Lydia - Serving Others

A few weeks before I sent out and email announcing the activity:

We will learn about Lydia. Lydia was "A Seller of Purple". She opened up her home to the missionaries and helped to convert hundreds! For our activity, We will have a Purple Party!  The sister missionaries are coming to share a short message and we are providing them dinner. This is a perfect activity to invite a friend that is not a member of our church! Every 8 or 9 year old girl is welcome to our Purple Party!

-Wear Purple!
 -Bring a healthy food item to share with the missionaries and all the girls (purple food preferred but not required)
-Bring a 8 or 9 year old girl as a friend to the party!

I invited two sets of sister missionaries: once from our ward and one from our our local YSA ward. Both sets came!

I made it clear to the parents that thay were providing dinner for the missionaries and we got some great responses. One girl brought a bucket of KFC fried chicken, another brought a pizza. Not exactly healthy and none of it was purple, but oh well! It was a feast!

Sadly, the response to inviting friends was a lot less enthusiastic. We did not have any guests show up to the party.

Before the girls showed up we decorated with cheap $1 purple plastic tablecloths and purple ballons. 5 of those went a long way!

After out opening stuffs we said a prayer on the food. While they were eating it was time for the lesson! Instead of  reading my lesson like I usually do I had a sister missionary read it.  I had printed off a map so the girls could look at it.

Lydia

Lydia’s story is found in the New Testament, in the book of Acts.

Lydia was a woman who was probably very rich. She was a “Seller of Purple” which probably means she dyed fabrics the color purple, which was really hard to do back then, and then sold them for a lot of money. She had a household, which means she owned a large house with lots of rooms and had servants who worked for her.

Lydia lived in Philippi, which was a giant city bustling with trade in the country of Macedonia. Macedonia is in Europe, and as you can see from this map, it’s a long way away from Bethlehem and Jerusalem where Christ lived and taught. Lydia was alive when Jesus was alive, but he was far away, so she never heard him teach. In fact, she never heard anything about him while he was alive. Lydia loved God, prayed often, and always tried to choose the right. She sought after the truth. Do you think if Jesus came to Macedonia and talked to her, that she would believe him and become one of his disciples?

But Christ never went to Macedonia. He was crucified before Lydia knew anything about him. So how can people who love God and are trying to choose the right, and looking for truth learn about Christ if Christ never comes to them? How do people today learn about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?

Missionaries! Missionaries do the work Christ would do if he were here.

After Jesus was crucified and resurrected, his apostles kept teaching the people what Jesus had taught them. Paul, otherwise known as Saul, was converted to the church after a vision and several miracles. He became a great missionary and travels all over to teach people about Christ! One day, he has a vision where a man appears and tells him to come to Macedonia. Paul doesn't know why he’s supposed to go, only that God wants him to go.

Paul and his companion, Silas, make the long journey to Macedonia and go to the giant city of Philippi. Paul and Silas are guided by the Spirit to a river, where they see a group of women praying by the river. One of those women was Lydia! Paul and Silas start teaching the women about Christ. The spirit tells Lydia that what Paul and Silas are saying is true! She listens very closely to everything Paul and Silas say. They teach Lydia and she decides to be baptized! Lydia is the very first person on the entire continent of Europe to be baptized into the church!

Once Lydia is baptized, she wants others to learn about Christ and be baptized, too! She wants to help the missionaries, Silas and Paul. Lydia asks them to live at her house, so they can teach the people in the city of Philippi. Silas and Paul do stay with Lydia, and since they are living in her house, Lydia would have to feed them as well. Do you think the missionaries were grateful that Lydia fed them? Because the missionaries were in Lydia’s house, they taught her household, or her servants and family. Her entire household was baptized because Lydia had invited the missionaries in to her home. A lot of people in the city are baptized, too!

The Gospel of Jesus Christ bring happiness and blessings. If we are grateful for that happiness and blessings, we can share that happiness and those blessings with the people we love by inviting them and the missionaries into our home. The missionaries probably won’t live in your house like they did in Lydia’s house, but you can feed the missionaries, just like Lydia did! When you feed the missionaries, you’re not only inviting the missionaries into your home, but the spirit as well! You can even ask your friends if they want to eat dinner with the missionaries, and have your friends and the missionaries over for dinner at the same time. That way the missionaries can teach your friends, just like Paul and Silas taught Lydia's family and servants.

God loved Lydia so much that he sent his missionaries all the way to Macedonia so they could teach Lydia the Gospel. The Lord then used Lydia to teach hundreds of other people the Gospel!

God loves us so much that he has given each one of us his Gospel. He has given us missionaries so we can share the Gospel with our friends. If we want to be like Lydia, all we have to do is invite the missionaries and our friends into our home.

After the lesson it was time for games! We played several silly party games. The point was for the girls to have fun together. It went great! The girls had a blast and the sister missionaries had fun, too!

After the party I gave out my handout:  (Taken from womeninthescriptures.com)

Lydia

Facts About Her:

• She is a "seller of purple" which has reference to her work as a merchant (and perhaps maker) of purple dye used to dye cloth (vs. 14);
• She is from the city of Thyatria, which is located in the middle of modern day Turkey, but made her home in Phillipi which was a big trading city;

• She gathers with other women outside of the city walls of Phillipi near the river side "where prayer was wont to be made." (vs. 13);
• She is described as one who "worshiped God" and "whose heart the Lord opened" even before she heard Paul's message (vs. 14);
• She hears Paul and Silas preaching to the women gathered at the river and "she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul." (vs.14);
• She and her whole household are baptized, making her the first Christian convert on the European continent (vs. 15);
• After she is baptized she opens her home to Paul and Silas and tells them "If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. (vs.15)"
• Later, after Paul and Silas have been beaten (vs. 16-23), thrown in prison (vs. 24), survive an earthquake that opens the doors of their prison (vs. 25-28), and convert and baptize the prison keeper and his whole household (vs. 29-36) they return to Lydia's house before they continue on their journey to Thessalonica (vs.40).

Speculations About Her:

• Her home was most likely used as the meeting place for the church in Phillipi and perhaps Paul had Lydia in mind when later in his epistle to the Philippians he wrote, "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. Always in every prayer of mine for you making request with joy, For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now"(Philip. 1:3—5)

• She was probably a very well-to-do woman, seeing as the author of Acts identifies by her trade as a "seller of purple" and that she has a "household". It may be that she was unmarried or a widow seeing as there is no mention of her husband.

Questions to Think About:

• Why do you think that the women who were gathered at the river to pray are some of the first people Paul and Silas seek out to teach?

• Have you made room in your home, like Lydia did, for the prophets of God? Do they "abide", figuratively, in your home? If not, what changes can you make in your life and in your home to give them room?

• How can you invite the missionaries in your home?
• Can you ask someone if they want to eat dinner with the missionaries in your home?