Home Church - Putting Others First

Doug's preaching this weekend, which means he has our one car.  Usually I try to walk to the East End campus of North Way on these weekends, but it wasn't physically possible this time.  We just got snow and the sidewalks are covered with snow, slush and ice.  Not only would it be tough for me to plow through with the stroller, but it would be treacherous for Koen on his scooter.  So, I resorted to Church of the Home again.  I like making sure the kids realize that it's still important to give that time to the Lord and it definitely gives us something to do during the morning.  Thankfully, Koen did get to attend North Way Oakland as a friend (and one of our favorite babysitters) was going to the 9am service and Koen hitched a ride with her.  While he was gone we did our usual Tavin/Mommy/Penn Rye routine which is quite chill.  He's Penn sporting his adorable big boy pajamas...melt my heart!

When he got back a little before 11am, we were ready for our service.  But as you can see here, Tavin was prepared with his Bible all morning long.  

We started our church time in the living room with me explaining our theme of "Putting Others First."  I found another "Paws & Tales" video actually entitled, "Putting Others First" so that was our storytime.  Here are the boys taking it in.  Koen is hilarious with TV...that kid hones in.  Tav, on the other hand...it was totally over his head.

After the video, we chatted about putting other first, above ourselves.  Tav was so excited about his Bible that I had to make a story out of that edition work in with our theme, so we read about the Good Samaritan for his sake and I tied it in for Koen (obviously it does tie in, but I was trying to keep all the terminology similar and Tav's Bible didn't exactly have this story laid out perfectly for "putting others first").  Tav was happy we used his Bible.  It is so precious the way he loves it so much.  We read it before nap every day and before bed.  It warms my heart and I've just been praying that this is just the beginning of him yearning for God's Word all his life.  Anyways, next I taught the boys a song I had learned in school as a child.  You'll see a video of it later, but it totally led up to our craft time which we headed to next.  Here are the supplies for our J-O-Y craft.

So, the song goes...J-O-Y, J-O-Y, tell you what it means...Jesus first, yourself last and others in between.  I had Koen cut out all the letters and then I had prepared construction paper cards with 1, 2 and 3 written on them.  Koen (and Tav with help) had to put the appropriate letter in the right numerical place.  J, for Jesus goes first, O, for Others, comes second and then Y for You, always comes last in third.  We made about 20 of these cards and the repetition of J-O-Y on 1-2-3 actually really seemed to get the point home that we serve God first, then others, then ourselves.  Here's Koen cutting out the letters and then gluing them on.

Here's Tav attempting to cut them out and then doing a great job gluing them on in the right places.  He really got it with the J to 1, O to 2 and Y to 3.  I was impressed!

Here are the boys (well, me leading Koen and Tav mumbling along) singing our song of the day.

As you saw in the supplies picture, I also had typed up some verses that talk about this principle of putting others first.  We cut those out too and each J-O-Y card has a verse that the boys glued on the back.  Now we are going to use these cards each day to keep this principle top of mind (I obviously picked this topic on purpose because it's something that these brothers struggle with as so many siblings do (well, let's give them some credit, all humans do)).  When we see one of the boys putting others before themselves, we will put a J-O-Y card into the daily envelope.  At the end of each day, at dinner, we will count up our J-O-Y card and see how we did, then we will start again the next day.  

The boys love these things where they get cards, tickets (or snowmen as we did in December), so hopefully this will help them keep what they learned today top of mind.  And then I also hope that the Scriptures on the back will keep us reciting these living words and memorizing them in our hearts.  Good job, boys.  Hopefully we will all live this out in the days to come!!!