My kids (like all kids) love to pretend. Lydia has always been the one that plays Mommy and puts herself into the story. Asa, on the other hand, likes to play with little figurines and be the master of the story! I love seeing the games they make up, the ideas that come out of their heads and what keeps them entertained.
One of my favorite things to ask the kids is, “What do you think about…?” or “What would it be like if…” and then we imagine different scenarios based on whatever it is we’re talking about. I want my kids to imagine and wonder and think of new adventures.
As much as I’d like my kids to use their imagination to make up games and stories, I really want them to imagine great things to do for God. Remember Adventures in Odyssey’s ACTS program? They are encouraging kids to give a total of 50,000 service hours this summer. You know how I much I love this–it’s why we do our Monthly Missions.
This month, the focus of ACTS is using your imagination to think of a fun way to serve others. They have so many fun ideas on their site and are highlighting kids like Matthew, a little boy who writes apps for churches and other ministries. It’s challenging me to let my kids come up with their own mission, their own way to serve. They are probably more creative than me!
To celebrate the second part of this ACTS adventure, Adventures in Odyssey is giving away a FREE ebook, Voyage with the Vikings. This is a chapter book about a boy and girl (cousins) who travel via the Imagination Station to Greenland and meet Erik the Red and Lief Erikkson! We read it at lunch a few months ago and the kids loved it! It’s the first of a series (11 books right now!) where the kids travel to all different historical times and places.
To get your free PDF of the book, click here to download.
I’m part of the Adventures in Odyssey ACTS team to get the word out about this awesome service opportunity! Oh, and look! Another free download with cool service ideas, printable games and devotional ideas to go along with your ACTS of service!
We open our home on Sunday afternoons as an extension of Saddleback Church. Even though they’re in LA and we’re in the Netherlands, we stream their services to reach out to our neighbors in the small village that we live in. We’re not (I repeat NOT) trained missionaries – but we see this as a way to serve the Lord while we’re here and (hopefully!) expand His kingdom!
I encourage my kids to give without expecting something in return. We also dropped all.our change into a bag to support the salvation army in Malawi during the month of missions.
My kids and I get a jar of jelly, one peanut butter, a loaf of bread, chips and drinks and bike tongue park. We live in an older neighborhood so the closest park happens to be where the homeless congregate. We lay out our blanket in the middle of the park and start making sandwiches. One by one the kids take a sandwich, a drink and chips to the different people they see and invite them tinkling our picnic. It is wonderful watching them care for others. We have made several friends this way.
Our family raised money by doing the Run For The Homeless. Its a one mile and 5K and the money goes to run the homeless shelter and its programs.
I used to lead the children’s bible study for my local mommy group. One year the theme was object lessons so we did everything from squirting out an entire tube of toothpaste (to learn once you say words you can’t put them back in your mouth) to making Resurrection rolls at Easter to learn about the empty tomb!
We are currently collecting pull tabs from Coke cans to donate to the Ronald McDonald House (my 4 year old’s idea), since we recently adopted our 2nd child and were in Kansas for 7 weeks staying at the Ronald McDonald house and it was awesome! Made lots of friends, had opportunities to talk about the Lord with other families, and took our sweet baby home after. 🙂
My 5 year old LOVES these books!!! We’ve only read the 1st one. Thanks!
A few years ago I went on a mission’s trip for a week to Honduras. While it was an amazing experience, I found it difficult to be away from my young children for that long (3 and 18 months at the time). So even though my church goes every year I haven’t been back. Well this year my church sponsored a “mission’s” trip right here in our home town. I decided to participate with my children (now 6 and 4) to share my love for mission’s with them. We did light construction projects for the widows/single mom’s of our church and we did a backyard bible club in a lower income/immigrant community near our church with the hopes of inviting the children to come to our summer VBS and fall Kid’s club program. My children were so excited to be apart of the missions trip and they learned through watching and participating what it means to serve others and share the gospel with those who don’t know Jesus. We still support the Honduras mission and send things to them throughout the year. Someday I hope to take my children back with me. But for now we can participate together in missions right in our own backyard!
Recently, we had a chance to take our girls (ages 5&7) to a local Feed My Starving Children packing site. They got to help package meals to be sent to countries around the world, and also had the chance to sample some of the food that we were preparing to send. It was a great experience for our whole family.
We love to take meals to those in need in our community. We’ll be doing it again this week. I love the idea of turning the kids imagination loose and letting them come up with service ideas. We’re going to spend some time perusing the ACTS page and letting the kids brainstorm!
I’d love for our family to just randomly and anonymously mow lawns in our community that has several elderly families.
My in-laws have Alzheimer’s and Dementia, and are unfortunately living in their own home (we are desperately trying to get them into assisted living for their own safety). My sons, who are 6 & 4 sweep the patio and driveway at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, when we deliver meals to them. I’m so excited about this service initiative, we are starting our year of 52 weeks of service in our family this year!
My children are still little but we encourage them to donate their unused toys to children who have little/none. This year my son decided he would like to give away some of his clothes to a fellow classmate who was recently and swiftly taken into foster care. He even offered to use his piggy bank to buy this child shoes 🙂
I hope in the future my children will continue to see the needs of others and act upon them.
My children and I are trying to come up with creative ways to help a friend who is raising money to adopt a daughter from China.
Our family has been helping with our special needs ministry at the church.
My daughter loves Adventures in Odyssey! Well, really the whole family does. But she is always on the website and has been making and selling bracelets all summer and plans to give all the money to our Crisis Pregnancy Center.
Our families favorite way to serve the Lord together is to bless missionaries. We find out what their favorite things are and we get them or do them. We like our house to be the missionaries hub. We have several different families stay with us at the same time and we LOVE serving them! They are spiritual heroes!
Last summer my husband and I began exploring missions opportunities for the two of us for this summer. As we continued to talk and pray with another couple about our opportunities we felt God leading us toward a short term missions trip with our families. Tomorrow morning we will depart with half of our children (three from their family and two from ours), ages 1 to 10, for Berlin, Germany to help with a VBS in a neighborhood with the highest concentration of young families as well as atheists. We are beyond excited to see what God is going to do and so thankful for the multitude of opportunities this trip has already presented to teach our own kids about God’s great commission and what it really looks like to “make disciples of all nations.” And we love that we can serve as a family!
Thanks for your encouragement and great ideas!
We serve by preparing our Sunday school spaces for the programs. The kids help clean decorate or whatever needs to happen.
We have done yard work/raked leaves for houses in our town. We just went house to house and asked if we could rake their yard for them.
When I bring a meal for a neighbor in need or new mom, I try and include all my kids in the process. If they are too little to help prepare food, I suggest they draw a picture or sometimes they find a little something of their own to contribute. It helps them be involved and enjoy the blessing of caring for others.
Our church has a monthly service at a senior living community. I always bring my boys with me, and they enjoying singing, and seeing the seniors. They also enjoy picking up the Bibles to help clean up after the service.
Love reading the ideas for service. We did operation Christmas child last year and the boys did great with it! They’re at a great age and I really need to start doing more to instill a servants heart in them!!!
We love doing Christmas shoeboxes too…always looking for more interesting service ideas, so this is great!
We travel all around the country in our 42′ RV for my husbands job therefore our hometown is always changing. For a while we didn’t know what to do or even where to begin. One day God pulled at our heartstrings and set us in motion. We put together bags to hand out to the homeless. This simply consists of a trip to Costco, grabbing zip locks, bottled water, granola bars, chips, apples and oranges, socks, toothbrushes and toothpaste, and whatever else struck our fancy. Then we hit the dollar store for bibles and write/draw cards for each bag. We keep the bags in the back seat and the boys hand them out as we see people on the side of the road. Their favorite is actually having a bag or two in our backpacks as we ‘explore’ and being able to just stop and talk with whomever they see on the street or under the bridges. We done this from Atlanta to San Antonio to Denver to Seattle and back to NY.
I’d love for us to help some of the older people in our church with their gardens or lawns. My kids need to be a little older for us all to do this together but right now we’re teaching them by having them rake our lawn and pick weeds, etc. We always collect items to fill shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child and back to school time is a good time to let the kids pick school supplies out!
We have started letting the kids pick out things to buy for Christmas from the Compassion and Samaritan’s purse catalogs, really letting them decide and explaining how those things can help people. Thank you for the opportunity to win!
I thought of an idea from hearing about Roots for the Journey by Yancy from you. I’m going to buy some CDs from her site ~ http://www.yancynotnancy.com (free shipping!) and keep them to hand out to new neighbors, people we come across who are hurting, etc with some tasty treats as well of course 😉
Am I too late to the party? Oh well, I’ll comment anyway. We live in Malaysia, and we are trying to find ways to engage as a family with the community, to model a life that follows Christ with kids in tow.
Tina @ Mommynificent
I just sent packages full of special gifts to friends, I called it #projectlove. My kids helped and we had so much fun spoiling these special friends! It has turned into a continual project of blessing others in small ways. I am now making and selling a necklace, the #projectlove Wildflower necklace. $10 from each sale is going to Amazima Ministries. My kids are helping with the necklaces and packaging. Teaching them to serve others is so important to me!