Now that things have settled down a bit from the Holidays, I’ll more frequently update the blog!

If you weren’t able to attend last Friday when the Children of the World Choir visited ACS chapel, you missed an awesome service! The 14 students, from Uganda, Nepal & the Philippines, stole the heart of our students. The choir, a ministry outreach of World Help, serves to glorify God in song, bring attention to various World Help ministry opportunities, and encourage others to sponsor needy children around the world.

Our elementary students were given coin holders to save money as an offering for World Help to build a well in a location where dirty water is causing much disease and famine. With a load of quarters and some additional offering, our elementary school raised $542.50 to give to this project. What an amazing job by our students to support this project!

The team visiting our school shared a separate ministry opportunity to our upper grades students. World Help has partnered with a ministry in Guatemala to create the project: “Operation Baby Rescue.” A video shown in our chapel showed the director of the operation traveling into the mountains of Guatemala to pick up babies that would surely die without proper medical treatment and food/water. In the clip, World Help’s Vice President Noel Brewer Yeatts traveled with the director to pick up a baby who was reportedly at the point of death. The baby was rescued and brought back to the mission. However, they didn’t simply find one needy baby that day, they came back to the mission with TEN! The work this ministry is doing is incredible. The ACS upper grades students gave $694.35 to Operation Baby Rescue.

That our students gave a total of over $1,200 toward these projects is truly phenomenal! Praise God for their generosity.

Our time with the children of the world choir reminded me of two specific things. First, if we’re not careful, our being accustomed to certain luxuries will tempt us to forget that the citizens of many countries are struggling just to survive. Second, quite often we believe that only people in Guatemala or Haiti or Africa or some other foreign place are struggling with disease, hunger or poverty. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My prayer is that ACS won’t solely come together to support missions around the world but will also be active in our local communities to reach out and show the love of Christ to people who truly need to see it. Our effort in the hunger bowl the past couple of years is a good springboard for us! Would you join me in reminding and encouraging our students that there is a need right in our community and we can be an outreach of Jesus Christ every day?!

Don’t forget: You’re always welcome in our chapels! Middle School meets every Thursday at 8. High School meets every Friday at 8. Elementary meets every Friday at 9. It might be best to contact me at dposton@athenschristian.com to ensure we are having a regular scheduled chapel before you come! Sometimes our schedule changes for various events.