Teachable Moments

My greatest desire as a mom is to make sure that I make the most of every opportunity to train up and teach my children in the ways of the Lord. The window of opportunity for teaching them is so small that we have to take advantage of every opportunity. I feel like I have already missed out on some but I pray that I can make sure to every one that comes up in the future. That also means I have to make teachable moments. I cannot just sit back and wait for the perfect opportunity to arise. Two areas that have been on my heart lately are prayer and missions. I so desire for my children to be prayers and to also have hearts for missions.

We have been very intentional in teaching the kids about prayer but we have struggled in praying for specific requests. I saw the prayer bucket idea on pinterest and a friend's blog and loved it. All it took was a bunch and some sticks. On each stick and wrote a family member, country, issue or other prayer request. Each kid gets to pick one per day during prayer time and pray for what is on the stick. They have loved it!! It is so sweet to see and hear them pray for specific requests. We are excited to add more sticks.

At our Christmas Eve dinner of Chinese food, we begun talking about how people in China are not able to worship God freely. How the president does not allow God to be discussed. This broke Ben's heart! He just couldn't understand how that could happen. He has talked about it several times since then and has said he wants to be president of China one day so he can change the rules and allow everyone to worship God. I pray that his sweet heart continues to be open towards other countries and missions. We recently bought a large world map and are weekly going to talk about a country. We will research about that country and talk about how people worship God. We will also seek out missionaries and other things that we can pray for. I pray this will foster a deep love of missions within Ben and Kate. These are just little ways I hope can teach Ben and Kate! Let me know if you have any ideas on creating teachable moments. I need all the help I can get!