Since Cambrie was born, I’ve felt especially pulled towards discipleship – doing my best to spread God’s love somehow each day. Just before Summer arrived, I saw a posting in St. Wenceslaus’ weekly bulletin asking for volunteer catechists to teach Religious Education on Wednesday nights during the school year.
Even as I currently seem to struggle along day after day feeling just barely able to keep my head above the choppy sea waters of life, I still felt like I needed to be more involved with my church community.
I was drawn to the opportunity immediately. And with the willingness of my parents to watch my own two little ones once a week, I happily committed to spending one evening per week with some of the Lord’s littlest lambs.
In the past few months leading up to the start of classes, I prayed (no less than a dozen times) for the Lord to keep my heart calm in the waiting & asked for the Holy Spirit’s help in delivering the right messages to these kiddos throughout the year.
Sure enough, the Lord kept showing me
His reassurance through the waiting…
…that I was, indeed, very capable of
being a shepherd to young hearts & minds
through His word.
Because He would be with me
every step of the way, I did not need
to lean on my own understanding.
At the open house night, me and the other catechist (Ashley) had our 3rd and 4th graders color either a boy or girl lamb to be added to our class poster for the next session.
There are 10 colorful lambs on our poster now – all surrounding Jesus.
We try to create a healthy & intimate environment:
~ candlelight
~ a little bit of nature
~ focus on gratitude and hope
While the kiddos settle into their spots and wait for class to start, I have a small candle safely burning on our “prayer table”, which is below our classroom shepherd poster. The faux lavender plant was $5 at Wal-Mart and seems to do an OK job functioning as nature’s decor.
Silence tends to make people feel awkward or nervous so Ellie Holcomb’s Magnolia album playing at a low level seems to be a nice way to help the kiddos focus on the positive – such as these cute little Dear God gratitude sheets I found on Pinterest!
We decided to make these quick exercises totally optional, and the kiddos are not pressed to turn them in or share from them (but are welcome to!).
Here are a few from last week:
Little Mac even decorated his own lamb for the house.
Then Cam tried to eat it.
