Home School Village- How to Serve Our Community

Over at the Home School Village the topic this week is: do you involve your children in local community service / outreach projects?


Homeschooling opens so many opportunities for service. Our personal favorite service is to volunteer Fridays at Pioneer Farms, a local living-history museum. We dress up in reenactment clothing and host a cabin for the day. While we are at the cabin, we clean the grounds to make it tidy and welcoming. 

When visitors arrive at the cabin, we give a tour and explain the history of the building. We also teach them about life in the 1840's and demonstrate how to do activities such as laundry, cleaning and carding cotton from the field, spinning wool into yarn, playing marbles, cooking over an outdoor hearth, etc. 

We bring a lunch of rolls, meat, cheeses, fruits, and lemon cookies so we can spend an entire day there. When there are no visitors, we embroider samplers or read aloud together from period-appropriate books such as Little House on the Prairie or Indian Summer. 


My children love playing in the woods behind the cabin, and I love the time away from telephones, computers, and doorbells. It's so peaceful on the grounds, and as an added bonus it's a great educational experience for my children. They get to learn about history in a hands-on kinetic way. 


There is more service we did that I had kept to myself in the past because the scriptures say not to boast of our service. I am only sharing it here in the hopes that it may give you ideas for your own acts of service. 


We had an elderly neighbor who lived alone. We took her a nice dinner every Sunday so she would have a nice meal at least once a week. We'd stay for an hour and help with any household task she needed to have done, since she had Multiple Sclerosis and couldn't move very well. We mopped floors, changed light bulbs, fetched Christmas decor from the attic, fetched kitchen supplies from the top cabinets, helped set up her computer and Internet, and gave her foot rubs when she was ill. It was such a wonderful experience to serve this woman. We served her for over a year, and the only Sunday dinner we missed was when we were on a family vacation.   I felt like this was true service, to seek out and serve the lonely one. Isn't that what our Savior would do? 


The Lord tells us to serve Him with our might, mind, and strength. I wondered how to use my talents in serving the Lord. I am a face painter....and it seemed difficult to find a way to use that in service. I prayed for inspiration, and the answer came. I made a sign saying that %90 of all payments I received would go to Humanitarian Services. I put this up on my booth at the largest festival of the year. It was a great way to raise a large quantity of money for a good cause. I also offered that day to paint anyone who couldn't afford to be painted, since large families often couldn't cover the expense of having all their children get a painting. After painting for 8 hours, I had over $700 to donate. This is where the money went: