July 14, 2009
Dear Demetrius,
In last night’s Bible study, several men were asking about ideas to write to their children. Since your children are about the ages of my five grandchildren I’ll just put on paper some of the ideas I have used to write to my grandkids. I’ve already shared a few of these with you. Feel free to use any, all, or none of them. My motive is only to help dads be better dads while they are locked up (or even if they are not)!
The last verse of the Old Testament talks about turning the hearts of the fathers to the children. If there was ever a time in world history when that needs to be done, I would say it is now! So many fathers are locked away from their kids or deployed in the military far away or too busy working trying to keep food on the table that the need for some simple advice seems to be now as well.
Almost every culture on earth passes down values to the next generation with stories, parables, legends, or fables. There are many life lessons that kids need to get from dad. Stories are a great way to pass these along.
While you are locked up, I advise that you stay away from things that steal your time like the TV room. Your children are lots more important than seeing who throws a ball through a hoop or knocks a ball into a hole in the dirt. Use this precious prison time to develop new skills for yourself, learn new trades, and influence your children. Getting a letter from dad will mean more to them than you can imagine. This applies to all ages! My children are 30, 31, 32 and they still love it when I write them. I doubt anyone ever outgrows this need.
Before I give specific ideas let me share with you a few basic things I try to get across to them no matter what format the story takes. When they are done reading I want them to know that I love them, I pray for them, I want them to always love Jesus and to love studying His amazing creation. I want them to know that I love to learn new things – ending school better not end learning! I want them to understand that we all make mistakes, but the door is always open to come back into fellowship.
I can’t always get every item into every story, but these are the general goals I shoot for. The Bible contains scores of stories of all types. There are heroes to love and villains to hate. You can study the lives of these Bible characters for the rest of your life and never empty that well!
Since my five grandchildren are ages 3-6 at this time, I try to make my stories age appropriate. I have written several hundred stories since I have been locked up. Here are a few of the ideas I have used:
1) The Dear God series of stories contain about 200 stories of imaginary conversations between myself and God, myself and a Bible or historical character, or just a letter to God or the character. These are due out in book form very soon. They appeal to older kids or adults. Many are posted on cseblogs.com.
To do these stories I will think of a topic that concerns me at the time, select a character that went through the same thing I am going through, study all I can find out about them, and then “knee-mail” them. I try to understand what they were probably thinking and how God would respond based on what He has revealed to us in His Word. We can let the mind of Christ dwell in us (Phil. 2:5).
For example, when I get discouraged because of being away from my family, I think about some of the many Bible characters who faced this same situation. Joseph was sold by his brothers and taken as a slave to Egypt. What did he do? Read all about him and then “talk with him.” It becomes an amazing way to study God’s Word and try to understand the mind of the Lord.
2) As I get mail from all over the world, I will send my grandkids the stamps. They have a stamp collection book where they keep the stamp and the story I send about the country. Since we live in Florida, I try to make as many comparisons between the country and Florida as I can. I will look up the numbers in the encyclopedia. For example, if I got a letter from Portugal I would say, “Portugal is about 2/3 as big as Florida and has about 2/3 as many people. They have 10 million.” I then tell them a few basic things about the country, what the people do for work and if they have mountains, beaches, farms, or points of interest. Then I point out that many people in that country don’t know Jesus as their Savior and say, “Maybe we can go visit Portugal some day and tell them how to go to Heaven. While we are there we will go see where Christopher Columbus sailed from.” I encourage their parents to help them learn to find the countries on a globe – not a map – and to look it up on the internet as well. I have about 50 stories like this that I have sent them. If you can’t type it up just write it out and see if someone there can type it up and even add pictures from the internet. If you don’t get stamps, do the story with pictures copied from the encyclopedia.
I also did several stories about the globe, the world, continents, oceans, and islands to explain what they are. We hope to put these in book form soon as well.
3) One of the favorite series of stories for the kids is called, “When I was a Boy.” We start off in the car, or van, or bus, and they ask, “Hey, Grandpa,” what’s that green button on the dash for?” “Oh you don’t want to push that! It will take us all back in time!” “It will?! Can we go visit when you were a boy,” they all ask excitedly? “OK, but you can’t tell young Kent who you really are. He would never understand that you are really his grandkids from the future. We will just tell him we are visiting from Florida.” So we push the button and go back to various scenes in my childhood where I learned something (sometimes the hard way)! You can teach lessons about honesty, loyalty to family and God, peer pressure, being helpful by helping neighbor Jones pull weeds, etc. Make a list of good character traits you want them to get and incorporate them into a story. This series will preserve some of my “roots” for them as well. Kids need to know their heritage. It helps give them an inner moral compass when storms of life come up. It’s amazing how little things like “Hovinds don’t quit,” “Hovinds are always kind,” “Hovinds love to learn about God’s world,” or “Hovinds love to teach others about things,” etc., will make them want to live up to their family name. Build character in them – even if it wasn’t done well in you. If your childhood was “less than ideal” change it for the next generation.
4) Another series of stories is called “When your Daddy was a Boy.” This does the same thing, but we go visit their daddy (or mom) as a child. Kids need to know who their parents are and were as kids. You could title this, “When I was your age…” Let them know about times you were scared, excited, saw new things, learned lessons, got hurt, how you got that scar, etc. Maybe even have a section, “Boy, that was stupid,” or “Things not to do!”
If you feel you are not a good writer, you are probably right. Neither am I. Just get started. Even if your stories don’t win a Pulitzer Prize it will help them, and you will get better at it.
5) A similar series could be “When You were Little.” Preserve their heritage for them.
6) To help build memories in my grandkids when I read to them, I would start every story – no matter what it really was about – the same way. They would hand me a book to read and I would open it and say, “This is the story of the Three Bears,” and they would giggle and say, “No, Grandpa! This is not the Three Bears!” So, I actually wrote a series of stories called, “The Adventures of the Three Bears.” They live in a house in the woods and love to go study God’s creation. They go meet and talk with various plants and animals who then tell them how amazing God is to make them the way He did. The cactus tells how he knows to save water for when dry times come (lesson for kids – save up for hard times in your life too and you will make it). Each plant or animal can teach us and our children amazing lessons! The three bears can go anywhere. Often I will find pictures of an animal in a magazine that someone is throwing away and cut it out to include in the story. The picture itself can prompt the story. I will often start out by saying, “I saw this picture of… and it reminded me to pray for you. I want you to be like this…in these ways…or to NOT to do…” The sky is the limit with these stories.
7) Another good idea is to tell “The Endless Story” with them. You tell the first part like this: “Once upon a time we were walking down the street and found a wallet with some money and pictures in it. It also had the man’s name and address. So we…”And let them tell the next part of the story and send it back to you. Each person adds to the story. Don’t criticize them for their story parts, but use it as a teaching time. If they send the wallet story back saying they went to the store and spent the money, you can say, “after a few minutes we felt bad inside. We knew this was not right to do. So we went to visit the man whose name was in the wallet and…” You can steer the story to cover things you want like, “answer sweetly,” “do your homework,” “clean up after yourself,” “show gratitude,” “help others,” etc.
Many adventure series like The Sugar Creek Gang or The Hardy Boys follow a group of kids as they encounter various challenges in life. Make up a gang of kids and include your kids name in the book. Maybe have a boy or girl who always seems to make bad choices and ends up getting hurt or in trouble be part of the gang. Kids can learn what to do – or not to do – vicariously through the lives and adventures of others.
Pray about what your kids need at this stage in their life and get started. It’s only paper at this point and you can always redo it or throw it away. It may make the difference in their life for years to come. Hollywood knows how life changing stories can be! It is a shame they don’t use their power to effect positive values in lives. They seem to be bent on making evil look good and good look evil!
Feel free to copy and modify any of my stories and ideas. Don’t hesitate to ask me any questions and let me know if you want me to proofread any of the stories you write. Set a lot of good heroes and examples before them and help them choose God’s way in this wicked world.
Kent Hovind
Room 240