"When Hope is Hungry, Everything Feeds It." ~Mignon McLaughlin

If you are reading this blog because you just got a letter from me, I want you to know that you have been prayed for.  (If you didn't get a letter and you want one, let me know.  Or if you just want to be prayed for... I'm open.)

Now, updates...

History Workshop
We're halfway through our fourth week of the Summer Enrichment program, and I just finished teaching my last history workshop (at least of the ones I'm teaching).  We're having a guest speaker come in from the dA Center for the Arts (in downtown Pomona) to talk to the kids about the goddess, Pomona for the last full history workshop of the summer.

Since the visit from Mr. Bob, I've been telling the kids about Pomona's history specifically.

I've told the kids about the Tongva Indians, who used to live all over Southern California, and had two rancherias in Pomona (which made up a village called Toibi).  They learned about their culture, which is different from most of the other American Indians you study in school: men AND women could be chief, they lived relatively peacefully and traded with their neighbors, and they only believed in one God, in a religion that have parts that are very similar to Christianity!  In fact, one of the stories I told them about the Tongva had to do with this last fact and the almost attack on Mission San Gabriel.  (Ask me if you want to know!  It's super cool!)  How's that for a plug?

I've told the kids about Ricardo Vejar and Ignacio Palomares.  They were the two men who came to Pomona to settle here after the Tongva left to live in the Mission (or died because of the new diseases that they couldn't fight off). Vejar and Palomares got here after Mexico declared independence and were granted the land by the Mexican governor.  Back then, it was called Rancho San Jose.  I also told them about how Vejar lost his land to pay back his debts and Louis Phillips slowly bought it up while he was the caretaker of it.  The kids were excited because many of them recognize those names because streets, schools, and parks are named after them.  That same day they also learned about Spadra and the Citrus industry in the valley, and then they made their own crate labels!  (I so wish I got pictures of them now!)

On this day, I got a little nervous teaching, because we had volunteers in the room who are teachers by trade.  At the end of the workshop one of them was in, though, she paid me the highest compliment and told me that she forgot that she was there to help because she was so interested in what I was saying and the way I was teaching the kids!  YAY!

I walked the kids down to the YMCA (literally at the end of the block) and told them about the Palomares Hotel that used to be right where we were sitting and how it was the center of social life in the valley.  But that ended when it burned down, and later the town lobbied for a YMCA to be built there (right after WWI).  I also told them about a terrible train wreck that happened on Christmas Eve of 1899 that led the town to the collective decision to open a hospital (now Pomona Valley Hospital). 

And Jelitza got back from her orientation at UC Berkeley, so I had her lead the discussion of the quotes.  She, of course, was awesome!

Last Thursday, I showed the kids a slideshow of pictures of old schools, parks, and churches and we played a little game:  I made them guess what each one was before I told them what it was and sometimes told them funny tidbits about it.  Like the first Pomona High School, which then became the first Emerson Middle School, which is now Emerson Village, a retirement community.  It's just funny for me to think that people who went to middle school there might be living there now.

Yesterday was a very serious discussion for our older kids.  I told all the kids about the L.A. County Fair, but the younger two groups, I just focused on how it was started and then showed them pictures of that and the Fox Theater and talked about how those things are still around today even after 80-100 years!  (Which was the point of the picture slideshow too.)

The older kids learned about the Japanese Internment Camps and how the government ordered everyone of Japanese descent out of their homes to live in the internment camps, and that the Fairgrounds were an Assembly Center where they lived from April 1942 to August 1942 (during the hot summer months... in Pomona!) before they were moved to Manzanar to live for up to 3 years.  I read them interviews I found in articles published last year who were taken, by force, to the camps as children.  And I showed the oldest group this picture, taken in Pomona: 

Then I asked them to think about how they would feel if all of this was happening to them.  I gave them a chance to write their reflections in relation to this quote:

The really cool part was that one of our LAUP interns, Jenn, had a grandmother who went into one of those internment camps, and she was moving with our oldest group of kids for the day.  So she shared what she was told about them as well, and how it affected her family.  Honestly, if I had known that she was Japanese American, I would have felt a little more nervous about it, going in (but all I knew was that she's pretty and awesome).  But at the end of the day, she actually thanked me for teaching about it.

Coordinating

The days that I was not leading a history workshop, I was the Coordinator for the program.  My responsibility in that job is to tell everyone when it's time to go to their next workshop, field volunteer and student questions and problems, keep track of discipline, call parents, if needed, and deal with any other problems and emergencies as they come up.  Sometimes, I have days where everything is going wrong and I don't get anything done outside of putting out fires.  Sometimes, I get time to visit the workshops and take some awesome pics.

Learning silent "E"

Unfortunately, the last two days I've coordinated, there were many fires to put out, so I didn't get AS many pictures.  Here's hoping today goes better!

Donations

We've had a lot of in-kind donations lately, and a lot of requests for a wish list of some kind so that people make sure to get us stuff they know we need (hence the last blog post).  And it is SUPER awesome guys!  Thank you so much!

One of the most touching donations this summer is from the La Verne Heights Presbyterian Church's Vacation Bible School (VBS).  They asked us a few months ago what "big ticket" item we might need, and we asked for new soccer nets and soccer balls for the kids to play with.  The kids in the VBS program brought in nearly $530 in change over the course of one week!  I got to stop by on Wednesday that week to thank them for what they were doing and invite them to come play with us sometime, so who knows?  Maybe some day they will!

Bible Study

Usually, my bible study section is reserved for our girls bible study, but we've all been way too busy to have an actual bible study session... a couple of us watched "My Big, Fat Greek Wedding" last week though.  We also invited our LAUP interns.  Then Some of us spent time contrasting the similarities between the Greek and Mexican cultures.  It was fun!

But this time I put Bible Study in because we're working with LifeSong Community Church to implement a new bible study during the school year.  Before now, we had a dear friend and volunteer coming in once a week to lead a bible study for the K-3rd graders, and this year another volunteer stepped in to lead one for the junior highers, but there was a void in the bible study programming for our 4th and 5th graders.  Our volunteers from LifeSong noticed this gap and have offered to step in and fix it with a new curriculum that they have access to.  We all went to a training a couple weekends ago for the adult portion of their curriculum, and I think that, with a little tweaking, it will work!  LifeSong is taking point on this project too.  They're really doing great and I'm so glad they're on our team!