The Wise Man and the Foolish Man - Build your life on Christ

Sundays and the command to keep the Sabbath Day holy are such a great opportunity to be creative and have fun. I say a "great opportunity to be creative" because too often we focus only on the things we cannot do, that we forget about all the things we can do on Sunday.

Here's what we did for last week's Sunday activity: the reenactment of the wise man and the foolish man!  Mami Chula is the Sunday School teacher of the adults. We are studying the New Testament, and just reviewed the beatitudes. The new BibleVideos.org videos are just fabulous! I love that they follow the words of scripture word by word, and the production is just excellent. 

So for our Sunday family activity after dinner, I pulled out an empty fish tank that I just had sitting around, hauled a rock from the backyard, and pulled a couple houses I had bought at the craft store when they were on sale for ten cents.  The kids had a lot of fun playing in the water. I gave each of my three kids a house, and asked them where they would build. Last month when we talked about the weather, I had showed them on my phone, in our car commutes, a video about the wise man and the foolish man from YouTube. So they were familiar with the story. So when I asked them were to build, they remembered. Puma Tiger  said: "mine is going to be on the top of the rock!" and quickly took possession of the limited real estate on top.. Seeing this, Blueberries said in an even more excited voice "mine is going to be on the bottoooom!! because I want it to flooooood!!!" Hahaha, I had to laugh. She knew what would happen, and she wanted that fun of seeing her house inundated and floating around.  Aren't we like that sometimes? Crazy people!

"The wise man built his house upon the rock,

And the rains came tumbling down.

The rains came down, and the floods came up,

And the house on the rock stood still."

At the end, when because of the water the house would not stand, Blueberries did say she wanted her house to go on the rock. Just for a change I guess :)  But before putting it on, I told her there was only one way to go from the flood to the rock.... "what is it?" I asked. Sometimes I ask questions even thought I know they don't know the answear so that they pay lots of attention. They love knowing the answear, so when they don't and I ask, they will often give me a good guess, or they'll just listen for about three seconds in anticipation. That is when the answear has to be something I want to stick in their brain.

Something, easy, simple, clear. So I just said "a-rre-pen-ti-mien-to!"  That is "repentance"  I had her say it one or two times, which she did delighted with an extra triple rolling of the arrrrrrrepentimiento   (it took her a while to be able to roll her rrrs, so she will take every chance to show off!).  Then I simply explained "repentance is when we come to Christ. HE is the Rock. HE always wants us to come to him, to move our house over and live His way, the best way."

Papi Chulo and I have decided that besides going to Church and having family dinner, on Sundays we want to be proactive in giving ourselves opportunities to bond together as a family, learn the doctrine of Christ, and come closer to our Heavenly Father, through family activities. We prepare a bit, but most of the time, we just look for connections to gospel principles on activities. We have been doing this for about a year now, and we LOVE IT! The memories, and the learning, are just so worth it!

What do you do to come closer to God on Sundays?