Self Control 5/10/11

This evening we finished our last Bright Lights lesson for the year by finishing set three. To begin the evening, several of the girls had prepared music or scripture memorization to share with us. Thank you ladies for taking the time to share with us, it was a blessing! Unfortunately, we only got a picture of one of the performances.

Sara playing the clarinet

Our ongoing activity for the evening was a game that made everyone aware of how hard it is to control the tongue. Each girl was given two stickers & told not to say "I" at all during the evening. If anyone heard you saying the forbidden word they could take one of your stickers and put it on themselves. Whoever had the most stickers by the end of the night won. In the end, Heather was the winner. :)

Once the game was over, Sarah decided to collect the stickers on her face. ;)

We were able to take group pictures at this meeting and pretty much everyone was there so they turned out really well.

Silly Picture...

We also got a group picture with each of the small groups.

The Rebekah group, led by Karen & Haleigh...

The Mary group, led by Sylvia & Rachel...

The Esther group, led by Katelyn, Jessica & Jenny

It's been a great year, I look forward to seeing you all with your moms for our last meeting on May 24th at CBC!

At this meeting we celebrated the birthdays of Jenna, McKenzie & Kalei

Humility 4/26/11

This evening our meeting was on humility. The opposite of humility is pride. We show pride in our lives when we exaggerate, brag about accomplishments, condemn others, demonstrating stubbornness or rebellion, and many other ways. The world encourages us to stand up for ourselves and fight but Jesus tells us the opposite - we are to show humility and learn to put other before ourselves.

One area where we can show humility is in our relationships with our families. We must learn to have humility in order to quench quarrels and seek forgiveness.

The best way to gain an attitude of humility is to realize how sinful and small we are compared to our all-powerful, almighty God. A full understanding of His majesty should cause us to humble ourselves even more so that He might be made known through us.

We took some time to study some great men of the Bible and their various responses of humility when they were in the presence of the Lord.

After the lesson, we all gathered in the living room and I explained the instructions for our next activity - the humility test.

The girls worked in groups to complete a VERY tricky humility test. All of the answers to the test came from the Bible but the girls were not allowed to use their Bibles to complete this test.

The Bible verses they needed to answer the questions on the test were found on index cards. The only "problem" was, there was only one copy of each verse.

So, the teams had to trade cards in order to get all the necessary information to complete their tests. You had to be careful who you traded with because there were penalty cards that would delay your team or put you at a disadvantage.

I forgot to announce the winner at the end of our meeting so I'll post it here. It ended up being very close. Each team finished as follows:
1st place: Haleigh's team with 19 points
2nd place: Karen's team with 16 points
3rd place: Jessica's team with 15 points
4th place: Katelyn's team with 12 points
5th place: Sylvia's team with 9 points

Amber with the Rebekah group's beloved monkey. :)

After small groups, we took some group photos. Since we had quite a few girls missing this week, we're going to take them again at our next meeting. Whichever picture has the most girls present will be the winner. :)

Click on the photo to see it larger.

Silly photo! Click on the photo to see it larger.

During tea time the girls surprised me with some flowers, singing the birthday song, cards & two lovely posters for my birthday. I was very surprised and blessed by their thoughtfulness! Thank you ladies, you are a blessing!!!

A few more pictures of tea time...

Amber, Melissa, Martha & Abby

Sylvia, the Black's friend (sorry I forgot your name!), Sarah & McKenzie

Brooke & Katie

I will look forward to seeing everyone again on May 10th! Don't forget your Bible memory sheets!

Meekness 4/12/11

This evening our lesson topic was meekness. Meekness is like gentleness and requires humility and self control.

Consider a horse - it has large muscles and is capable of running wild and being very powerful. However, it allows itself to be submitted to the will of its master and becomes gentle. Even though it seems subdued, it is still just as powerful as before. The difference is that the power is now controlled by a master.

In the same way, we are very powerful and are capable of many strong emotions. However, when we allow our wills and emotional power to be submitted to the Lord's control we become gentle. We haven't lost the power, we simply are allowing God to use that power the way He wishes.

Anger is the opposite of meekness and we will either yield to one or the other, but we can't have both. Many feelings of anger are often caused by "rights" that we feel have been violated. If we are willing to surrender those areas to the Lord, it will become easier for us to respond with meekness when we are tempted to retaliate in anger.

After the lesson, the girls got by themselves & did an activity of surrendering their rights to the Lord and asking Him to give them grace to respond with meekness the next time they are tempted to lash out in anger.

Abby

Martha

Karen

Cecily

Taylor, Heather & Brooke

Our group has been enjoying being pen pals with girls from a Bright Lights group in Texas. Each meeting they are eager to write letters and see if they have any mail. :)

The girls broke up into small groups and then we had tea and fellowship time to close. Bunny ears/moose ears were quite a popular picture theme this evening. :)

Gretchen & Jenna

Back Row: Taylor, Haleigh, Karen, Melissa 

Front: Amber, Sophie, Cecily, Gretchen, Heather

Cecily & Sophie

Sweet Sisters, McKenzie & BrookeAshley

Katie

Sara, Taylor, Sarah, Haleigh, Kalei & Sylvia (behind Haleigh)

Smiling Sarah

 "Ninja" is a very popular game of choice at the end of each meeting.

Jenna :)

Melissa :)

Amber & Abby

Karen, Jenna & Gretchen

Jenna, Shelby & Martha

I look forward to seeing you all again on April 26th!