Kidsave

By Nicole

"Because Every Kid Needs A Family"

Kidsave is an organization that is dedicated to getting children out of orphanages and foster care and into permanent families. You can go to their website for all of the information – they do several different things! This year, we will be hosting for their Summer Miracles program. I don't yet know if it will be a boy or a girl, but to make this article easier to type and read, I will use “she” and “her.”

For approximately five weeks this summer, a parentless child from Colombia will become part of our family. This will give her the opportunity to experience life in a family, learn about another culture, and possibly do things that are not normally available to a young person in her position. Most importantly, we hope that we will be able to help find a permanent family for this child. The chances of this happening are excellent!

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Book Review: The Treasure Tree

Title: The Treasure Tree
By: John & Cindry Trent and Gary & Norma Smalley
Illustrated By: Judy Love
Reviewed By: EM, Age 5

The book is about four friends. A lion, a golden retriever, a beaver, and an otter. They are at a party and they get a gift from their friend owl. The gift is a treasure map! So they follow the treasure map to find four keys that will get them to the treasure tree. They go to a blueberry pie patch, they visit a clam (who spits!), they go to peppermint falls (my favorite!!), and they visit four rabbits and an elephant who sneezed. Once they had all the keys they had to figure out how to use them to get the gate open so they could get to the tree. Owl came and said, "Why don't you put all your keys together and open the lock?" And it worked! And they got to eat candy hearts. I like this book a lot.

Alaska-Bound

By Lara

As you read this, I should be on a cruise ship in Prince William Sound watching sea otters frolic. That's right. I'm in Alaska. My dream vacation. Seriously. I don't remember how long I've wanted to go to Alaska, but it's been since I was a child. Now I'm there.

When things get stressful at work, I will close my eyes, pretend that I am in a canoe, paddling on a pristine glacier lake, breathing crisp mountain air. I also love the idea of glaciers and fjords and volcanoes and moose. Yes. Alaskan dream vacation.

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Wisdom and Eloquence

By Jason, Pastor & Headmaster

Two Defining Characteristics of a Biblically-Minded Servant-Leader

At our School, our vision is to train up a generation of Biblically-minded servant-leaders who will lead the church and the culture toward righteousness. As we have been fleshing out, as a staff, what this means, we have focused much of our attention on two very key characteristics for our students: Wisdom and Eloquence. For years I have spoken about the importance of wisdom. Proverbs emphasizes the central importance of wisdom again and again – “Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom.” - Proverbs 4:7

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Important Things To Remember

By MAD21

During my journey of losing 100 pounds, I learned a few things along the way. I thought I would share them with you:

• Nothing worth having is ever easy.
• You didn’t get to be your current size in a few weeks, months or years. Give yourself a break and set realistic expectations. If you mess up one meal, one day, or even a week, just start again. If it takes you 2-3 years to lose all the weight and get to the level of health that you want, so be it. Those years are going to pass anyway, so you might as well keep up the work. It is SO worth it.
• NOTHING tastes as good as being slim and healthy feels. Ask yourself every time you want to eat that extra piece of cake, donut, or candy bar if that will taste better than how you will feel being able to buy a size 6 pair of jeans.
• It's cannot be a 'diet,' it has to be a lifestyle, a new way of living. In order for you to be successful at losing weight and getting healthy, you have to have a full understanding that this is a lifestyle change. Not just something you do for a little while or until you fit into that certain size. You have to make a lifetime commitment to do this for yourself. Fill your life with activity, not food. Find something to be passionate about, a purpose.
• Remind yourself that food’s real purpose is only to make our bodies function. Yes, the junk tastes yummy. But if it’s too much of a temptation to over eat, ask yourself why do you even want or need to eat it. And when you eat it, ask yourself how you feel (I think we miss that part, I found that eating some foods made me feel tired, or just plain icky). We don’t keep junk food in our house. No jelly treats, no fruit rollups, no candy, no cookies. If there is no nutritional value, we don’t have it in our kitchen. Does this mean we never eat it? No way! (Not with my sweet tooth!) Just that we only have it on special occasions. As Cookie Monster would say... “It’s a sometimes treat.”