"Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not easily broken." Ecclesiastes 4:12
During our June 19 Bible Lesson we heard that Joseph had two dreams that were messages from God. Today when we looked at scripture from Genesis 42:1-46:34 and Genesis 50:15-21 we learned that Joseph's dreams came true. Joseph's father, Jacob, and his brothers lived in Canaan during a famine. Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain. They did not recognize their brother Joseph who was in charge of distributing food. His brothers bowed down to him, just like in the dream. Joseph put his brothers through a series of tests before revealing to them that he was the brother that they sold into slavery.
Joseph forgave his brothers and explained that though they intended to harm him
that God used the situation for good. Their family was able to go to Egypt and thrive. God once again kept his promise to the nation of Israel. Much later God sent his son, Jesus Christ, one of Jacob's descendants to redeem people from sin and bring salvation into the world.
Today we completed the first section of the Gospel Project Bible studies called "The Story Begins", where we began learning about God's love and concern for the people he created and his desire to be in relationship with us.
After we opened our nice big screen we realized that our projector would not turn on. We had a cozy lesson by the lap top and club members colored a worksheet while we reflected on important concepts of the lesson and also resilience in the presence of unexpected challenges.
One of the goals of our club is for club members to form friendships within the club as they play together. At some meetings we will incorporate unstructured free time for them to develop decision making skills while planning relaxing self guided leisure. We will strive to have age appropriate supplies out for them to choose from.
We seek club members feedback on their satisfaction with the club and ways to make it more beneficial to them and future club members. Since moving to our current club room the children have wanted time to explore the room. Today they enjoyed creating imaginative activities together as they became involved with our new space. They quickly cleaned up afterwards for our other activities.
We anticipate that their social circles within the club will grow as members are involved with each other during meetings.
Marcus Vise, who works with Second Harvest Food Bank, came to visit our meeting and discussed current hunger in our communities and the many programs that they offer to help. Our club members brought nonperishable food and dollars to the meeting.
The Tricord club members, their families, and our Core Club Room volunteers were inspired to do a food drive to help our neighbors. We are each going to have collection boxes for food in areas near our homes. We will bring what we collect to our September 11, 2021 meeting. Mr. Vise will return to that meeting, and our service project for the day will be for the children to divide up what we collect into nutritious food boxes to be donated to local food banks.
As we work with club members we expect that they will each recognize and name personal strengths and be given opportunities to use them. We hope that this large service project will help the children and the people that they serve realize that our club members and group have much to offer. We strive to decrease stereotypes toward people with disabilities. Our food drive will also increase acts of family and community service, which is another club goal.
Will you please help our small group have a BIG impact by contributing? If you do not live in an area where any of us have a collection box, but would like to help club members curb hunger, you may go to myregistry.com and type Tricord Club into the search box. That will take you to the wish list for our Second Harvest Food Drive monetary donations. Since Second Harvest buys in bulk each dollar provides four meals!
