Learning to Serve

I always want to incorporate service into our Christmas season--especially with my children. Both now and throughout the year we have lots of service opportunities that we hear about through our church. But the majority of the time, my children are too young to come.

This year my daughter's preschool had a food drive before Thanksgiving. I took her to the store with a list of items they were collecting and had her pick some stuff out and then we dropped it in the bin at the school. I'm glad we did it. But I don't think she ever quite got what we were doing. Thankfully, she can't imagine not having enough food to eat. So it confused her that we would give boring old cans of food to other people. (Giving away treats and baked goods she understands.)

A member of my church works at a nonprofit that had a huge toy drive for children in need throughout the area. I didn't hear about the donating toys part, but then they needed help wrapping the toys. I took my four year old with me last night to wrap presents.

She manned the tape dispenser while I wrapped. She gave me pieces of tape two or three times longer than I ever needed. She also got to eat cookies and chips. I don't think she quite got what we were doing at first.

The donations were so generous that all the kids on the list were getting two toys from the drive this year. When I told her we needed to wrap another toy for the same kid, she was impressed. I told her that she was very blessed because she was going to get more than two presents this year. She stood up and exclaimed for all to hear, "Yeah! I'm going to get tons of presents!"

As time went on, I think she understood that we were doing this for other people. She would run out to choose another pile of gifts to wrap (usually choosing the princess themed stuff, but also some Buzz Lightyear toys). And then she would ask about the child is was going to. Was it a boy or a girl? How old were they? Do you think they'd like the gift?

My friend commented that she was impressed that even though my daughter was excited by many of the toys she saw, she never asked for any of them.

On the drive home, we took some detours through the neighborhood to check out Christmas lights. I told her that what we had just done was service--doing something for other people without expecting anything in return. She did learn that doing service gives you a good feeling inside. And sometimes, there's cookies.

Family Traditions: Pioneer Day

Here’s the thing about state holidays—when you move to another state, no one knows or cares about a holiday that you’ve celebrated all your life. Maybe it’s something like being a Canadian in America on Canadian Thanksgiving.

Utah has a state holiday called Pioneer Day. It celebrates the day (July 24, 1847) that the Mormon Pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. I moved to Utah when I was four, so I remember celebrating this holiday my entire life.

When I was young, our church would sponsor an activity for the children where we would dress up in pioneer bonnets, dresses, and aprons; decorate our bikes, trikes, and Radio Flyer wagons; and then march around the neighborhood as if we were pioneers. Our sneakers looked out of place with our dresses and our bikes were decorated with leftover birthday streamers, but we felt very traditional. Our final destination was usually the church parking lot where we got a popsicle. I know now, of course, that our once or twice around a city block didn’t even begin to compare to a single day’s journey of the pioneers’ 1300 mile trek. But as a six year old on a hot July day, I felt I’d earned that popsicle.*

My girls will very likely never live in Utah as children. Even in large Latter-day Saint communities outside of Utah, Pioneer Day is only remembered as a topic to talk about in church on Sunday. But no bike parades. My sister lives in Utah with her three daughters. Every year they go to a large celebration in a park for Pioneer Day. It involves a lot of booths and displays that tell you about the history of the pioneers and celebrates the sacrifices they made to settle these valleys.

This year I was lucky enough to be in Utah with my daughters for Pioneer Day. And my three year old now has her own pioneer bonnet to add to her dress up collection. They are too young to remember this Pioneer Day in particular, but it was nice for me to be able to share a holiday from my childhood with them. And maybe next year, though we won’t be in Utah, we’ll dig out the bonnet and talk about what it means to be a pioneer.


*Our church often sponsors real three day treks for youth where they have to push handcarts, dress and eat like pioneers, and actually walk the distance the pioneers had to walk in a day. I never had the opportunity to do that, but have heard good things about the experience from those who have.