By Jen McPhie

This was one of our best Enrichment Nights it was on service. Our presidency was challenged by the Stake R.S. presidency to take a pair of garden gloves that said “Helping Hands” on the label and come up with something that we could do with our R.S. sisters. So, we put on our thinking caps and came up with a six month plan (we had to report on this project at our next stake leadership training meeting). The plan went as follows:

We presented our sisters with a basket of hands (We called them HELPING HANDS) cut out of construction paper and had a cross-stitch picture of praying hands on the table. We ask the sisters to take as many hand as they would like and said we were challenging them to take the hand and do some sort of service for a sister in our ward. It could be anything they choose to do it could even be a secret.

Then the person who received the hand was asked (if they wanted to) to return the hand and write on the hand what service was done for them and any other comments.

Three months later we changed it to “We are his Hands” and with this we wanted the sisters to still do services as before, but we also wanted sisters to be on the look out of other sister performing acts of serves, and to fill out a hand on what they saw.

As the sister returned hand after hand we as a presidency were so excited to see the act of service going on in our ward. This became a whole activity for some families and we began getting handmade hands back into our basket from children in our ward. Some of the acts of serves where huge while others where simple, but very much needed.

We displayed all our hand up in the hallway every Sunday for all the members in our ward to see it was awesome.

On the six month for our enrichment night (which also happen to be visited by the Stake R.S. presidency) We had a special HELPING HANDS night . We invited the sisters to come to enrichment night with there own special invitation very nicely done in an envelope addressed to each sister. We had our lesson on service and then we met in the cultural hall. We set up tables and did Paraffin wax treatments on all of our sisters hands to thank them for their service using their hands. The presidency massaged each sisters hands and talked and visited together. We had a comment from the Stake R.S. presidency who was truly touch by our efforts to make this project so special she said “This reminds me of the Savior and how he washed his disciples feet! Good work!”

After we where done with this activity we then sat in a big round circle with chairs so that we could face one another. We sang “I have Two Little Hands” and change a couple of words to fit in with the sisters and our project. Then, we read 2 stories “The Importance of One” and a story about slowing down and remembering what is truly important.

We then asked the sisters to pass our basket of hands around and to take a hand out and read what serves was on the hand. It was a special night some sisters had know idea how they had effected others and what little act of kindness had meant to each other. When the basket was empty we let the sisters share anything else that they wanted to and if they forgot to write on a hand they could say their thank you’s. We finished the night with a story about hands what kind of hand do you have.
We had smoothies and Hand sugar cookies to eat- Yummy!! This night turned out better then we could have ever imagined! The spirit was so strong and wonderful this night. I highly recommend if you need an idea to help bring sisters together this is an activity for you!