Involving the Family in Service

Scouts in Twin Falls, Idaho, attach inner tubes to
scrap metal found in the Snake River Canyon,
so it can be floated down the river to a dock.

One Monday night, I wanted to teach my kids about love and showing love through service. At first I wasn’t sure how to make it fun so my 5-, 3- and 1.5-year-old kids would not only understand but enjoy the lesson. I also wanted to make it something we did, not just talk about.

So I told them a story about a little boy named Heber, who got a new red coat. He then gave that coat to a little boy who had no coat at all. When his mom asked about his new red coat, Heber explained what he had done, fearing she would be upset. His mom wasn’t upset but happy he thought to do something to help this other young boy. There is actually a video about it, so we watched the video and talked about the story.

Then each of us cut out four hearts (the 1.5 year old is mostly just going through the motions for the rest of the lesson). I told them that service is a way to show love for others. We are God’s hands when we take time to serve other people. I explained that we should all look for ways to serve each other. When we did service for one of our family members, we would leave a heart for them.

My 5 year old was really excited about this, and she asked for ways to serve immediately. My 3 year old was also very excited and wanted to help too. My daughter asked to make her brother’s bed, read to the youngest and made lunch for me one day. After each act of service, she left a heart. My 3 year old son wanted to help his mom, by putting away her clean socks. He did his best to help make our bed and left a heart for me.

I loved to see the heart in my lunch and on my pillow. I loved to see them excited to help each other. The great part was when the hearts were all given out, they still did service for their family. The simple activity helped them enjoy service and they started to look for ways to serve.  

Any time someone goes out of their way to serve someone else and does it out of love, I believe God gives him or her an increase in love. 2 Timothy 1:6-7

Metal is pulled out of the river at the dock
and taken to a junk yard.

God also gives other blessings when we serve, including knowledge and understanding. Over the years, I have learned how to love orphans, quilt, reroof a house, use a chainsaw, build tables, and float trash metal out of a canyon through service projects. I also learned how not to cut a junk car apart on a canyon wall, but that’s a story for another time.

Service gives you understanding as you interact with other people. It gives you hope and helps you forget your struggles. The interesting part is when you serve others, your problems are more manageable; life gains new perspective. It also helps your kids too.

According to the National Service Learning Clearinghouse organization, kids that have parents who help others and encourage their children to help others are “more likely to internalize prosocial values and attitudes and to help others when they grow up, including responsibility, empathy, and caring for others.”

NSLC advocates integrating service into learning curriculum for all ages, kindergarten through college. They also explain the importance that parent’s play in making service a way of life and not just a random act.

“When parents nurture their child’s sense of compassion and commitment toward their community, we build a better world for now and for the future,” the NSLC website continues. “While doing important community work—feeding the hungry, recording oral histories with elders, working for human rights—service-minded families are raising children and teenagers who are more likely to become civically engaged, thoughtful, caring, and generous adults.”

Don’t forget to talk about service afterwards. Share your feelings, and ask your kids how they feel as they serve. This helps them reflect on what they did and gives them a chance to build on the learning they experienced as they served. A nonprofit called Doing Good Together has some resources to aid in reflecting.

I have to agree with Steven Covey, who said,

"Can you imagine anything more energizing, more unifying, more filled with satisfaction than working with members of your family to accomplish something that really makes a difference in the world?"

Next week:  Attitude with Children

Family Virtues – Faith and Hope

Faith is believing you can, even when it seems
you shouldn't even try. My niece is doing a great job of
doing all she can.

On one summer vacation, we were driving through central Utah near Arches National Park with a couple other families. We stopped to stretch our legs and walk around the towering rock formations. I followed a few of the others to a high arch (probably 30 or 40 feet high) and saw that they were starting to climb on it. As you might expect, I wanted to follow their lead and started to climb myself. It was easy and comfortable for me to climb higher than the others. Whether that was because they were smart enough to stop sooner or because I wasn’t too concerned about getting down, I’m not sure. But as the rock started to curve and the holes became smaller, it occurred to me that getting down was going to be a problem.

It was around that time that the others noticed I was in trouble and someone called for my dad. When he saw the situation, he quickly ran to me and started to climb after me. I couldn’t look down, and he wasn’t in a position to pick me up. So he talked to me and coached me down the rock formation. I was scared, but I had learned that I could trust my dad and he would help me get down safely. I walked away that day, a little wiser and grateful to be on flat ground.

Faith is a belief in something not seen but hoped for. I also define faith as belief in action. When we allow a belief to cause us to act, we are exercising faith. This is important for children to learn because it teaches them to act for themselves. It teaches them to move forward to accomplish something they want or need to do. Faith is a common part of life, and it was my faith in my father and his guidance that gave me confidence to get down from the rock.

Speaking of rocks, the most important faith we can teach our children is faith in the Rock of our salvation. When we teach our children to act according to their beliefs, they gain confidence in the power of God. We see it in the women that believed if she could just touch Jesus’ robe, she would be healed (Mark 5:34). We see it in the blind man that went to Jesus and asked to have his sight restored (Mark 10:52). We see it in the Canaanite woman who called after Jesus and asked him to heal her daughter (Matt. 15:28). In all those cases, Jesus responded to the actively seeking him with some form of the following: Your faith hath made the whole. Obviously it was the power of God that healed them or their loved ones, but he was acknowledging their effort to seek him out as a necessary ingredient in the miracle.

How can we teach our children to seek out the Savior? We can tell them to pray and ask for God to help them. We should also make sure we are leading by example. Are we seeking the Lord? Are we getting up from our prayers ready to move and follow the guidance we are given? I am amazed at what my kids pick up on. They are watching to see how we react and will follow our actions more than our words.

Like my niece, there are times when we just have to
hope someone will help us get out. This hope helps
us smile when we are down in the dirt.

Hope is closely related to faith and is necessary in our lives. Like faith, hope is a belief that something good will happen even though we can’t see it. The difference I see is that hope comes when something is out of your control. Let me explain.

When I was serving a two year mission for my church in South Korea, I got a letter from my parents. Luckily, I was sitting down when I started to read it because I was shocked at the news. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and she would be going through chemotherapy immediately. I was thousands of miles from home, without a way to get home and even if I did go home, I couldn’t do anything once I got there. So I prayed for her and I got up and went to work. I had faith that God would answer my prayer, but I had a hope that she would be OK and would recover. My actions wouldn’t have a direct impact, though I think serving God as a missionary provides some blessings, my feeling was hope.

In the more eternal perspective, we hope for eternal life. A goal we could not achieve on our own. No amount of action could gain that reward. It is only through Christ that we can get that we can be saved from our sins (Titus 3:7). This hope is what gets us through the hard times when we lose a loved one before we are ready. We need faith to keep going, and hope can fuel the flame.

Again, kids need to see our example of hope more than hear our words. Are we hopeful when times are hard? Do we speak of hope when we have just cause to lament our fate? Are we full of hope in the words of Christ?

These are interesting days, but I believe God is aware of us and our needs. He is there guiding our footsteps as we scale life’s treacherous path. He comes to us always. It is up to us to act on this belief and see God’s hand in our lives. It is up to us to look forward with hope, not in man but in the power of God (Proverbs 10:28). Then we will see God do more than we ever could on our own.

Next week: Learning through parables