Fellowship | Jendi's Journal

On Saturday night we had an informal get together at church. Just pizza, soda, Doritos, Uno, Phase 10, and Monopoly. It was great fun and fellowship. The pictures that I have show all the faces so you will just have to imagine the fun.

The interesting thing was that there was 14 adults and 14 children there. To make it even more interesting the oldest child was 6 years old.

So don’t confuse a quiet, relaxing evening with our fun evening. (LOL) Those children had every toy imaginable out in the nursery! At one point the older ones came out and asked if they could play puzzles. About 3 mothers collectively said, “No!”

Everyone seemed to have a good time. The adults talking made almost as much noise as the kids.

“Please move the ship 10.” “Stop slamming that door.” “Mommy, can I have some chips?” “Uno!” “I need $200 – I passed go.” “Mommy, can I give her a pretzel?” “Who went out?” “Already?!” “Don’t take the baby blanket!” “Daddy, he took my toy.” “Draw Two.” “Did anyone mess with my money while I was gone?” “Is there any Dr. Pepper left?”

The church was cleaned up and ready for Sunday, the testimonies were joyful, and we’ll be ready to do it again soon.

The moral is: Don’t think that you have to have everything planned just so to have a great time. Just get together and have some good, clean fun. [If it's a neutral place it makes the mother's happier because they don't have to clean. ]

Have a great week!

At the blog Making a House a Home the author, Mrs. U has asked for ideas. I’m posting my ideas here so I don’t leave a humongous comment.

Activity: Ladies Fellowship

Ages: All

Theme: Picnic

Place: Inside (which is the problem)

Decorations: In Mrs. U’s comment section there are lots of suggestions for baskets, fake ants, red-checked tablecloths, blankets on the floor, candles, mason jars, a red wagon, etc.

It would be great to set a couple real picnic baskets around the room or on the food table if you have access to any.

Food: Picnic food of course! There are food suggestion in her comments also. This is not my forte so I’m going to leave it at that.

Favors: Citronella candles from a Dollar Store, a fun plastic cup they could use and take home, some plastic ants for the little girls.

Prizes: anything picnic or outdoor related like a can of bug spray, an umbrella, a sun hat, etc. I have found that it works good to make the decorations be prizes. It serves two purposes and cuts down on clean-up and storage. If you do flowers in mason jars or something like that; they would be nice prizes.

Games:

I like to include a Hymn or chorus before the speaker. It’s usually possible to find one related to the theme; if not related to the theme maybe to the devotion.
How much does the Watermelon weigh? Kind of like “Guess the Candy in the Jar.”
Some stores carry plastic Horseshoes for kids to play with. That could be turned into an inside game.
It’s nice to have a paper game. You can make a matching game for about any theme. For this theme flowers or trees might work good. Just put the proper name on one side and a definition on the other. Wikipedia can be a great help with definitions. [Hint: when playing paper games ask them to tell you when they are done. Then if there is a tie the person that was done first is the winner.]
Indoor Baseball: Divide everyone into 2 teams. Have 3 chairs set up for bases and a bat for the person “up” to hold. The “pitcher” will ask a Bible trivia question and the person up to bat must answer correctly to go sit on first base; if they answer incorrectly they are out. When I’ve done this I just play through each team and the one with the most points wins. If it’s a big group just play through half of the first team then switch to play half of the second team, etc. You can also have 3 levels of questions: an easy question for a single hit, a medium question for a double, and a hard question for a home run.
Group Charades without any props can be fun and include all ages. Just write the things to be acted out on slips of paper and put them in a basket, hat, box, bag, etc. For a picnic theme you could do outdoor activities like badminton, volleyball, rowing, fishing, napping, biking, hiking, football, eating watermelon, etc. You will need two teams and each team will need to be divided in half; one half to act and one half to guess. The halves can take turns guessing and acting or not. Have a time limit for the acting; if the answer is not guessed in that time the team does not get a point. If you think that your group would rather draw instead switch it to pictionary. Use a chalkboard or white board and one person at a time pulls a slip from the basket and draws.
Guess What: Have semi-large pictures of birds, trees, leaves, or flowers to hold up in front of the group one at a time. The first person to shout the correct answer scores one point for their team. A wrong answer subtracts a point.
Door Prizes: work in any situation.