We are really enjoying spending more time with Grandpa!

For the opening song, we'll probably do "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam."  Then we'll have a prayer.

I'm planning to take the lesson from this Friend article where they have flannel board figures you can print and cut out of Jesus on the cross and in Gethsemane, then the women meeting him at the tomb.  I'll tell an abbreviated version of the Easter story for the babies.

Then we can color Easter eggs for an activity.

Then a closing song of "Do As I'm Doing," Degen's current favorite song, and a prayer. 

I saw a cute treat where they made thumbprint cookies with frosting and pastel jelly beans as cookie easter baskets, so maybe I'll do that.

I saw another Easter lesson where they filled a bunch of plastic eggs with lines of testimony about Jesus, then gave someone the basket with the eggs and egg-shaped cookies frosted to look like easter eggs.  That would be a fun one to do with older kids who can write.

And, of course, there's my parent's awesome Passover Seder (dinner) that they do every year that would be perfect to do as an Easter time FHE for grownups.

“The bishop presides over every person in the ward and directs their local church activities. … All of your adolescent life you will be under the direction of the bishop. He will appoint teachers and supervisors to do his work, but he will be very much interested in your progress. Your life here will be constantly weighed by him, for he is the judge of your worthiness … to receive higher ordinances, and to be worthy to go to the Temple.

 

“If you are going to work in the Church system you will learn to be obedient to your bishop. If you get into trouble you will be wise if you seek his advice and counsel. He has been designated by the Lord and appointed by the President of the Church to be responsible for you and to make sure you progress according to your worthiness and ability. …

“… He will see you every year at tithing settlement. He will interview you. … If you go on a mission he will be the one who makes the first inquiry as to your fitness and ability to serve in this capacity” (S. Dilworth Young, More Precious than Rubies [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1959], pp. 40–41).

After reading this quote, we're supposed to write down all the responsibilities of the Bishop that we can think of, including family responsibilities.  Then we discuss ways we can show him that we appreciate his efforts.  Then I pull out my Thank You cards and we all write notes to him telling him how much we appreciate him.  Finally, I'm in charge of making sure he gets the notes. 

A couple of hitches.  We may have an impromptu special guest today, I've been warned, which would trump my lesson.  But we may not.  The other thing isn't so much a "hitch" as it's an item to figure out.  This Wednesday for our Beehive activity the Bishop is coming to speak to us about Patriarchal Blessings.  Do I give him the notes today, or do I wait until after his speech on Wednesday?  Hmmm…

Some suggestions for appreciating the Bishop from the manual:

The young women may also want to choose one of the following ways of expressing appreciation for the bishop during the coming week:

• 1. Share your feelings about your bishop with your family at family home evening.

• 2. Share your feelings about your bishop with the bishop himself.

• 3. Do something nice for your bishop this week.

• 4. In your personal prayers, thank Heavenly Father for your bishop and pray for him.

I think this lesson is partly about understanding what the Bishop does, partly about gratitude, and partly about sustaining our leaders.  If we understand what they do and the sacrifices they make, we'll be more appreciative and less prone to complain. 

Our Bishop is a UPS man.  His wife runs a preschool of excellent reputation out of their home.  He has a good family.  He is good and kind and tries hard to keep up with the hundreds of us in our ward.  He practices what he preaches.  He is patient.  I am grateful for his service and his family's support of him in his calling to serve my ward, my family, and me.  Thanks Bishop!

My lesson for the Beehives today is about the home environment. The idea is to teach them that keeping your home orderly and clean invites the Spirit to be in your home and that women staying home to raise children and keep their homes beautiful and clean is honorable work that God is pleased with. It's not mere drudgery and by having a cheerful attitude about our work we can bless our families.

I remember listening to this lesson when I was in Young Women as a young woman and I vividly recall the teacher ask us how we would feel if the Savior came to visit us at home that day without warning. Of course my room was a wreck and I believe I remember having had a fight with my mother that week about the subject of the cleanliness of my room (not an uncommon topic of discussion). It went something like: Mom: "You must keep your room clean. I'm sick of seeing this mess!" Me: "Well, then I'll close the door so you don't have to see it! It's my room and you shouldn't be in there anyway. I like it this way." Mom: "It's not your room. It's my room because it's my house. I let you use that room. As long as you live in this house, you'll keep your room clean!" You can probably imagine how it went from there. Eventually I would agree to clean it if she would help me. Of course one of my big problems with keeping my room clean was that I'd let it go until it was horrifying, then get overwhelmed and let it get even worse, then one weekend when I'd have nothing else to do and be sick of it I'd clean like crazy till it was "perfect." So, my mom would sit there with me, going through each dresser drawer and under my bed and in my closet until, hours later, we were satisfied or too exhausted to continue. My poor mother is so patient. I realize what a saint she is now that I'm older and have a house of my own to try to keep clean.

Anyway, back to young Bethany's beehive class. My teacher asked us if our homes were in a state to comfortably receive the Savior, or if we'd be embarrassed. I knew I would be embarrassed by my room and wanted to improve. It's taken me a lot of effort since then to improve, but I believe I have improved. I feel like my home is my stewardship, that I've been very blessed to be allowed to have a nice home with plenty of room and lots of stuff to mess it up with. I'm still not very good at cleaning or decorating or any of those skills I've been working on, but I'm getting better at it all the time.

As I've thought about this lesson I'm giving today, I realize that if the Savior were to come to my home today, He would see toys and clothes on the floor, books in disarray in the basement, a messy office, and dishes on the table from last night's dinner. But He would also know how much effort I've put in to getting it that good! I ran a full dishwasher last night, most of the laundry is clean and folded, the kids' bedroom and the guest room are picked up, there are clean towels and toilets in the bathroom. He would know and I would know that it's better and that I'm trying to be better still.

I had a couple of paradigm shifts that really helped me in my quest to improve myself in this way. One, I recognized that I don't have to work nearly as hard as my ancestors did to keep a clean, orderly house. I have a vacuum, dishwasher, clothes washer, dryer, and many other conveniences that make it hundreds of times faster to do what needs to be done. So, I earned to be grateful for the few tasks I have to do comparatively. Two, I found a web page called flylady.net which teaches that you don't have to do everything perfectly all at once to make your home a nice place to live. Just a few minutes a day working on the maintenance frees up time and psychological space to work on the time-consuming stuff that you never get to otherwise. It also taught me to just do a little something that will show me immediate results when I'm overwhelmed, and that helps motivate me to tackle more. And, I discovered that it's easier to do a little cleaning often (even when it's not very dirty!) than to do a lot of cleaning all at once when it's really dirty. It may seem obvious to you, but it was news to me! (Sorry Mom, I know you tried to tell me…) When my home is clean and orderly and when I'm cheerful about the work I'm able to do it's easier to feel the Spirit. It's also easier for me to serve others because I'm more worried about people than about all the things I need to do at home. I can think more clearly in orderly places, which is why the lesson brings up how clean the temple always is. Trying new things isn't really frightening when my home is in order, because there's space for one more thing on my plate. Making new friends is easier because I'm not embarrassed to have them over to my house on the spur of the moment when my house is clean (or at least closer to clean).

God likes things clean. He likes His house to be clean, His people to be clean, and His peoples' houses to be clean. It occurs to me that learning to clean your house can help you learn to become clean internally–to repent. We don't have to be perfect on our own all at once. Christ will sit with us in our room, just like my mom, and go through each drawer and under the bed and through the boxes in the closet. He'll help us get rid of the sweaters that don't fit anymore and the empty drinking-straw wrappers that somehow got in with the shoes. He'll teach us how to wash our sheets and maybe even paint the walls our favorite color. He never gets sick of helping us and he won't give up on us until it's done, if we're willing to keep working with him. He doesn't make us do it alone, but he insists that we do it if we are going to live in his Kingdom. Thanks for listening while I wrote myself through what this lesson means to me. I think it'll help me teach my sweet Beehives better.