Ladybug Friends

During most of my growing up years, my dad was a farmer.  He farmed wheat and cotton.  Every summer I was the "un-hired" hand...meaning free labor for him!!  I didn't get paid wages, but spending time with him and learning to "farm" taught me a lot.  (In my high school years, when he became our small-town Farmer's Coop manger, he did hire me during the summer wheat harvest and I did get paid to work.) I think about those farming days with great memories (except for the plowing!). 

One thing I remember vividly had to do with lady bugs. Dad purchased thousands and thousands of ladybugs.  They were shipped to us in big crates and were stacked up high in our laundry/mud room.  I remember we had to have a fan blowing in there to keep them extra cool and alive.  I remember they stunk!

The day after the ladybugs arrived, I had the privilege of riding with my dad on his motorcycle.  He was driving, and I rode behind him turned around with my back against his.  He drove the motorcycle up and down the cotton rows, and I scattered those stinky, but very pretty, ladybugs!  I would reach into the burlap bags and pull out handfuls of ladybugs, throwing them as we rode. Why???  Because the ladybugs would eat the boll weevils that were eating the cotton stalks.  Isn't that neat???  I still think that is so cool!  My kids like to hear that story and are even more amazed to hear that their grandpa and I rode the motorcycle.  They think I'm a 'fraidy cat.  They don't know the real me :). (hee hee!)

Sunday morning I taught my 1st and 2nd graders about ladybugs.  It's a lesson I found on Danielle's Place, called "Ladybug Friends".  It's such a cute lesson (and a FREE lesson) that teaches about how we should be friends and help others like ladybugs do.  I especially enjoyed telling the children about how I scattered the ladybugs in my dad's cotton field and how those ladybugs helped us by eating the bad bugs that were eating the cotton plants.  (The Danielle's Place lesson has an interesting story about ladybugs helping with the Florida orange trees, too.)

Ladybug friends. Yet another one of God's amazing and beautiful creatures teaching us a lesson about how to live.....as friends and friends who help each other!

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.

Galatians 5:13

(NOTE:  And speaking of helping friends, I have a friend needing help to keep their little theatre open in their town.  She is the school drama teacher and asked if I would pass along this info.  Go to http://www.wellingtonritztheatre.com/  and click on the link to vote for the Wellington (Texas) theatre to win $25,000.  Thank you for helping! :)