{"id":8835,"date":"2014-02-28T01:27:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T01:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8835"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:30","slug":"maranatha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=8835","title":{"rendered":"MARANATHA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cowman’s principal, Angie Bundy, and I have been talking off and on throughout the school year about a way to get our kids to broaden their horizons a bit and find joy in serving others, preferably even outside the walls of Cowman School.\u00a0 About a month ago, we found a focus\u00a0for our\u00a0desire to serve:\u00a0 A\u00a0short walk down the street is a “Starfish” school, a church-run and OMS affiliated school which is supported, at least in part, by sponsorship of individual students. That means that just like thousands of other students across Haiti, the\u00a0kids of Maranatha are able to get a solid, Christ-centered education thanks to\u00a0the outreach efforts of a local church with the support of OMS and individual donors from the U.S. and Canada.\u00a0What a beautiful thing!Over the last couple of weeks, Angie and I made a couple of trips to Maranatha to speak to the director there\u00a0and brainstorm about\u00a0how our 6th and 7th graders might be able to serve her students.\u00a0 Since our Cowman students are all fluent in English and her upper grade students are required to learn<\/strong><\/em> English, we decided one way we could serve would be in giving her 7th grade students an opportunity to practice conversations in English.\u00a0 So Angie,\u00a0the students, and I\u00a0walked off campus yesterday morning to spend an hour meeting some new friends in our neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n

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It\u00a0took us\u00a0less than ten minutes to walk down the main road that runs in front of Cowman.<\/p>\n\n\n

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When we arrived, the Maranatha director unlocked the church sanctuary, which is part of their campus, in order to give our 15 students and her 22 enough space to interact.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Cowman students paired up and then each pair welcomed three or four Maranatha students in order to form small groups for conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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I quickly learned that the little game I had planned to lead them all in for the hour was NOT going to work – these students were in their FIRST year of English.\u00a0 So on the spur of the moment, our Cowman kids were put on the spot to lead their new friends in questions and answers with very little help from me or Angie.\u00a0 And they did an INCREDIBLE job without even a fuss.\u00a0 Angie and I were both so impressed – with both their attitudes and<\/em><\/strong> their abilities.\u00a0 Our kids really stepped up to the challenge, even the ones who are usually very quiet (which, admittedly, is only a tiny handful of my students).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Our Cowman kids even spent the last few minutes of our time together leading an impromptu rendition of “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” – and before we knew it, we were saying goodbye and shaking hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

The director assured us that she would love to have us return soon and we assured her that we certainly would.\u00a0 Our students seemed more than enthusiastic about the whole experience.<\/p>\n\n\n

The director headed back to the school grounds with one of her younger students …<\/p>\n\n\n

And we headed out the gate and back towards Cowman…<\/p>\n\n\n

With the abiding sense that we had been of some small but concrete use in God’s Kingdom …<\/p>\n\n\n

And that makes for a GOOD day at school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cowman’s principal, Angie Bundy, and I have been talking off and on throughout the school year about a way to get our kids to broaden their horizons a bit and find joy in serving others, preferably even outside the walls of Cowman School.\u00a0 About a month ago, we found a focus\u00a0for our\u00a0desire to serve:\u00a0 A\u00a0short […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8848,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8835\/revisions\/8848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}