"The Christmas Message is that There is Hope for a Ruined Humanity--Hope of Pardon, Hope of Peace with God, Hope of Glory--Because at the Father's Will Jesus Became Poor, and Was Born in a Stable So That Thirty Years Later He Might Hang on a Cross." ~ JI Packer

The last month was pretty hectic, but fun, and came off surprisingly well!

Update
After the kids came back from Thanksgiving Break, they had 3 more weeks of school and programs before going back on another break for Christmas.  This alone would likely normally have the kids bouncing off the walls for the duration, but for the first two weeks of that time, they were getting out of school an hour early because they had parent teacher conferences.  And we opened up an hour early during that time to let them in.  Instead of coming up with a modified, longer program day schedule, we used that time to have the kids work on Christmas crafts and watch Christmas movies or listen as someone read them Christmas books (i.e. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", etc.).  They also went through an Advent Calendar, reading a verse or two a day that, at the end of the three weeks, told them the Christmas Story.  They put the verses on a small Rosemary bush, shaped like a tree, as ornaments.

Some of the crafts they did included handprint wreaths, Christmas chains, and letters to Santa which, when turned into the red mailbox at Macy's, would count toward Macy's giving $1 donations for each of them to the Make-A-Wish foundation.  Some of our older kids were reluctant to write letters to Santa, but once they heard what it was for, they were all over it.  Didn't even have to read the age-old article, "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus" to them!  My kids are pretty great!

The Annual Christmas party was a HUGE success!  2 different churches participated in the festivities and there were about a million gifts for our kids to choose from to buy for their families.  And pretty much all of them were donated!  We almost definitely had more volunteers than students.  (I could probably give a more exact number, but I didn't plan that day!  Thanks Emily!!!) Everyone was wonderful, and while it probably looked crazy, all the reports I got back were about how organized it was.

Of course,  I forgot to take pictures, so have some I found on our server!

Merry Christmas!!!

"Hope is the Physician of Each Misery." ~Irish Proverb

So, I've clearly done a terrible job of keeping up with this.  One might ask how it is that I now am being paid full-time, and yet have no time to actually keep up with the blogging to tell everyone what's going on, when I was doing it just fine at half time.  Well, I have no idea what happened, but I can promise it's because they're keeping me very, very busy at Pomona Hope and not because I've forgotten altogether.

I can't even remember most of the things I need to catch you up on anymore, so I'll just do the recent ones:

Art Projects
I am terrible at art.  I can't draw a straight line with a ruler.  I could probably eventually copy something close to what it is supposed to look like, but that generally is something that takes me so long that my lack of patience wins out.

As the Kids Coordinator, part of my job is coming up with an Art project twice a week for my Kindergarten through 3rd graders and once a week for my 4th-6th graders.  This has tended to be one of my more stressful, last minute endeavors all year.  And the younger kids usually end up with some kind of coloring project.

Thankfully, one of our lovely volunteers from Lifesong Church (Thanks Susan!) asked if there was anything that she and her Bible Study group of women, most of whom were unable to actually come in during programs hours, could do to help out.  And it turns out, they're great at arts and crafts!  So they've been planning and creating examples, and providing some of the materials for art projects for our K-3rd graders for the past 2 months, and it has been wonderful!  More proof that God answers prayers people (even silly, little ones, like "God, please don't make me come up with art projects... it's hard.").

The 4th-6th graders, I've been a little more devious with.  They're not as widespread in abilities as our K-3rd graders, so it's a little easier to find something for them, and since they're at the age where math becomes fairly difficult (suddenly jumping from 2 + 2 = 4 and 2 x 2 = 4 to fractions and solving for variables), and I usually have a math professor (thanks Todd!) in the room with them at the time they start their Art time once a week, I've been giving them math-based art projects.

And starting in January, we're going to be working on Math Adventure Journals that are a mixture of history, bible study, math, and art in their art sessions, as well as on Fridays for workshops.  (This idea is very heavily based on the stuff that this teacher at a private, Christian middle school does with his kids: http://www.mathsquad.com/mathjournal.html.)  I already asked the kids about it and they seem pretty excited!  I've been working on my own example journal to show them, and it is interesting, but the art part REALLY slows me down.  Still not my spiritual gift.

Halloween: Haunted Tour
I have been kicking myself for almost 2 weeks for completely forgetting to take pictures on Halloween.  But it was a really fun day!  Usually on Thursdays, we have our weekly Garden Workshop for the kids, but that day our AMAZING volunteer (Thanks, Barb) who has been running it all year was unable to come.  She let us know well in advance, so we were able to plan around it!  Another awesome volunteer (Thanks Kevin), who happens to live and work at 1st Pres as the Residential Manager put together a really neat "Haunted Tour" of the 3rd floor of the building.

You see, the kids only go up to the 3rd floor to go to the computer lab once a week.  One of the rules in the computer lab is if you get a warning up there, no matter how many you've gotten (or haven't gotten) that day, you come straight back downstairs and hang out with the coordinator until computer lab is over.  We don't want the kids messing with (or around) the equipment.  The kids REALLY don't want to get a warning up there because for years the rumor has spread among them that the 3rd floor is haunted.  I don't know who started it, but it probably hasn't helped that they do pass the rooms where people are living and they have occasionally seen shadows pass windows in rooms they can't enter.

So, we decided to capitalize on that (I did remind the younger students that we do not actually have ghosts before they went up).  The rooms chosen for the tour were on the opposite side of the floor from anywhere they'd been allowed to go before.  They are also some of the creepier rooms in the building to begin with.  One was a giant room being used for storage (in a building that's at least 70-80 years old), one is a kitchen area that has windows leading out to a room that used to be the roof (but at one point it was leaky and they found it was cheaper to build a whole new roof than to fix the already existing leaky one), and one room, at the end of the tour, was nearly empty and had no windows at all (easy to make dark).  The plan was to set it up like a maze and have our high school volunteers be "ghosts" with the kids having the chance to pick up 7 or 8 pieces of candy on the way through, and then they would have to defeat the "Boss" ghost at the very end to leave, by playing a ring toss game with glow bracelets.  I believe the idea came from Luigi's Haunted Mansion (video game).

We were concerned that our Junior Highers (our oldest group) were scheduled to go through first, since they were supposed to go through before our high schoolers usually got there, and when it was still pretty light outside (all but one room had giant windows... even with light-blocking curtains, it's hard to make it REALLY dark), and plus, they're in Junior High, so nothing is exciting.  But they actually enjoyed it so much, that many of them finished their homework early just so that they could go upstairs again to help with the younger groups!

Halloween: Trick-or-Treat
At the end of our Program day, we usually offer an extra optional homework hour for the kids who know coming in for the day that they are not going to finish their homework in the time allotted to them that day.  But on Halloween, we cancelled it (no one would have stayed that day anyway, no homework for most of the kids who usually do!) so that we could take our kids Trick-or-Treating in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.  I did not know this before, but apparently there are a couple streets in that area that get so into Halloween that the police block off the streets to through traffic just so that people can Trick-or-Treat.  12 kids signed up to go with us, and we all had a blast.  We had about 1 hour for the actual Trick-or-Treating part, and it was the perfect amount of time to go through one whole street.  Two of the kids who came with us didn't have costumes, so we let them borrow some of the stuff we have for our Summer plays, and they were SO happy!  One of them just had a king's crown and a purple robe and people kept telling him that they liked his costume and he ate it up!  Very cute.

I'm glad we went to that as early as we did (still mostly daylight/dusk) because it was pretty dark by the time we were leaving, it was getting really crowded and pretty scary for our kids.  I want to go back next year.

Veteran's Day
Yesterday was Veteran's Day, and while we didn't do anything the day of (except have no programs), I did have the last minute idea for an art project (what?!) for the kids to make cards to send to deployed service men and women.  I found an organization to send it to called "Operation Gratitude" and just had the kids make cards.

But then, I figured I know enough Veterans, it wouldn't be too hard to find someone to come in, right? I had planned to ask Mr. Bob back, but he wasn't at church that Sunday, so instead, I asked Mr. Don, whom I've known almost my whole life, and I didn't know he was a Veteran until I randomly walked up to ask him on that Sunday.  Much less did I know that he was roommates with Elvis while he was in the Army.  One more reason I love my job:  I get to know people better by asking questions I would never have thought to ask in the first place.

He even wore his old uniform! Over 50 years later!!!

Garden Workshop Board Game
Any down time I've had has either gone into the Math Art Journal curriculum or the Garden Knowledge Board Game I've been working on in collusion with Barb for days that she can't come or the weather doesn't lend to a good learning environment outside.

The idea came to me when she got sick at the very last minute and we had our kids play board games instead.  As the daughter of a hardcore gamer, I was horrified to learn that even our Junior Highers were not interested in playing any games more difficult than the 3rd grade level (ex: Sorry, UNO, etc.).  This made me sad (and we will definitely be having more board game days soon), but in the meantime, I decided it would be best if we could still at least stick to a Garden theme.

With help from Barb, I came up with questions and answers (she mostly did the answers, I can't actually grow anything).  With help from Kevin, I came up with rules and board game design, and with help from another volunteer from Lifesong, I learned that I don't have to reinvent the wheel to actually create a game board, the internet has everything!  Then she edited the PDF I found in her fancy professional version of Adobe so that I could type in the spaces on the board!  (Thanks Christine!)

Now I have the dice, everything is printed up, most of the cards are cut out, and I just have to start pasting everything into the folders.  Maybe I'll have my sister do that when she comes to visit tomorrow. :-)

Volunteers
A big part of my stress lately (as the volunteer coordinator) has been finding enough volunteers for some days.  We usually have just enough on Mondays, we're pretty short on Tuesdays, we have volunteers coming out our ears two Wednesdays a month, and then struggle a little on the others, and Thursdays are mostly manageable.  It has been weighing on me heavily for the past few months that there just were not enough volunteers, especially for our youngest groups of kids (since they demand the most attention and there are SO MANY of them!), but also most days for our Junior High group (they have 3 separate classrooms to divide up into, but we have not had 3 volunteers available to be with them on most days, so they all do their homework in one giant room, which tends to be distracting for several of our Middle Schoolers), and our 4th-6th graders, probably our best-behaved, most low maintenance group, has been slipping by with the bare minimum because they are so well-behaved, but I know on many days they could use more help with homework especially.

I've finally made my peace with the lack of volunteers and started getting creative:  when there aren't enough adults helping the K-3rd grades, I ask the Junior Highers who are done with their homework if they're interested in helping out.  I've even asked a few of our 6th grade girls if they wanted to help the little kids instead of going to gym games.  Our kids are wonderful and definitely rose to the occasion, and I've been so impressed by them.  But I also don't want to rely on them regularly.  They need to have a chance to be kids too.

I've held several extra volunteer trainings (which are a lot of work to set up for and find the time for), made appearances at several different events asking for more volunteers, posted on websites, etc.  Other volunteers have told me of their efforts to reach out as well, and it still seems like not enough people.

I have been blessed with so many wonderful volunteers who come regularly and often and do a wonderful job when they're here, I just didn't understand why it still felt like I was falling short.  I finally asked Emily last week what I was doing wrong and she said that it's not that I was doing anything wrong, we probably have the same number, if not more volunteers than we usually do at this time, but that we have so many more students than we've ever had before and that almost half of them are all in one room and need help on a more 1:1 or 2:1 ratio of student to volunteer.

I am so SO thankful for my volunteers.  They are amazing.  Much of my concern comes out of asking them for extra help, so often, when they are just volunteering, it's not their job.  I don't want to overwhelm anyone or burn them out.  And so many of them are so wonderful and rise to the occasion every time, I just love them.  Even some of our high schoolers go above and beyond and it's overwhelming for me thinking about how awesome they all are.  Surely, there must be more out there! :-)

TRAINING: Shameless Plug
That being said,  are you bored in the afternoons and looking for something to do?  Between jobs or done with jobs or have a job that has flexible hours?  Do you like kids or Jesus or both and want to see them succeed?  I have one more regularly scheduled volunteer training for this calendar year, TOMORROW, November 13, from 3 to 5:30 pm.  If you are interested in become one of the awesome few, please let me know if you can make this (if you can't and you're still interested, contact me anyway, we may be able to work something out).  You can RSVP to me at liz@pomonahope.org

Funny Pictures
I shouldn't encourage this, but it's really funny to me: all the students have their own wallets to keep track of the money they get for doing good things like homework.  One of our Junior Highers threw his high up in the air in the gym and it got caught on the light above him.  What are the odds?!

Seriously, someone do the math, I want to know.

And this one is more cute than funny.  During our optional homework hour, sometimes the kids finish early, and sometimes students who have no homework (or have finished) stay so that their siblings with homework can finish theirs and parents only need to make one trip.  Had to find some way to entertain them while I helped kids with their homework.  Started chess club.

It's like Fight Club without the messiness.

“Everyone Must Dream. We Dream to Give Ourselves Hope. To Stop Dreaming - Well, That's Like Saying You Can Never Change Your Fate. Isn't That True?” ~Amy Tan

Update on the Junior High Retreat! 

(from Brianne, one of the leaders)

I would say that the retreat was a success! We had five kids on Friday and four on Saturday. I thought they seemed really engaged and were extremely willing to participate; I think we struck a good balance between "hanging out" and actual content for the weekend.

To me, what was perhaps the most telling was our ending activity, where Sarah had all of us write a short story about a time when we were feeling a certain way (e.g. joyful, scared, confused, etc.). We all went around and shared our stories. Though the point made in this activity was that you can't judge people or any situation based off of one piece of information, it really struck me how open the kids were with each other and how willing they were to share about parts of their lives that we don't normally see at Pomona Hope. I think that no matter how much we teach them, building relationships with the kids and helping them build relationships with each other is probably the most important thing we can do. They need a place and people that they feel they belong to/with.

Other than that, I definitely enjoyed myself. We did some out of the box things, like a blindfolded partner obstacle course, and a hospitality game where the kids had to present their snack as if I was coming over for dinner. I think everyone enjoyed the different structures we set up. I'm not sure how much they learned explicitly, but I always enjoy hearing their thoughts about things they most likely don't talk about in school. The kids might not know it, but their perspectives are in such formative stages right now and they're taking in everything around them.

In addition, we got to hang out with some of them at "the feast" afterwards (the dinner hosted by Rock of Faith). Sharing day-to-day life with them, if only for a weekend, was such a delight and privilege. It's easy to get caught up in school and even in IV ministry, so I'm grateful for the time I got to spend away from campus and kind of just hanging out with the kids.

 

 

"Hope is the Companion of Power, and Mother of Success; for Who So Hopes Strongly Has Within Him the Gift of Miracles." ~ Samuel Smiles

We've got some big things coming up at Pomona Hope, and a lot of enthusiasm from participants (kids, parents, volunteers) and those who want to participate!

Firstly, the high school girls bible study group.  We still need a name.  I will entertain suggestions from the audience.  Maybe I'll make it into a contest.  The struggle with the group is that they get permission to come, and then at the last minute something comes up and they have to watch their younger siblings or school activities or something.  I had similar issues when I was in high school and missed out on a lot, so I'm not deterred by this.  I do think it will be easier for everyone to show up regularly once we move it to Tuesdays, so stay tuned.  In the meantime, we'll keep trying to meet, and (if it turns out like last Friday), only one person can come, we'll hang out and watch a movie instead.  I also had two of the girls come over on Monday night to eat some of my dinner, but I didn't turn it into a bible study (which was all prepared!) because I didn't want them to feel tricked into it, though I don't think they would have really minded.  We watched Once Upon a Time instead.  So now they've seen the most recent episode, and that's it.

Secondly, volunteers.  I've been in contact with 4 new volunteers from places I never expected, just in the last few days. My favorite has to be the one who sent me a facebook message basically saying, "I was waiting around in the choir room of the church waiting to get married last week when I saw a flyer for an outreach in Pomona and I think it said to contact you."  The only way I can think to answer my automatic question of "Who does that?!" is "It's a miracle!"  I'm going to frame it and put it in my office someday.
 
Thirdly, the Walk for the Hungry.  The Walk for the Hungry is Inland Valley Hope Partners' big fundraiser for the year.  Most of the money goes to local food banks.  Every dollar raised can be used to leverage 5 pounds of food!  The kids of Pomona Hope are going to be participating in this year's Walk.  When we were originally approached, our issue was that many of our families are just getting by, and some may even benefit from the local food banks, so who would they fundraise from?!  But then we had a donor come up with the idea, and commit to donating $10 per kid who participates!  So now, all the kids need to do is get permission from their parents, and show up!  I'm in the midst of arranging volunteers to keep track of all the kids the day of, and to provide rides to and from the Walk.  Should be an exciting (and exhausting!) day. :-)

Fourthly, Pomona Hope's Annual Fundraiser.  This is our big fundraiser for the year, so it's usually a big deal, but this year it's taking on a totally new format.  Instead of a sit-down dinner, it's an art show (well, art auction, but I know I can't afford anything, so for me, it's a show), with tapas.  I'm excited about it, it should be a lot of fun.  It gives everyone more of a chance to talk to each other, network, etc. and it gives us an ice breaker or two to boot!  The art is being donated by local artists, and they were specifically asked to create something that reminded them of Hope.  The event is called "Impressions of Hope."  If you have any questions, or want to attend, please contact Tanya at teveleth@gmail.com.

It's weird.  I'm tired, from lack of sleep, because I keep stressing out about whether or not something was done, but only for the things I've already finished.  But I'm too excited for it to stop me.  And that problem will probably be solved once this is my only job. :-)