Missional Motherhood Month (3)

Earlier this week, Jenny Kemp shared a bit about how she's been intentional in her relationships at her kids' school this year.

Today's post is by Sarah Condie who looks back on many years of local school involvement and the opportunities that arose. I hope you find her story as encouraging as I did!

I thought I would share my story, as my children are older than Jenny Kemp’s, but we took a very similar approach. Our children are now 21, 19 and 16 and they all attended their local public school which was a wonderful mission field for all of our family. We were actively involved in the school which had a preschool for twelve years.

At the time, one third of the school consisted of Aboriginal children, many of whom had been sent to school with a can of coke and a packet of chips. A school bus would collect the children, as this was they only effective way of getting them there. The school had a breakfast room which was established to feed the children something a little more nutritional. They also had a lunch canteen during winter and a thick nourishing soup was served for $1 each day and a sausage sizzle on Fridays. I am setting this as background as on the face of it this school didn’t look like it would provide the most “Christian, nourishing environment” for our beloved children.

However, we entrusted “our darlings” to our God who loves our children even more than we do and sent them to this school. It was just around the corner, I could walk there and we wanted to meet people from our local community. It is a challenge to trust God with our children – we so want to control their environment and protect them from bad things happening to them – which is a good thing in and of itself, until we put them into such a cosseted cocoon, that our darlings don’t learn to stand on their own two feet to become independent young people.

Our time at this school was filled with numerous opportunities of “influence for good” in this community. I was the school P & C secretary for too many years to remember and helped organised three fetes. Our principal begged me to bring other “Christian” families to the school, as they had benefited from our involvement so enormously. Many friends of my children’s came to Sunday School and Holiday clubs and other special events such as Carols in the Park – all very easy to invite friends to. One girl begged her mother to buy her a bible. These are just some of the things that I can remember at the top of my head. Teachers would me that our children had talked about their church community and their faith during class. Their faith was certainly “in their face”.

As Christian parents, we want to help our children develop in their character, in bearing and producing the fruit of the spirit. Life was not always easy for my children at this school, and at times, things would happen that would upset me and want me to jump in and rescue them. For example, a stolen brand new school shirt, a stolen pencil case filled with treasures, having to sit next to “the worst boy in the class” because my child was such a positive example to him. We would use these situations as opportunities to talk with our children and help them manage the situation for themselves – and believe me they did.

Our school community saw first hand a Christian family in action and we had many opportunities for conversations about our faith, our children and how we raised them, our church and our values. We and the other Christian families at the school were “light” and “salt” to this community. As Jenny says, this is such a unique door into our local community – I still bump into Mums and Dads who I met at school - those relationships are still there. My three children all speak positively about their experience at our local public school. God certainly used their time there to shape and mould them into the fine young people they are today. One thing that has particularly struck me about my children is their lack of preoccupation with material possessions. I am sure this stems from their time at their local school where they met many children who had nothing and they realised well of they were. There were many features of our school that were not perfect, but God used all of their experiences “for good”.

My 16 year old son is at his local high school and has started up a Christian group there and had many conversations about Jesus and his faith with his friends. The group is small, but he cajoles his friends to join him and they are being challenged by Jesus each week. My other two are at uni and have a deep and vibrant faith. I thank God for them and for their experiences at their local public school. As a mother, trusting God with my children at school was one of the hardest things I did, but I certainly believe he honoured that trust and used our family for good in that community over many years.

If you want to share a story from your own life, or from the life of another woman, please email me!

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Peter Pan and Wendy party

As promised, I thought I'd give you a run down of the Peter Pan and Wendy party. It was a bit trickier than I originally thought, but I did get a few good ideas from some other sites, and with my mum's enthusiastic help and inspired ideas of her own, we managed to do it.

Decorations

For decorations, I went with the idea of making different parts of the area into different parts of Neverland. So we had Pirate Cove, the Indian Camp, Mermaids Lagoon etc. As the kids arrived they could have their faces painted at the Indian Camp and get temporary tattoos at Pirate Cove. I got a couple of girls from our church youth group (who also help out with Sunday school) to come and help with the activities and games - that was a VERY good decision as they were a wonderful help - they even helped clean up at the end!).


My favourite part of the decorations was the backdrop my mum did. She got a huge roll of black plastic from the hardware store, and stuck stars and a flying Wendy, Peter and Tinkerbell to it. It looked great!


Activities

As well as face painting and tattoos, we got the kids to do some plaster painting as they arrived. The plasters were generously given to me by another mum from school - she is the same lady I mentioned in this post. I was very grateful to her - the kids loved them.


Food

I did most of the usual food with a 'Peter Pan' twist: magic wand biscuits, fairy bread in star shapes, little tiny 'fairy' jelly cups, cupcakes with Tinkerbell and crocodiles on them, plus some 'fairy' punch (red cordial and lemonade!).


Games

Dave did a great job again of doing the games on the day (SO great being married to an ex-teacher!!). We did pass the wand (like pass the parcel, but they passed the wand and chose a lucky dip when it stopped at them)...


...and we did a treasure hunt. For this one, I drew a map of Neverland (there are actually quite a lot on the internet to copy from) and printed out and coloured in a picture of each place on the map. The kids (with Dave leading), had to go and find each of the pages and bring them back to me to find the treasure. The actual treasure was some chocolate coins in a box.

Party bags

My mum was responsible for these - she made little pink felt bags with stars attached for each girl (they were inspired by these ones). For the boys, I made up some pirate ones.


Cake

The cake was the easiest one I have every made, but I was really happy with it. All I did was laminate a colour photocopied picture of Peter Pan and Wendy (Rebecca chose it). Then on the day, I iced the cake pink, placed it in the middle of a square cake and added icing stars (I bought them from a cake decorating shop).


So easy, and not a toothpick in sight!

We've decided that we'll do another 'special' one when Elsie turns 5, but future birthdays for Jacob and Rebecca will be more low key - and will only be every second year!!

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Advent calendars (2)

I have two more entries in the Christmas giveaway competition to show you. The first is from Jo Charles. As you can see, hers is more of an advent/Jesse tree:

I really like the way this one uses the ornaments as visual teaching aids - and they're really cute too! Here's what she wrote about it:

We were inspired by the instructions in Commonsense Parenting by Kent and Barbara Hughes. We do the readings out of that book too, although our discussions can sometimes go further than the questions they give. The kids take it in turns to read the readings and to hang the things up. we made them out of FIMO and cardboard and cotton wool and a white modelling material that you can buy here in Chile called white ceramic. We use the same symbols each year, although sometimes the kids add/improve on the last year's offering.

I am in the process of translating the instructions/questions into Spanish to share with families at church, as there is a good deal of Biblical Theology in the questions.

And the second entry is from Miriam English, who made her advent calendar before she and her husband had kids so they could to keep Jesus central to Christmas.

If you look closely you'll notice that she's even stitched the Bible verses on to the calendar! She explains:

There are 24 pockets, with a Bible reading on each. The Bible readings follow the story of Jesus' whole life, beginning with some prophetic teachings about him in the OT which are then quoted in the NT. My husband and I also started off giving each other a small gift alternately, which was surprisingly fun with just the two of us!

Now we have two children, aged 4 and 2, and so we all have a turn of receiving a small gift, and then read the passages together as a family (usually after dinner). After having had children, I've realised that some of the Bible passages are too long for really young children, so I'm going to try and adapt it this year - but still keep with the same idea of following Jesus' whole life over the month of December, and teaching that it was God's plan for him to come, as a present for us all, for a long, long time!

When they are old enough, I also originally had the intention of getting our kids to give some of the small gifts in the pockets, to some of their friends, just to help encourage the idea of 'giving' rather than always receiving. Still thinking about how this would work though and think I still have a couple more years to think about it before our kids would be ready for this part of it.

Thank you Miriam and Jo! And for the rest of you - if you want to enter the competition and win one of these beautiful Christmas ornaments from harrysdesk, then all the details are here.

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Missional Motherhood Month (2)

November is missional motherhood month - the idea being that you can send me examples of ideas you've had for how to live out a Great Commission mindset in your life as a mum, or ways in which you've seen other women doing it.

The second story for this year comes from Jenny Kemp, who has her own blog which I have in my reader and find very encouraging. She's written down a few reflections at the end of a year in which she and her husband decided to get a bit more serious about involving themselves involved in the local school and pre-school communities:

I would just like to say that neither myself or my husband would ever say we are great evangelists. We are pretty hopeless to be honest. But we trust that God is a big God who can work despite our weaknesses. Plus you have to be 'in it to win it' (as they say!).

We have five children and three of them currently attend our local public school. Next year we will have four kids at the same school and our fifth child will attend the local preschool.

Last year my husband and I both felt that this was the time of life to get involved with the local community and build on all the contacts we were making through our children and their friends. This window of opportunity will not be open forever.

So this year my husband became the secretary of the school P&C and I volunteered as the secretary of the community preschool (being secretary is now an area of speciality for our family!).

My husband has a busy job in full-time ministry and finds it hard to make connections with the other parents. I find it easier being there each day to pick up the kids (and manage their social lives). Entering into the school community and getting involved has meant that he has a reason to talk to the other dads. Going to the working bee on a day where the rain was pouring down, shoveling woodchips around the school gardens with five other dads, earned him lots of credibility. The parents on the P&C respect him because he's getting involved with what they care about. And if there's anything Christians can do, it is serve others. We've had lots of practice doing that!

We don't know how God is going to use our family. We trust that he will use our efforts. I strongly believe that we are to be salt and light in a dark world. I think the way we live our life is a huge witness. But we have to be involved in the world so that people can actually see that.

A few weeks ago we were invited to go camping for the weekend with three families from school. None of them know Jesus yet. We were really excited to go (even though they were a little apprehensive about how kooky we might be!). Did we have any big conversations about Jesus? No. Did we talk lots about politics, raising kids, values and juggling life and work? Yes. Did we get comments about how well our kids respected us? Yes. I count all those as small steps in those people coming to know what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus.

Do you know what the biggest tension for me has been in getting more involved with unbelievers? That we don't have as much time for church programs. But as I said at the beginning. This is a short window of opportunity. And we're keen to grab it and trust that God will use it for His purposes and glory.

If you'd like to share a story - please email me.

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"If you come across a bird's nest..."

A few people have asked me about the magpie (actually it turned out to be a currawong) and its eggs since I wrote about them in this post, a couple of months ago. The good news was that the currawong's boldness was vindicated and the nest survived.

But there was a sequel to the story, just a couple of weeks ago....

...you can read it at The Sola Panel!

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'Hope', by Emily Bronte

Here's another Emily Bronte poem. Despite what the name might imply, it's actually quite a bleak one!





Hope

HOPE was but a timid friend;
She sat without the grated den,
Watching how my fate would tend,
Even as selfish-hearted men.

She was cruel in her fear;
Through the bars one dreary day,
I looked out to see her there,
And she turned her face away!

Like a false guard, false watch keeping,
Still, in strife, she whispered peace;
She would sing while I was weeping;
If I listened, she would cease.

False she was, and unrelenting;
When my last joys strewed the ground,
Even Sorrow saw, repenting,
Those sad relics scattered round;

Hope, whose whisper would have given
Balm to all my frenzied pain,
Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,
Went, and ne'er returned again!

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Rebecca's birthday

It was Rebecca's birthday today - and her Peter Pan and Wendy party yesterday. It all went really well and she's had a lovely time. I'm trying hard not to think too much about the fact she is now a 5 year old! Here are some photos from her party yesterday, and if I get a chance I'll share a bit more about the party later in the week:

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Advent calendars (1)

I am very excited that I have already been sent two entries for the Christmas giveaway (see yesterday's post for details). Cat has sent me this photo of hers from last year, which I think sounds quite simple, but looks really effective:


And here is her explanation:

I made my first ever advent calendar last year, after being inspired by some other mums. It was really simple - I just covered an existing picture frame with wrapping paper, stuck some numbered envelopes on and filled them as we went. Each envelope had a little note for dinner and something else. The notes either had a Christmas joke or a mini-Bible study on some Christmas themes like 'joy', 'peace', 'hope', etc, and my daughter had the opportunity to look up a short passage and then we talked about how Jesus' birth relates to these ideas.

The something else ranged from little gifts (a bag of marbles, a 'Happy Birthday Jesus' colouring kit, etc), to home-made decoration activities (we decorated the tree, made paper-chains, made snowflakes for our windows), other activities (making jelly, getting both of our hair-cut, going to the beach, often the first clue in a treasure hunt around the house to find a special Christmassy dessert (like mince pies). We had so much fun and it made advent a really special family time, while also giving me more opportunity to include Jesus in our celebrations.

Janiel is going to use one like this and is going to paint/decorate it:

And this is what she writes about last year:

I put verses (from Disciplines of a Godly Family by Kent and Barbara Hughes) into each box - some longer and some shorter. This year they can all read so I'll work on similar passages but expanded. In each box there was also a small treat or something to do to create a family memory. One was going out in pyjamas for McDonald's ice-creams, one was watching a movie together, one was a special supper, one was making Christmas cards for friends and family far away. None were complicated or expensive but all 4 of our children have asked if we are doing it again.

Thanks Cat and Janiel, you're both in the draw to win one of the decorations from harrydesk. If you want to enter, all you need to do is email me with your photo and explanation - you have until the end of November.

And I would also love to hear your missional motherhood stories too - again, until the end of November.

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