Letter From Evangeline Burgers
Hello Church Community,
I pray that you had a great time celebrating our Earth on Wednesday and that you’ve overall had a good week with your families at home.
Last week, Pastor Jenny started a new sermon series on stories and she challenged us to share a story about our beginning. One way children might think about their story of beginning is through sharing about their names.
One of my very favorite activities to do when I taught Kindergarten was for parents to share the story of their child’s name with the class. We all learned so much about our friends this way and I found it a powerful opportunity to build up a child’s esteem and affirm their identity.
I’ve recorded a read-aloud of my personal favorite book, Chrysanthemum, to help our children think about names and their significance. There’s also this fun video from Scholastic featuring people sharing their name stories.
If you have a chance, talk with your child about their name. Tell the story of how you decided on their name when they were a baby. Are they named after a specific ancestor or special friend? Is there a funny story about how their name came to be? Why did you love it? Then help your child to share the story of their name in the read-aloud YouTube comments. I pray this will be a fun way for our children to share their personal name stories with one another.
Names are just one small piece of what makes our story special. I love the image Pastor Jenny mentioned last week from Psalms about God knitting us in our mother’s womb. What a beautiful and exciting life we live, that we get to co-write our stories with God!
To follow up from Sunday School last week, I challenged our children to reach out to a friend they are missing and tell them how much they care about them. I’ve attached a “Thinking of You” coloring page here for them to do just that!
Have a great week and let me know if you need anything!
Love,
Evangeline Burgers
Director of Children’s Ministry
Princeton UMC
609-924-2613 (church phone)
She/Her/Hers
