The Christian Education ministries at Fritz UMC Bethlehemisobserving Lent in special ways, including these activities among our children and youth:

• Lenten Care Packages have been sent home to families, complete with snap pea seeds, soil, newspaper, the Lord’s Prayer broken into 6 graphics, and several different sized labyrinths. These are all tools to help us measure our personal prayer growth throughout the season of Lent, as well as helping us make connections to the New Testament lectionary readings throughout the 6 weeks leading to Easter.
• ClearView Masks is a project aimed at getting face masks with clear middles onto as many faces as possible. The children in our Sunday School are concerned about those with hearing impairments, those who are deaf, and those who have a hard time interpreting social cues when mouths are obstructed from view. In early March, a Zoom meeting will be recorded to teach people how to sew a ‘clearview’ mask and how to retrofit an existing mask. The children invited everyone to join them in this project!
• Centering in Prayer is a Lenten-long focus on prayer. Each week, we will examine a different part of the Lord’s Prayer, connecting our personal and corporate prayer lives with the use of labyrinths. This will all be happening for the children and families over Zoom, with the hopes of the snow melting long enough to enjoy a giant chalk labyrinth in our parking lot by the time Holy Week arrives. 
• Three Simple Rules, by the late UM Bishop Reuben Job, is being read and studied by our confirmation students. They are taking six weeks to dive deeply into how these rules play out in our daily lives and to connect them to what we experience in popular culture.
• Caring Pantry is our congregation-wide Lenten service project. We are collecting school supplies and healthy snacks to be placed in a special box on our church’s lawn, just for the children that meet at our corner bus stop. We want to be sure that we are remembering to love on our neighbors throughout the year and Lent is the perfect time for us to start building the newest part of our outreach ministries.