Kindness - Complete Notes

One problem with waiting to write up a blog after a meeting is that I tend to forget!!  Boy is my memory getting bad as I get older.  Anyway, fortunately for me, the mom who led it, had her notes written up.  Here are the notes for Kindness.  Thank you, Christie.

-Tonight we are going to talk about kindness, its such a simple word, such a simple action and it can have huge results!

-our memory verse is…be kind to one another, compassionate and mutually forgiving, just as God has forgiven you in Christ.

-If I say to you, kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless, what do you think this means?  This was actually a quote from Mother Teresa.  This quote is true because acting with kindness is so easy to do that it is also easy to forget.  Kindness comes out of charity, out of love.  Kindness could be said to be the motivation for every virtue we practice.

-Kindness is not a complex virtue to explain, its challenge comes in making it a habit that is never broken.  We are kind to those we know, our own circle of friends but not with those who look different or act different.  We are kind to our own but cold with the stranger.  Your goal is to practice kindness even when it is uncomfortable to do so.

-How many of you have heard the phrase random acts of kindness?  Some examples would be paying for someone’s toll or picking up a friends dropped keys.  This is great encouragement; however our faith would encourage us to be kind on purpose.  Not randomly, not without thought, but done on purpose and out of habit.  We shouldn’t have to think about stooping to pick up a drop paper or holding the door for the next person we just do it.

-This is #4 in your books,   I want you to think about the last week, think about when people were kind to you, your siblings and others, (after they give some ideas) now, from these ideas of how others were kind to you, let’s make a list of ways you can be kind.

-In the bible Paul speaks of the Fruits of the Holy Spirit.  Paul challenges us to act out of freedom and love and kindness.  I want to read part of this now….read   Galatians chapter 5 verse 13.  In a few minutes we will be making a fruit tree illustrating the fruits of the holy spirit, this way you can hang it in your house to help your family remember.  This is #5 in your books

-Our Saint this month is St. Marie-Marguarite d’Youville, here is a little information about her:

She was born in 1771 in Quebec Canada.  Marguarite was able to attend the Ursuline school in Montreal.  She married Francois d’Youville a fur trader in 1722 with whom she had 6 children.  In 1730 her husband died and she had also lost many of her children to sickness and hardship.  By 1737 both of Marguarites remaining sons had become priests and Marguarite had joined with other women in serving the sick and the poor.  They formed the first Canadian Sisters of Charity and became known as the Grey Nuns.  These women attracted others to join their order and spent their lives doing good for others.  Her Grey Nuns spread throughout Canada founding schools, hospitals, orphanages and more.  They are especially known for their great work among the Eskimo.  Margurite died in 1771 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1990.  Her feast day is April 11.

-Our Country this month is Canada, our neighbor to the north.  The US shares a border with Canada it this border is the longest shared border between two countries.  It is a peaceful border with altercations between the 2 countries virtually nonexistent.   Has anyone ever been to Canada?  What can you tell us about it?

-we have two short crafts tonight the first one I already told you is the fruit tree, and we will be also making a craft that illustrates a quote about being kind.   This is #7 in your book.   There are a number of beautiful quotes about being kind from the scripture, here are a few…read the quotes.   

Then explain the crafts.

Here is the first craft.  It came from Oriental Trading. 

I will need to add a picture of the second craft. The girls got to use different scrapbook paper to cut out apples.  They pasted their "fruits" of the spirit onto each and glued them onto a tree.

Quotes about being kind

-Acts 20:35b - It is more blessed to give than to receive.

-“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” 
 Mother Teresa

-Ephesians 4:32 - Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

-Matthew 25:35 -For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,

-You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.  Ralph Waldo Emerson 

-It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice. ~Author Unknown

-Kindness, like a boomerang, always returns. ~Author Unknown

-Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud. ~Maya Angelou

-Kindness is the greatest wisdom. ~Author Unknown

-A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. ~Amelia Earhart

***We will be doing our Baby Shower in May so that will take care of #8

***After the lesson  #’s  4, 5, 7, and 8 are completed.

Another Successful Cookie Sale

I think I've finally recovered from our cookie sale.  It really was a lot of work, but once again, we had a very successful year!!  We made $266.50 from our little 50 cent cookie sale.  What was really amazing is that we were almost completely sold out before the 11 am Mass.  The selection was looking so sad by that time, we didn't even have the sale announced at the Mass.  We sold out!!

It started on the Sunday before, I made all the dough for the cookies. We were so blessed this year to be able to use the parish kitchen to bake the cookies.  On Monday morning, 4 of us got together.  It took us less than 2 hours to bake over 200 cookies.  The past 2 years, it would take an entire day to make the cookies in my oven.  Look at this beauty!!! We packaged them all and put them in the freezer.  It was nice to be able to put them in the church freezer instead of worrying about having room in mine.

On Friday, I made 100 chocolate covered pretzels, 5 batches of Rice Krispy Treats and 8 batches of frosting.  My kids kept letting me know that if I should happen to break any of the pretzels, they would be more than happy to eat them for me.  Such generous kids!

Saturday morning, we met at the church to decorate all of those delicious cookies.  This is a huge job.  I learned a very valuable lesson this year.  We didn't have as many moms to help this year and we were lacking one very important job, someone to really supervise the girls.  While the moms were frosting, the girls were putting sprinkles on the cookies.  When I say putting on the sprinkles, I should be saying DUMPING on the sprinkles.  Wow, did we go through a lot of sprinkles.  A whole lot more than in the past couple years.  It made for huge mess to clean up.  This doesn't even come close to the mess that was made.  So next year, one mom will just sit with the girls to keep an eye on things and there will be lots of plates for the girls to sprinkle over!!  Packaging all the cookies is what takes us the longest.  I still think the pretty packaging helps sell all those cookies!!

Next year we need to double Mary's famous chocolate chip cookies and add at least a couple more batches of sugar cookies. 

Thank you Lord for our very generous parish!

Looking for Other Little Flower Blogs

I would love to get a list together of all the other ladies who have blogs for their Little Flowers groups.  It certainly is helpful to be able to see what other groups are doing and a great way to get ideas.  If you have a blog or know of one, please feel free to leave the name or link in the comments.  The Little Flowers Girls Club had been listing them.  I would like share the links on the side of my page for easy reference for all of us.

Also we are starting a Little Women's Hospitality Group in the Fall.  If you know of any groups or blogs, I would certainly appreciate know about those as well.  We needs lots of ideas!!

Getting Ready for the Bake Sale

Time to get the prep work done for our bake sale.  There is a lot of work that goes into those 50 cent cookies.  I sent out the list of ingredients we need for the sugar cookies and frosting.  I wanted to get it written down so that next year I don't need to calculate it out again.  Considering we basically sold out last year, I added an extra batch. This ingredient list is for 7 batches of cookies using this recipe.

This is the list I sent out to all the moms.  I tried to divide it so that it was basically even.  The ladies filled the list up very quickly which I really appreciate. 

2 lbs butter -

2 lbs butter -

2 lbs butter -

2 lbs butter -

2 Dozen Eggs -

2 – 5 lbs bags Flour -

2 -  4 lb bags Powder Sugar (confectioners' sugar) - 

5 Cups Solid Vegetable Shortening  -

10 lb bag of sugar -

4 containers of sprinkles and 5 lb bag of flour 

I've started making all the prayers that we attach to each cookie.  Since we made a little over $200 last year, I need to cut out at least 450 hearts.  My Silhouette will be humming quite a bit over the next week.  

I will make the dough the day before and then a few of us will be meeting in the social hall kitchen to do the baking.  I can't wait to test out the ovens.  It should save us at least a few hours of work.  I bought a couple more heart cookie cutters so that we will be able to crank those cookies out.  Then we will freeze them until the weekend and then the decorating will being.

Hopefully having the list will help take away some stress next year.  I love our cookie sale and am excited to see it all come together.

Movie Night

Last year, the Knights of Columbus bought a big screen t.v. for our social hall, but because of the flood, we never got to use it.  This month's virtue was the perfect excuse for testing it out.  While the activity suggested learning more about slavery and perhaps watching Roots, I felt that was way too old for our group of girls.  I decided to just focus on acceptance so we watched 'Kit Kittredge, An American Girl'.  She had to learn to accept a lot of changes living during the Depression.

The girls were so excited to get to bring their pillows and sleeping bags and wear their pajamas!!  Of course, I can't let an event go by without doing a little crafting so I made all the girls personalized popcorn containers that they got to take home.  I just have too much fun crafting so the popcorn and drinks became a little concession stand.  Lots of fun.

Just so that I won't forget, we went through 4 boxes of popcorn and a little over a gallon of lemonade. The m&m's were just leftovers from Christmas cookies at my house.  I put them in little individual containers so that each girl could have one.  

Considering it's been a snowy day, we had a great turnout.  Worked out even better because tomorrow there is a 2 hour delay.  Yay!!  We all get to sleep in.

Acceptance

I had to think about this virtue for a couple of weeks before starting to plan out the meeting.  For some reason, I was trying to make it a whole lot more difficult than it needed to be. If you start looking for ideas online, you will find lots of lessons on acceptance of others and perhaps their lifestyles.  I realized that it is always best to keep it simple.  Since everyone appreciates being able to check off some of the activities, I decided to just work on them.

The girls and I tried to figure out the definition of acceptance.  It's always hard to give a definition!  Got lots of examples of what they had to accept.  Then we moved on to #5.  Using a children's Bible, I read the story of the Agony in the Garden.  I got the moms involved and asked them to share something that they had to accept and perhaps how they dealt with it.  It was great for the girls to have their moms sharing. 

We also worked on #4.  It was easy for them to think of the things they had to accept this week.  Well it was really easy to for them to think of all the hard things that they had to accept.  Our "Hard" list was much longer than the "Easy" list. 

While I was preparing for this virtue, I really struggled on how St. Josephine Bakhita was the right saint for this virtue.  How could a person who had been a slave teach us about acceptance?  I read the blurb about St. Josephine from the Member's Guide.  The connection was made with this statement, "Though slow of movement—perhaps on account of the torture she had suffered as a teenager—she did every job lovingly, with a contagious joy. To those who had more visible roles, she would say, 'You go and teach. I will go to the chapel and pray that you may do it well.'" from From Slave to Saint The Story of St. Josephine Bakhita.  She accepted whatever job was given to her and she did it joyfully.  

The girls were really fascinated by St. Josephine's story.  I think more so than any other saint thus far.  They asked a lot of questions about her being kidnapped and also about the scars she had on her body and about her family.  I was a little concerned that I had frightened them so I reassured them with this statement taken from the above article, “If I were to meet those who kidnapped me, and even those who tortured me,” she wrote, “I would kneel and kiss their hands. For if these things had not happened, I would not have been a Christian and a religious today.”  It was important for them to see that she was "okay" even after going through such a horrible ordeal. 

We switched gears then to take about Sudan.  I learned more than I ever knew about the country preparing for this lesson.  A good resource to share is http://www.our-africa.org/sudan/welcome-to-sudan.  Lots of videos, maps and facts.  I took my ipad to the meeting so that we could watch one of the videos and see the maps and pictures.  I also passed out their pages for their passports.

I took our craft from activity #5.  String art wass an inexpensive craft costing less than $5.  My husband cut some of his scrap wood for me.  The boards measure 8 x 6.  I painted them and used a cross that I printed out on paper as my template to pound in the nails.  I used crocheting thread as the string.

We all have crosses to bear and it may be one that we just need to accept.  We need to remember the one that Jesus bore for us.  I wish I could have gotten a picture of all of the different crosses the girls made.  None of them were exactly the same just as the crosses we must carry are all different.  The heart in the middle is to remind us that God is always there for us. 

An Epiphany Party

Last week, we celebrated the Epiphany.  I just thought I would share some of the festivities.

Now what would be an Epiphany party without a bunch of crowns?

 Then we moved onto making beautiful watercolor designs using star stickers and kosher salt.

  I love the results!

They were so much fun to make using these simple ingredients. Here is a link to the tutorial.

Then it was time to munch on some star cookies and other goodies and listen to The Story of the Three Wise Kings by Tomie dePaola.  

When they were done, we played a short game and then we gave the girls their stars.  They probably could have spent the entire party just playing with them.

Before they left, they were given some blessed chalk and prayers to take home and bless their homes.

Just as a note to myself.  Next year, I think I would like to start with a little lesson about the Epiphany.  Otherwise, I would say it was a success!!

Prepping for the Epiphany

This year we decided to have an Epiphany party for the group instead of having a Christmas party during Advent.  I thought it would be a good opportunity to teach the girls what the Epiphany was and also keep the celebrating during Christmas, not Advent.

Today I got together with one of the other moms, and sewed all of our stars for the party.  Wow, 12 stars didn't sound like much, but perhaps when we added the 5 kids running around, it took us a little longer than we thought. 

Hopefully this will be a fun activity for them and we won't wind up with rice all over the social hall.  The girls have so much fun just throwing the prayer ball back and forth that we thought making "shooting" stars for them to throw around would be fun.

Got to finish some of the decorations and the little matchboxes for the Epiphany chalk.  We'll be all set for our big party on Monday!