Wednesday, October 5, 2016

New School Year, New Team, New Adventures

Greetings,
  

It’s been a while since our last update, so we thought we would give you an idea of what we've been doing.  This is our second year mentoring at Heritage Academy.  Last year, our group mentored six boys in the third grade class.  Only six!  In the whole class!  We have moved up to the fourth grade with four of those, as two of those original six moved schools.  But, we gained an additional four kids for a total of eight.  We had our first visit with them Wednesday, September 13th.  It was a great visit.  We are shifting our focus this year from being kids to talking about what it is to be a man.  And, more specifically, focusing on God's definition of a man:

(1) Rejects Passivity
(2) Accepts Responsibility
(3) Leads Courageously
(4) Invests Eternally

We're just so excited and so blessed that Heritage had asked us to come back.  

In addition, we have also started a new group for this year's third grade boys.  There are 17 boys!  So quite a big increase in kids, which is great.   We are all super excited and feel very blessed to have the opportunity of doing our work with such a big crew.  Our first visit was Wednesday, September 21st.  It could not have gone any better!   It's going to take a little bit of time to get to know each child and each unique situation, but we know the Lord has us there for a reason and we're excited for His plan going forward.  I would love to ask for your continued support and prayer, specifically for Heritage Academy, the teachers, the administrators, and the children and their families.  

Also, we are very encouraged that, in addition to our original group of men, we have added a whole new group of volunteers that are investing in this year's third grade class.  Please pray specifically for Adam, Charlie, Kelley, Rhodes, Jeff, Billy, John, Clayton, David, and Brian and the impact they will have on these young men's lives.  We are thrilled and honored to see a completely new group of guys investing in the lives of our youth and specifically in the lives of these children who are in very much need of mentorship and a good example.

Would you like to get involved?  We are hopeful for expanding this great work in the future.  Perhaps a women’s group can be formed as well.  While our original focus has been boys-due to the fact that these boys don’t have a lot of positive male influences-we are hopeful that eventually every class for boys and girls will have a group mentoring them.  It breaks our collective hearts when a young lady asks, “When are you going to have some women come see us?”  

The harvest is great, but the workers are few.



Graham for KH