I typed up the jelly bean poem and prepared tiny glass globes (4 oz size - $.44 each at WalMart). I filled them with jelly beans  and wrapped them in clear cellophane, tied with a narrow metallic ribbon and attached the poem.

We have three handicapped YW in our ward. I have never seen any of the girls be anything but kind and accepting to these girls, so I refocused that part of the lesson to being aware of "invisible" handicaps. We wouldn't expect a person on crutches to run a four minute mile. We wouldn't expect a blind person to navigate during a road rally. We wouldn't expect a quadriplegic to climb a mountain. (Though they just might be able to - given the right set of circumstances) Some people have "invisible" handicaps that just as limiting, just and debilitating - but not noticeable on the outside.

There is a story about a man coming home from work and going into the bedroom to change his clothes, take a shower and go out for the evening. He opens the closet door, and a giant grizzly bear leaps out and mauls him terribly. He is left, bleeding, torn, bones broken - but alive. He manages to crawl to the phone and call 911.

After months of reconstructive surgery, physical therapy and plastic surgery - he returns home to live independently again. He walks into the bedroom and looks at the closed closet door. Do you think he will ever feel the same way about opening that door again? Will he ever go back to opening it the same way he did before the bear jumped out? No. If he DID - there would be something wrong with him. It was a real thing, it was traumatic. It changed his life. But it would seem strange to everyone else who never opened a door and found a bear there. Not knowing his history - they could possibly "judge" him as weird.

Traumatic things happen in everyone's lives sometimes - and we don't always know what baggage they are carrying. We don't know what "invisible" handicaps they fight every day. I encouraged them to remember with school starting, there will be new kids moving up from lower grades who haven't been middle school or high school before. There will be new kids who have moved in over the summer. There might even be some kids that they didn't have good experienced with last year. Every day is new beginning. I encouraged them to look for the "loners," the shy, and listen to the Spirit.

I told them the story of my daughter coming to their school as a new kid last year - joining her Junior class in November, some six hundred miles from her former friends. She was traumatized about going there that first day. We prayed that she would make a friend to help her through that first day and got her a blessing. I dropped her off at the building that morning. I thought of her, prayed for her all day and picked her up after school. "Did you meet anyone nice?" I anxiously asked. Her smile lit up
the whole car. "Oh, Mom! They are ALL nice! I had people saying 'Hi, Chrissy!' that I hadn't even met yet." I told the girls that was a tremendous legacy to pass on this year to other new students.