Hands of Heaven

***A BIG thank you to all who commented on my last post.  You made me feel happy!***

Well, I’ve got sick kids and I am sick, too, so I figured this would be a good time to get some blogging done.

I’ve got half my Christmas shopping done and I’ve got all my decorating done AND my house isn’t even a total wreck so I am feeling pretty on top of things right now.  I am really unhappy that I am sick.  I HATE being sick!  But, such is life, I guess.

In my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) we have a women’s organization called the Relief Society.  Once a month we have an activity on a week night, and currently I am in charge of organizing these activities.  A couple months ago I put on my first activity.  I wanted to make it really nice and special.  It was a night about bringing us all together as sisters even more than we already are.

The jumping off point for the evening was a video I had seen a couple years back called Hands of Heaven.  Here is a clip from it.  It is incredibly touching and I LOVE the message.  I highly recommend it.  You can order it online from one of our church bookstores called Deseret Book.

Anyway, here is what we did.  As the sisters entered, we tied together their hands in pairs.  We told them they had to stay tied together until we told them they could untie.  We thought this would be a fun way to help people who didn’t know each other well or weren’t currently close friends get to know each other better.  We gave them a list of prompting questions to help them find things to talk about.  I was worried about this activity but it really turned out great. 

We then had an opening prayer and song.  We sang “Lord, I Would Follow Thee” but we changed the word “brother’s” to “sister’s”.  We then invited the sisters to serve themselves dinner from our buffet.  But we told them they had to stay tied together until they were seated and ready to eat.  This was fun to watch.  It took some creative serving and teamwork.

The sisters then ate their dinner.  We served Fruited Pasta Chicken Salad, Antipasto sticks and crackers, rolls, cucumber water, and strawberry water.  They all had a cupcake at their seat for dessert.  They were White Chocolate Orange cupcakes and they were divine!  I will post the recipe in another post.

After dinner we showed the video.  There were few dry eyes in the room.  I then gave a short talk about how we all have trials and we all need friends and support.  I then shared a personal experience about when my Relief Society sisters had pulled me in and helped me through a difficult time in my life.  We then had two other sisters share experiences of a similar type.  We ended with a special musical number and a prayer. 

It was an amazing night and I think the sisters all felt love and friendship.

The decorations were AMAZING!  My pictures do not do it justice.  It looked like a wedding reception.  The decorations were super simple but packed a lot of punch.  Under each plate is a piece of scrapbook paper.  Then we had all the mercury glass candlesticks with the tissue pom poms.  One of the ladies on my committee had those little silver balls which we scattered all over the tables.  It just looked elegant.