Lighting the World this Christmas in my LDS Seminary Classroom #LighttheWorld

I put up this sign to encourage the students to participate in the Light the World campaign this Christmas.  

This year the LDS Church is celebrating the Christmas 
season by encouraging all of us to "Light the World" by doing simple acts of service for others. 

Every day in December they have a different video to watch.
  
To see this video click here.  

Light the World Day #1

I  started off my class by showing the first video.

I cut a lot of 1" strips of paper out of bright yellow paper.  I gave a paper to each student for them to write something that they could do that day to "light the world."  

Then they turned the papers in and we started to make a "light the world" chain.  I put the extra papers by the sign in sheet so that they could add to the chain every morning.  I will post a picture of our chain when we are finished.   

I decided to do a little review of some of the things we have talked about this year.

Service Stones

I put a fluorescent light out on the table.  We turned off all the lights and as we talked we went over some of the scriptures that we have studied in our New Testament Seminary Class.  Then I turned on the fluorescent light with the Service Stones underneath it.  

Then  we discussed what it felt like to be in darkness and how hard it would have been in Jesus' day to work and to get around at night.

I turned off the light again so they could see the Service Stones and how they lit up.  Then I handed each student one of the Service Stones that I had made out of a clear glass stone and glow in the dark paint. 

 Here's a picture below of how I created the Service Stone.  I painted just the flat side of the stone with glow in the dark paint.  I put on 2 coats of paint.  The paint will come off easily, so tell them to be careful with them. 

I told them to place the stone upside down by their bed each night as they read their scriptures.  When they turn off the light they can turn the stone over and it will glow.  As they fall asleep they can think of an act of service that they can do the next day to help "Light the World".  The theme for the day is "Jesus lifted other's burdens and so can you.

Light the World Day #2-4

Since we happened to be at John 14:15, I basically taught the lesson from the New Testament Doctrinal Mastery Manual on Commandments.   We cross referenced it with Matthew 22:36-39, which brought us to the second greatest commandment "Love thy neighbor as thyself."  We discussed how the "Light the World" campaign would help us to love our neighbors more.

I also gave them this handout for their journals:

Lighting the World Worksheet

I had my students write about Christ's example and how we can learn from him.  I had them write a scripture of how he has influence them in their life.  I also had them write about how they can use this influence to light the world.

I really feel like it's making an impact on the students.  I like reading through their acts of service and some of them are just "smile" or "hold the door" and others have been things like "I gave a Book of Mormon to friend" and "I put up Christmas lights for an elderly person in my ward."

Here's how our "Light the World" chain is growing:

December 16

This was our last day of class, so we took a class picture with the chain.  Some of the days the students could hardly think of anything to write, but in the end the chain went back and forth 3 times.  

Some of the students thought it would be fun to see how long it was so they took it into the gym.  It was about the length of the gym.

Hopefully the students will continue to do acts of service over Christmas break.  It is fun to be a part of the #LIGHTtheWORLD campaign!

We did the same thing the next year.   Unfortunately many of the students left before we took the picture but we took one anyway.  Here it is: