My lesson today

I have been with the Beehives now for a little over two months, but have just noticed in the past couple of weeks that the girls sit by the same people every week, and visit with the same 1 or 2 girls every activity night too. It is interesting to me because there are so many of them! We have 16 girls in the class. Oh, they are so cute, but I like the idea of helping them to have comfort zones that are bigger than just 2 or 3 people! Wouldn't that be a great skill for them to learn now - to be able to stretch their comfort zones to include all of the girls in the group? Maybe it is expecting a lot of them, but I have high hopes that they could learn how to look beyond themselves and think more of helping others feel loved and needed.

I feel strongly about this too because the problem never seems to go away - I don't know how many times we talked in Relief Society about helping women in the ward to feel accepted and loved, and I have to admit that I have had times where my insecurites take hold, and I feel like the odd man out. Another reason this has been on my mind, is because it is something that I have had to work on consciously - I told Scott today that I would label myself a "recovering introvert". :) He didn't think that I should label myself, but it describes some of the tugging that I have felt from Heavenly Father over the years. Because I know the gospel is true, because I know that Heavenly Father loves me, and because I know that Heavenly Father can use me to help others that He also loves, I need to look outside of myself to try and lift others. I really try to smile, to call people by name, to ask them questions about things I know about them - most of the time it feels natural, and I really do care about people in general, but sometimes I have to push myself to Enrichment Night or to a neighborhood function because the socializing seems like an effort to me.

Anyway, with all this in mind, I gave the lesson today. The theme for the lesson was following the example of Christ, and it seemed to go well. I think the girls took away some ideas about things they could do in their homes and with the other neighborhood girls that would be more Christlike, and it was such a good reminder for me too! We wrote some of Christ's qualities up on the board, and as we listed "forgiving", "perfect example", "healer", "served and loved others", I thought to myself, and I said to the girls too, "Who wouldn't want to have all of these qualities!? I know that I want them!" You can't go wrong teaching a lesson about Christ -

Almost as great as the lesson topic though, was what we did beforehand. :) I had the girls sit in alphabetical order so their little comfort zones were all destroyed! (heh, heh, heh!) Then, they visited with the girl next to them for a minute and found out one good thing that had happened to them that week, then shared what their partner told them with the group. I loved seeing them mixed up all crazy! (That sounded a little bit like something Junie B. Jones would say!) They are all such good, kind girls, and were cute as they told about the good thing that had happened in their friend's life that week. My biggest hope in this calling is that they would know enough about God's love for them, so that they could forget about themselves and go forward in helping others.

My other happy feeling about the lesson comes because all of the girls commented. Usually we have three of the sixteen girls who answer all of the questions, so today, I asked a question, gave them a minute to think about how they would answer, then I called on specific girls so that we heard from all sixteen! Hooray! For next time, I need to come up with a better closer. I got to the end and really didn't have a clear idea of what I was going to say. Hmmm. It is good to have something to work on. :)