers, chap stick and travel sized tissues. 

Everyone brought in an amazing amount of supplies and we each took turns making a bag while our young ones played on the floor or colored together.  This week, I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures and THEN, when I got home, I realized that even though everyone got a blessing bag and one of our Mustard Seed moms kindly took all the extras to The Seattle Church of Mary Magdalene , I FORGOT to take one myself to give out!!  Gaah!!  However, you will be happy to know that I did not let me off the hook.  I made a blessing bag from items I had at home and plan to add a few more and give it away as well.  I am glad that I got an additional opportunity to prove that it is easy to make these bags by all the blessings that we have ourselves already.  Here’s a picture of the one that I made:

The parent topic this week was to share our favorite Christmas carol and the significance of that carol.  Also, the story for this week was SilentNight (Sing and Read Storybook) , illustrated by Darcy May, which we all sang together as I turned the pages for the pictures.  The last thing I did was to read a storybook to the grownups as well as the kids.  I read a beautifully illustrated and written book called Great Joy by Kate DiCamillo, a Newberry Medal winner and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline.  It tells the story of a little girl who sees a man and his performing monkey living on the street and she invites him to her Christmas Pageant at her church.  I highly recommend this beautiful, thoughtful book about giving.

Lastly, as a gift to the Mustard Seeds families, I gave everyone this:

 

We as Mustard Seeds are truly blessed.  We are blessed to see our children grow in faith, body and mind and we see our own faith grow and develop as well.  Thanks be to God!