Virtue Ethic
10-18

As we strive this month to look at different virtues that we can develop so that we can become a better person let us look at our next virtue: Courtesy. Remember that as a guide for trip into the land of virtues; I have been using Barbara Unell and Jerry Wyckoff’s book 20 Teachable Virtues: Practical Ways to Pass on Lessons of Virtue and Character to Your Children.

Courtesy: 1. Excellence of manners or social conduct; polite behavior. 2. A courteous, respectful, or considerate act or expression. 3. Indulgence, consent, or acquiescence. 4. Favor, help or generosity.

Saint Basil the great had the following to say about courtesy: “A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.” Barbara Unell and Jerry Wyckoff had this to say about courtesy: “Those who are considerate enough to think of the needs of others and to be courteous increase the pleasantness of everyday life and reduce its conflicts, thus reducing the pollution of violence around them.”

What I think about most when it comes to courtesy is that it requires thought. We need to move out of our selfishness to think about other people and what they might need or appreciate. Courtesy starts with thinking about the other as a gift from God and therefore treating the gift with respect. Gestures of courtesy do not have to big others also.

Mother Teresa for me is a prime example for courtesy. The following are some quotes from Mother Teresa that I think speak elegantly about courtesy.

“Peace begins with a smile..” ? Mother Teresa

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” ? Mother Teresa

“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” ? Mother Teresa

“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.” ? Mother Teresa

Remembering that most problems in the world happen out of neglect and not malice so therefore people who are focused on being courteous really can help make the world a better place. I also believe the courtesy is all about being the person that you wish to be. I do not think any of us dreams of growing up to be a bully always focused on our own desires. Instead I believe that we grow up desiring to be the person that others want to be around because we are a nice guy. Being courteous therefore for me is a choice to be the person that I want to be.


10 Steps to Help One Develop the Virtue of Courtesy.
1. Demonstrate courtesy for others by first practicing it.
2. Say “Please” when making a request.
3. Say “Thank You” when receiving something.
4. Try to be aware of other people’s feelings.
5. Try to return kindness to others even when not receiving it first.
6. Mediate television and watch shows the promote courtesy and not shows that promote making fun of others.
7. Try to avoid sarcasm.
8. Avoid negative name calling
9. Try to anticipate ways to help others.
10. Take time to reflect how your behavior has affected others.

It is time for our next virtue which is a virtue that many of us find us lacking from time to time and wishing we had more of and that being Patience. Remember that as an aid for our look at virtues I am using Barbara Unell and Jerry Wyckoff’s book 20 Teachable Virtues: Practical Ways to Pass on Lessons of Virtue and Character to Your Children.

Patient: 1. Bearing pains or trials calmly without complaint. 2. Manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain. 3. Not hasty or impetuous. 4. Steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity. 5. Able or willing to bear.

Patience: The capacity, habit, or fact of being patient.

When I think about patience, I think of the movie Evan Almighty. In the movie Evan’s wife and children lead him because Evan has been told by God to build an ark. While they are at a restaurant Evan’s wife Joan begins to complain to the waiter who happens to be God. She finally says to God “What do you think of that?” God’s response is something like “It sounds like an opportunity.” God goes onto explain that when people pray for patience God does not just zap a person with patience but rather God gives them more opportunities to practice patience.

Patience though is mostly about self-control. It is about being able to control our tempers and our instincts to start blaming others for problems that may or may not exist and rather we choose to remain calm and make loving decisions despite the chaos that maybe going on in our hearts and minds. Patience is about being in the right headspace to make appropriate decisions.

“Patience is power. Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is "timing" it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.” ? Fulton J. Sheen

When I am in a hurry I know that I begin to lose the power of self-control. I become rash and unkind. Patience therefore is a virtue that I know I need in my life.

Patience is for me a lot about self-acceptance. If I am not happy with who I am then I spend my time searching for approval from others and

Let nothing disturb thee; Let nothing dismay thee; All thing pass; God never changes. Patience attains all that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices ~ St. Teresa of Avila.

10 Steps to Help One Develop the Virtue of Patience.
1. Learning to delay want is part of developing patience
2. Planning future goals can help demonstrate the need to tolerate frustration
3. Help demonstrate the need to follow directions and take small steps in order to accomplish bigger things.
4. Understand that you cannot always have what you want
5. Understand that you are not necessarily entitled to everything.
6. Take time to pray
7. Reflect on God’s love
8. Work on issues that upset you.
9. Realize that patience is something that you wish to possess
10. Trust in God more.

We have come to our last Sunday of November and we conclude our look at virtues we turn once again to Barbara Unell and Jerry Wyckoff’s book 20 Teachable Virtues: Practical Ways to Pass on Lessons of Virtue and Character to Your Children. The virtue we will look at is resourcefulness.

Resourcefulness: able to deal skillfully and promptly with new situations difficulties etc.

I believe resourcefulness has become one of the most important and popular virtue in our world today. We see it in television shows like MacGyver (a show about a man who did not carry a gun but was always able to improvise a weapon or life saving device with items he found just lying around) and the A-Team (television show from my childhood in which Vietnam vets build battle vehicles out left over parts), movies like Bourne Trilogies (Jason Bourne a secret agent of the government is able to save the day by being fast acting and resourceful) and the Hunger Games (Katniss survives through her resourcefulness and ability to out think everyone).

Resourcefulness is all about being able to be aware of your present situation and of the objects around you and seeing the potential in them. Resourcefulness allows us to think outside of the box and therefore see beyond the ordinary use of things.

I believe in order to be able to develop resourcefulness one must appreciate everything as a gift and see things as a gift from God. Resourcefulness though does not mean use an object to the point of exhausting the potential of the object completely. If I use something without appreciating it then I am not being resourceful but rather gluttonous and disrespectful.

Resourcefulness also means trying different things until we find something that works. Often we find it easy to give up if something does not work the first time. Resourcefulness teaches us to try again or at least try a different variation or approach to the task that we are trying to accomplish.

Resourcefulness I think also comes from not being afraid to make mistakes.

10 Steps to Help One Develop the Virtue of Resourcefulness
1. Take an object and think about how many different ways this object can be used
2. Think about everything as a gift from God.
3. Put together a Jigsaw puzzle
4. Pretend to be on a desert island what 10 things would you want with you.
5. Share with others how you have overcome a difficult situation
6. Share with others a difficult situation and ask them to how they would handle it.
7. Play different strategic games.
8. Watch a movie or television show and explain how you would have handled a situation differently than one of the characters.
9. What are your strengths and talents?
10. Is there anyone person in your life that you have under-appreciated?

As we enter into the month of November we also remember to the familiar November topic of virtues and their developments. Pope Benedict XVI in his first homily as pope said the following: “The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” As Catholics we believe that we are called to grow and to better ourselves and the way to do this is to grow in virtues rather than vices. As we continue our journey through the virtues we turn again to Barbara C. Unell and Jerry L Wyckoff and their book 20 Teachable Virtues: Practical Ways to Pass on Lessons of Virtue and Character to Your Children to help guide us. Let us look at our first virtue.

Peacemaking
Peace-mak-er n. one who makes peace as by reconciling parties at variance.

Peace n. 1. The normal, nonwarring condition of a nation, a group of nations, or the world. 2. A historical period during which such a condition exists. 3. A state of harmony among people or groups. 4. The freedom from disorder normal in a community. 5. Cessation of or freedom from any strife or dissensions.

In order to be a good peacemaker, I think it is of primary importance to know where you are getting your self-worth from. I know that when I am getting my self-worth from the opinion of others, or from what I have, or from what I do, I am more likely to defend these things and not be a peacemaker. When I get my identity from God then I realize that it does not matter whether or not I am right or wrong because God loves me no matter what. The question no longer becomes what will build me up but rather what is the truth. Jesus received His identity from His relationship with His Father as seen at His Baptism with the voice from heaven. Jesus, firmly rooted in His identity, did not have to protect his possessions or his popularity. He could simply speak the truth. Being free in this way also allowed Jesus to cross many social boundaries in His days to reconcile people to God. He did not care what people thought of Him touching a leper or talking to a woman for His identity was rooted in the Father. People could insult Him, and ultimately kill Him and He responded only with love and forgiveness.

I have been watching a television series on Netflix called Flashpoint. In the show the police follow a simple creed to “keep the peace” by this simple formula – connect, respect, and protect. In connecting with the individual they try to communicate in a civil manner with the individual (who is often committing some crime) and at first this seems contradictory because most people first start yelling at someone who is doing something wrong. Connecting though allows them to show respect to the individual. As Catholics we proclaim that everyone is worthy or respect no matter what they have done and so this is a neat part of the show to see in action. The police officers show respect by treating them the person as a human being. The third thing they do is protect and by doing this they show something else and that there is a universal moral code. At no time do they lie to the people they are interacting with. If someone committed a crime they don’t promise them no jail time. They do promise though to help the person through it. They also protect themselves and others. Life is to precious for them to become human targets. I wonder how many of our relationships would get better if we try to connect (begin talking with the person we are in conflict with), respect (show them at least common courtesy) and finally protect (not let them do harm to themselves or others.)

10 Steps to develop the virtue of peacemaking
1. Try to understand the needs and wants of another person
2. Try to find ways in which everyone can be satisfied
3. Listen to others tell you their complaints and try to get to the feelings behind their discontent.
4. Practice being assertive without getting angry.
5. Ask yourself why you are holding onto the position that you have.
6. Root yourself in the Gospel values. What would Jesus do?
7. Use “I statements” and not “you statements”. “I felt hurt” is better than saying “you hurt me.”
8. Pray for the person you are in conflict with
9. Remember win or lose that your identity comes from God and not from others
10. Make sure you stand up on the side of truth and not just the popular side.

As we continue to reflect on different virtues and how we can make them a part of our repertoire let us remember Pope Benedict XVI’s quote “The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” As Catholics we believe that we are called to grow and to better ourselves and the way to do this is to grow in virtues rather than vices. As we continue our journey through the virtues we turn again to Barbara C. Unell and Jerry L Wyckoff and their book 20 Teachable Virtues: Practical Ways to Pass on Lessons of Virtue and Character to Your Children to help guide us. Let us look at our second virtue.

Self-reliance
Re-li-ance n. Confident or trustful dependence. 2. Something relied on.

Self-reliance is a virtue that is quickly going away or is at least getting harder and harder to teach. Things that use to take time and skill can be done with a touch of a button. For example, the other day I decided that I wanted to cook some cobbler in my Dutch oven. I first started the charcoal fire in order to get the charcoal nice and hot. Then I went in and dumped all the ingredients into the cast-iron Dutch oven pot. Finally I placed the Dutch oven on top of some of the hot coals and placed some hot coals on top of the Dutch oven lid so that the cobbler would cook evenly. As I was cooking the Dutch oven, I came to appreciate modern connivances realizing that cooking with a Dutch oven was the way that many meals had to prepare before we had gas or electric ovens.

Practicing the virtue of self-reliance does not mean that we have to be doomsday preparers but it does mean that we should be able to face difficult situations with confidence. If we have a flat tire on the road we may not be able to fix the tire but we should be able to call for help and not panic.

Practicing the virtue of self-reliance I think also means that we can try an option and if it fails we can try something else without beating ourselves up about it.

Here are four practical tips in order to become self-reliant.
1. Assume responsibility. Start taking responsibility for your life and the things in it. Don’t assume that life is going to take you where you want to go or make you the person that you want to be. Make sure you are the person who is waking yourself up in the morning and not your mother. Keep track of your own appointments and important due dates. Finally don’t blame your teachers, bosses, or others if you are not doing well. Figure a way around them if necessary. If you see them as an obstacle like a traffic jam don’t sit there in traffic and honk your horn as a victim. Instead try different side streets until you get around the roadblock.
2. Be informed. Make sure you take time to learn about the many different things that affect your life and how they work so that you can understand them when you cannot access Google.
3. Know where you are going. What are your goals and how are you going to get there. Don’t give into peer pressure.
4. Make your own decisions. One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that life is actually much easier and a lot less stressful when you proactively make your own decisions. It’s tempting when you’re younger to simply let life happen to you and hope that decisions and problems will magically resolve themselves. They won’t. In fact, problems and decisions often get bigger and harrier the longer you wait to take action on them. Make proactive decision-making a habit. With any choice or problem you may face, decide on an action plan quickly, and execute it immediately.

10 Steps to develop the virtue of self-reliance
1. Try to make an association between pleasant activities and self-generated activities
2. Try not to react to the environment but rather be proactive
3. Encourage your creativity and imagination
4. Practice putting aside immediate gratification for delayed gratification
5. Perform activities that encourage self-reliance such as Jig-saw puzzles and exercise
6. Think about how you have accomplished tasks before
7. Practice brainstorming different solutions to different problems
8. Get other peoples feedback and learn from your mistakes
9. Get other peoples feedback and treasure the things you do well.
10. Look for opportunities to serve.

Today we will look at the virtue of self-motivation and once again we will be using insights from Barbara C. Unell and Jerry L Wyckoff and their book 20 Teachable Virtues: Practical Ways to Pass on Lessons of Virtue and Character to Your Children to help guide us. Let us look at our third virtue.

Self-Motivation
Mo-ti-vate vb. To provide with a motive
Mo-tive n. 1. something that causes a person to act 2. Moving or tending to move to action. 3. of or relating to motion or causing of motion.

Charles Dubois, an English author, once said, “We must be prepared, at any moment, to sacrifice who we are for who we are capable of becoming.”

Michelangelo was quoted as saying: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

In Jesus’ parable of the man who received 5 talents, the man who received 2 talents, and the man who received one talent, remember, the major complaint was the lack of self-motivation of the person who buried the talent out of fear. The other two went forth and made a profit because they were self-motivated. (Mathew 25) What are we doing with the talents that God has given us.

The following are some ideas on how to become self-motivating.

10 Terrific Self Motivating Tips By Mike Moore
No one can motivate anyone to do anything. All a person can do for another is provide them with incentives to motivate themselves. Here are ten very effective strategies to help you get up and get moving toward actualizing your enormous, untapped potential.
* Be willing to leave your comfort zone. The greatest barrier to achieving your potential is your comfort zone. Great things happen when you make friends with your discomfort zone.
* Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Wisdom helps us avoid making mistakes and comes from making a million of them.
* Don’t indulge in self-limiting thinking. Think empowering, expansive thoughts.
*Choose to be happy. Happy people are easily motivated. Happiness is your birthright so don’t settle for anything else.
* Spend at least one hour a day in self-development. Read good books or listen to inspiring tapes. Driving to and from work provides an excellent opportunity to listen to self-improvement tapes.
* Train yourself to finish what you start. So many of us become scattered as we try to accomplish a task. Finish one task before you begin another.
* Live fully in the present moment. When you live in the past or the future you aren’t able to make things happen in the present.
* Commit yourself to joy. C.S. Lewis once said, “Joy is the serious business of heaven.”
* Never quit when you experience a setback or frustration. Success could be just around the corner.
* Dare to dream big dreams. If there is anything to the law of expectation then we are moving in the direction of our dreams, goals and expectations. The real tragedy in life is not in how much we suffer, but rather in how much we miss, so don’t miss a thing.

Our final virtue this month is the virtue of Responsibility. As we look at this virtue let us once again turn to Barbara C. Unell and Jerryy L Wyckoff and their book: 20 Teachable Virtues: Practical Ways to Pass on Lessons of Virtue and Character to Your Children for more insights.

Responsibility
Re-spon-si-bil-ity n. 1. The state or fact of being responsible 2. An instance of being responsible. 3. A particular burden of obligation upon a person who is responsible. 4. Something for which a person is responsible. 5. Reliability or dependability, especially in meeting debts or payments.

In many ways we are the sum of all the choices of our life. There are things that happen to us that are outside our control but it is still how we choose to respond to such situations that define us. In many ways become exactly what we make them out to be.

A man came to me for advice the other day. He said his problem was that his children will not come and visit him anymore and thus he does not get to see his grandchildren anymore. I asked him, “Do you have any idea why your children don’t come around anymore?” He answered that he did not. I asked him then, what would your son or daughter say if I asked them why they did not visit you anymore. He responded that his daughter and son would say something like, “they did not want him smoking, cussing and drinking in front of their children (his grandchildren).” I then preceded to ask the man if he smoked, cussed, and drank in front of his children and grandchildren and he said: “yes.” I told him that this is where his problem was and that his actions were preventing his children from coming around and that he had to take responsibility for his actions and change them if he wanted to see his grandchildren again.

The following is a cute story about responsibility

The mouse trap by Stephen on February 5, 2010
A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. “What food might this contain?” the mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap. Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning: “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.” The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The pig sympathized, but said, “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers.” The mouse turned to the cow and said, “There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!” The cow said, “Wow, Mr. Mouse. I’m sorry for you, but it’s no skin off my nose.” So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house – like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital and she returned home with a fever. Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient. But his wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well; she died. So many people came for her funeral; the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them. The mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness. So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and think it doesn’t concern you, remember, when one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another. Each of us is a vital thread in another person’s tapestry.

10 Steps to develop the virtue of Responsibility
1. Realize that learning responsibility is about learning to behave in a way so that others will trust you.
2. Means helping with the well-being of those around you especially family members
3. Means being able to feel what others feel and to understand their needs
4. Learning to respond with full knowledge of a situation
5. Learning to respond and understand the full needs of others
6. Learn to think about the outcomes and the impact they will have.
7. Learn to delay gratification
8. See the big picture
9. Realize that we are all connected with each other.
10. Realize that making mistakes is alright but making excuses does not really help

For the last five years, I have devoted the month of November to the topic of character development by focusing on the importance of virtues and their development in our lives. During this time, I have used Barbara C. Unell and Jerry L. Wyckoff’s book: 20 Teachable Virtues: Practical Ways to Pass on Lessons of Virtue and Character to Your Children. In their book Barbara and Wyckoff try to help people seize moments of life and use them to help us teach young people about the importance of the different virtues. Let us start pondering these last four virtues in their book.

Honesty
Honesty/honest: adj. 1. Truthful; trustworthy 2. Sincere or genuine. 3 gained by fair means. 4. Frank; open

“Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.’ But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. ^* Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one. - Mathew 5:33-37

I am not sure where I heard it but the saying “The truth is the only thing that cannot be imitated,” has been one of those sayings that has always stuck in the back of my mind. In fact we often measure the quality of a lie by how close it comes to the truth without being the truth.

John Paul II in his philosophical and theological talks made the statement somewhere that “no one ever invented a language in order to lie.” Languages were meant to convey truth. In the movie Dances with Wolves Lt. John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) tries to learn the Native American language by discovering their word for “buffalo”. He gets down on all fours and puts a pillow in his shirt and begins to walk around. He eventually makes horns with his fingers and says the word “buffalo”. The wise Native American Kicking Bird responds with the word “tatanka” which meant buffalo in his language. Both are excited because now they have at least one word in common. Neither of them go through this effort in order to lie to one another.

In the more recent movie Frozen, the young Prince Hans goes from being a lovable character to being the villain of the story simply by revealing the truth that he has been lying all this time in regards to his feelings for Anna. No one likes a liar because no one likes to be lied to.

While being deceitful and dishonest may increase one’s chances at temporary success, it often leads to a long time failure as lies fall apart. It is important for people striving to be honest to keep it mind that it is harder for a child

10 Steps to Develop Honesty
1. Most television shows and movies have villains who lie and cheat and it is good to point out to children how people feel about liars and cheaters.
2. Lead by example. Tell the truth as much as possible.
3. Lead by example. When caught in a lie admit it.
4. Lead by example and do not spread rumors or other things that might be untrue.
5. Have a child, who is caught in a lie, to explain why they lied.
6. Have a child, who is caught in a lie, explain the other lies that he or she had to make in order to keep the first lie going.
7. Show examples of people being honest
8. Explain how honesty is a way of building trust with others.
9. Reward honesty in others
10. Make sure to teach others how to be honest with themselves.

Three more virtues and our November Spiritual Pondering journey in regards to the twenty teachable virtues will be finished. For the last five years we have been exploring the idea of virtue development each November with the help of
Barbara C. Unell and Jerry L. Wyckoff’s book: 20 Teachable Virtues: Practical Ways to Pass on Lessons of Virtue and Character to Your Children.

Trustworthy
Trust n. a. assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or on something. B. One in which confidence is placed. 2. Dependence on something future or contingent 3. A charge or duty imposed in faith or confidence or as a condition of some relationship.

“Your loving kindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness (trustworthiness) reaches to the skies.” – Psalm 36:5.

If there is one virtue that God has proven that He has and that we continue to fail to believe that God possesses it would be trustworthiness. Despite all that Adam and Eve had received from God they doubted that God was worthy of their trust and disobeyed Him. From that moment God has been providing for us in order that we may come to recognize that He is worthy of our trust. We see God keep His promise to Adam and Eve by sending a savior to restore God’s relationship with us. God was faithful to Moses and helped Moses lead the people out of slavery and through the desert for 40 years despite the fact that Scripture tells us God grew tired of their complaining. God was faithful to Jesus by raising Him from the dead - still though we do not always trust that God will be there for us.

Trust is in many ways the foundation of all relationships. We learn to trust that the other person will behave in a way that will prove that he is trustworthy even if he or she has proven that he may not. In fact friends who are not trustworthy prove to cause more harm by their lies and deceit.

Cardinal Dolan in his book: Called to be Holy has this to say about being a disciple and the power of the truth:
A pursuit of religious studies will enhance our faith. Fides quaerens intellectum (“Faith seeking understanding”), as St. Anselm defined it. We dread a stale, insipid, childish, defensive faith; we crave a strong, lively, confident, childlike faith. Thus we are not afraid to probe, wonder, question, think critically. As Pope Leo XIII said, “The Church is not afraid of the truth.”
The above quote makes me realize the power of truth for when faced with the truth people are forced to change or to live in denial. Trustworthiness is so important to Catholics because Jesus referred to Himself as the Truth. There can be nothing truer than Christ. If we bear his name we to should live lives that witness to Jesus by being people worthy of truth.

10 Steps to Develop Trustworthiness
1. Model by example by completing tasks
2. Model by example by keeping appropriate confidences
3. Model by having sufficient self-respect that the opinions of others count.
4. Model by trusting others
5. Help others keep secrets
6. Discourage gossip
7. Establish chores and other ways that children can prove that they are trustworthy
8. Help them to see the need to serve others.
9. What does Jesus expect us to do? How can we be trustworthy to our Baptismal vows?
10. Talk about God’s Faithfulness.