Trying Something New!

Jim and I have been trying something new the past month or so for our family. We have chosen to attend our church's Wednesday night program once a month instead of weekly. On the weeks that we don't attend, we stay home, have a family dinner and have family bible time. We purchased a family bible at home program. It has been wonderful. A lot of the stress of Wednesday nights has been removed, we are as a family learning basic traits about God, memorizing scripture, and participating in fun activities together.

Our boys love this. I think because it is concentrated time where we all do something together and Mom/Dad participate in whatever activity we are doing.

Tonight's lesson was that God is loving. Pretty certain that my kids know this since of the basic truths from Wee Kids (our preschool program) is God loves you, but it was cool to take it a bit further and talk about what love really is, how God demonstrates love, when we feel unloveable, and what the ultimate sacrifice of love is.


This week, you started out with a time limit to list all of the people you could think of (if you don't see your name, I am sure it is under the papers!). Then we talked about how big God has to be to love all those people (and know everything about them too!). After practicing and working on memorizing John 3:16 (this one was for Conner, I think the rest of us knew this one, but he didn't so we decided to go for it), watching our bible dvd, we made signs to remind us through the week that God loves us even when we are unloveable (when we sin). We also drew names to write notes to each other to tell them three things we love about them (since loving others is a way we can show God we love Him).

Each week has been similiar, but different activities each week. We have done some drawing together (things we were thankful that God made) for creation, played hide and go seek the week we learned God is everywhere, and did some guessing games for learning God is all knowing. There are always questions that have been interesting too that have allowed us to learn things about each other we didn't know. Like when do we feel unloveable or where do we feel scared or what is our favorite thing in the house.

I am not sure what we will do when we get through the 24 lessons in the activity book or how we will feel 24 weeks from now, but right now it has been a good and rewarding experience for us. Some close friends of ours are doing it as well so it is fun to compare notes and keep each other accountable to actually do it and not just waste the wednesdays we don't go to church.