I love Nursery!

Last Sunday was my first time in Nursery as a leader, and I helped the other two leaders (a young couple just married this January) as they headed up the activities. We have a pretty decent sized nursery for being a small ward, plus we have visitors a lot, especially during the summer (decent sized = 6-10 kids). I really feel for the other leaders; I remember Chad and I in Nursery as newlyweds feeling inadequate in our toddler-wrangling skills. So I'm much more comfortable in this calling this time around, now that wrangling toddlers is my life.

I volunteered to do the lesson for this Sunday. I know that they've been trying to incorporate the lessons, but it's hard to get through to 18-month-olds. But I think it's really important to get Bree and the older kids used to sitting down for a lesson, since they'll be in Sunbeams in 6 months. We may even use the divider curtain during lesson time, to give the "Senior Nursery" kids a chance to really learn. Anyway, in preparation for today's lesson, I went through it last Monday for Family Home Evening. The topic was "The Book of Mormon Teaches us about Jesus Christ." (I love the new Nursery manual, and bought one for our home as soon as is came out. It is soooo much better for nursery aged kids than the Primary 1 book we used previously.) I taught the kids (mostly Bree) a few simple stories about Jesus that we learn from the Book of Mormon. Then we learned the chorus to "Search, Ponder, and Pray" and sang it a few times. It probably didn't even take five minutes for the whole lesson, which is exactly how they're designed.

So today, I only had 5 kids: two 3-year-olds and three between 17-20 months. Since I was on my own (the other leaders skipped out today), I taught them all together as they were finishing up their snack. Bree remembered details from some of the stories, and sang along as we learned the song again. But the highlight of my day came this evening when Bree asked, "Mommy, will you read me the Book of Mormon?" Normally I'm lazy, and I say, "Maybe later" when I get requests when I'm busy. But I was so touched and excited, we got out the Book of Mormon Stories picture book and read the first few stories. Then as I was fixing dinner, I heard Bree singing as she played; "Search, ponder and pray are the things I can do." I love Nursery.