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Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. - 1 John 3:18

It’s an odd feeling, that first time in your life when you experience true loneliness. For me, and I suspect many others, that first experience of true loneliness came during college. A couple of weeks after my parents dropped me off, the newness and excitement wore off. I settled into a routine of classes and homework, only to be struck with the realization that I knew no one and my community was a long 8-hour drive from me. 

College is a time of learning, growing, and changing. The further one goes from home, the more pronounced that change can be. In 2024, international students made up 6% of college students here in America; this equates to roughly 1.1 million students. International Students Inc. (ISI) is a religious non-profit that seeks to reach these students with the love of Christ by meeting their needs while they are in college. Their mission is “to share Christ’s love with international students and to equip them for effective service in cooperation with the local church and others.” MCC partners with their branch at UNM campuses, where ISI offers a range of services that provide these students with community and other practical resources. Their welcome center is located just off the UNM campus, and is where students can have free lunches, get help locating housing, and sign-up for other services. Ultimately, these services are used to show the love of Christ.

One of the services ISI offers is to help students find community through joining a Home Group. These Home Groups consist of 20-30 international college students meeting weekly at a volunteer’s home for food, games, and discussion. Students can choose from a discussion about culture or the Bible. ISI will also pair students with volunteers who sign up to be Friendship Partners. These friendship partners are individuals or families who offer to share their lives and form a genuine friendship with a student. 

Beyond Home Groups and Friendship Partners, ISI volunteers pick up students from the airport, open their homes for temporary housing till a student can move into an apartment, donate furnishings for apartments, help with English language classes, and set up group activities like Bible studies. Through meeting the physical and emotional needs of students, ISI can build relationships with students from all over the world and open doors to share Christ. Their impact is felt not only in our local UNM community, but in communities around the world as these students return home bringing the Gospel with them. 

If you would like to volunteer with ISI, you can talk to a member of our Mission team or contact ISI ABQ directly through their website. Be praying for:

• Volunteers to set up a third home study group
• Students from the Middle East, as the current conflict intensifies 
• Current volunteers have opportunities for gospel conversations with students. 

Summertime can strike both anticipation and anxiety in the heart of any parent. On the one hand, we’re thrilled to have slower and warmer days ahead, fewer commitments on the calendar, and more free time with our kids. On the other hand, all that free time can be downright daunting. The pressure to make the most of summer, to execute the perfect plan, to squeeze a lifetime of meaning and memories out of just one season is paralyzing.

This is my 20th summer as a mom, and I still get both giddy and stressed out with every dawning June. But I’ve come to appreciate how summer allows for sweet and unique rhythms that the rest of the year doesn’t. With a little planning, you and I cannot just survive the summer—we can make it a time to point our kids to the Lord and have fun along the way.

Tried and True Rhythms

Here are a handful of my favorite tried and true rhythms from over two decades of parenting during the summer months.

1. Make consistent, small deposits.

Summertime is like all good things in life—slow and steady deposits build wealth over a lifetime. You don’t have to go big this summer. When I asked my young adult and older teen kids what they cherished about our summers, they all replied with simple daily things: slow mornings, reading challenges at the library, swimming at the local pool, and visiting the same aquarium year after year. Their fondest memories grew from consistency. Pick a few things you love to do as a family and stick with them. They’ll shape your children more than trying to come up with new and exciting ideas every day.

2. Aim for progress over perfection in spiritual growth.

You don’t have to read the whole Bible or memorize an entire catechism this summer. How about reading one page of a special devotional book at breakfast? Or picking one book of the Bible and reading a small portion together at lunch? Or selecting an adventurous novel with biblical themes to read aloud at night before bed? These habits are far from flashy, but your kids will be talking about those Bible verses and read-aloud books for years to come.

You don’t have to read the whole Bible or memorize an entire catechism this summer. Consider what you can do to make small spiritual deposits in your kids’ lives. 

3. Serve together.

One source of joy for our family has been serving together in some way every summer. Some years this has meant a cross-cultural mission trip. But many years it meant the kids making something with their own hands to sell for a special cause.

One year they made popsicles in paper cups and sold them at the community garage sale. They called it “Popsicles for Poverty” and gave all the money to Compassion International. The girls and I looked back at those photos this week and shared a laugh. At the time, I remember it feeling messy (and even a little cringey). I wondered if it was worthwhile. But I’ve learned that a rhythm of serving every summer affects the tone of the whole year.

4. Get out in nature together.

Take walks, go to the creek, find worms in the dirt, grow some plants, capture some caterpillars and watch them turn into butterflies, or make a list of the birds that come near your windows. These good gifts right outside your home are food for the soul and will give you ample opportunity to point your kids to the beauty of creation and the worth and goodness of their Creator.

5. Pick something to pray for.

Devote your summer prayers to something specific—maybe a certain country, people group, or continent. The goal here isn’t long, belabored prayer time but rather opening your kids’ eyes (and yours!) to a need you may not normally see. Place a map, a photo, or some kind of visual reminder next to the dinner table or your child’s bed and simply pray for that same thing each day.

6. Make a loose plan.

We all have different styles and cultures in our families. There’s no one right way to do summer. I’ve found, though, that a loose plan is helpful. When we start our summer days with zero agenda, it tends to go badly. Rather than creativity and joy, there’s complaining and meltdowns.

You don’t need to schedule every half hour, but creating a rhythm your kids can count on is so helpful. Rotating between quiet time and play time throughout the day struck a happy balance for us.

Share Life and the Gospel

The long, slow days of summer are a great time to recalibrate as a family. Rather than succumbing to any internal or external pressure to have an epic summer, ask yourself instead, How can I commend the Lord to my kids over the next three months (Ps. 145:4)? Steady acts of faithfulness will serve you and your family well. Sharing your life and the gospel with them will be time well spent (1 Thess. 2:8).

Take it from me, a mom who has just one of four little birds left in the nest: daily habits and nourishing rhythms over these summer months will shape your kids the way dripping water creates a canyon. The growth is happening. The fruit will appear. Keep serving, praying, and playing.

TheGospelCoalition. How to Survive Summer with Kids. June 22, 2023. Jen Oshman.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/survive-summer-kids/

Within the last year I have walked through a path of change that has taken me out of the United States Army and into a season more focused on family and others. The indoctrination that you first receive when you join the military ensures that you always have a mindset that is preparing and gearing up for the next mission. That mission- a clear definition of success and the end-state you are working to achieve—provides focus and clarity as you choose what to invest your time and resources in. Leaving the military, I have had a huge and lingering question, what is my mission now?

Throughout this change, I have been especially thankful that God is a God of love and grace, but also order. In His word he has given us a clear framework to build our lives around. Before we can answer the question of what our individual mission is, we must understand the calling that has been given to us as followers of Christ. In Mathew 22:37-40, Jesus clearly answered the Pharisees when they came and asked him which is the greatest commandment, “And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.””

I like to keep things simple, loving God and loving others as a framework for your entire life gives you clear, God-directed, and understandable criteria that can be applied to every moment. But it’s not just loving and following God as best as you can - God calls us to love with everything that He has equipped us with -heart, soul, mind, and strength. Until our last breath on planet earth, we are called by God to give Him our everything. I’ll be honest, walking out of a job where I was prepared to give my final breath in service to others, I have struggled to understand how I might find the same level of purpose.

Here is where I found an equally challenging response- giving up my priorities and desires each day in exchange for God’s, I am taking the risk that I will expend every part of myself without a clear, self-focused time to rejuvenate. In essence, every day we have the opportunity to lay down our lives and serve God to the point that only He can sustain us. That sounds risky and challenging, two things that activate deep and innate parts of every-man’s heart. Here is the reality, this only works if you are actively pursuing the heart of God through daily prayer, reading, and meditation which provides that opportunity for God to fill us back up. It’s almost as if God designed us to live like this…

The second part of the passage talks about others. Structuring our approach to others is critically important as there are numerous “others” in this lost and broken world. We are finite, we cannot give beyond the equipping that God has provided us. Going back to the garden of Eden, God provided Adam’s first “other,” his wife Eve. Our first “other” is our spouse. The person that we become one flesh with, establish a family with, and hopefully spend the majority of our lives with in service to God. The next step in God’s giving of “others” for Adam to serve were his kids. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” Psalm 127:3-5 ESV. I absolutely love the description that David gives to children, arrows that honed, sharpened, and launched out into the world to conduct the mission that God has given them. Between loving your wife and kids, there will be seasons where these are the only priorities that you will have time to steward.

Two other categories that God has given us are to care for our extended family (1 Timothy 5:8) and to go and make disciples of every nation. His heart extends to each and every person on earth, and so should ours. However, the expansive nature of this last group means that we could spend our entire lives serving these others and neglect the first two categories that God has established.

Back to the question that has been nagging at me ever since I started charting the course out of the military where the mission was clearly defined for me every day. The answer God has been reinforcing for me is that the mission to love God and love others always existed. Additionally, the reality that was slowly soaking in was that in one aspect of my life, I had let the world define my mission over what God had for me. How did this manifest daily? Staying at work beyond the end of the work day to try and get ahead on tomorrows tasks, choosing to take my time away from family to invest in things that helped me to be better at my job, and when I was off work my mind was consumed with the stress and challenges of the military mission. In essence, my world revolved around my job. Have you found yourself in this situation? Finding the mission that the world has offered more engaging than the mission that God has laid out for us to be faithful to our wives, father our children, and serve others with everything that we have?

There is one other person that I haven’t mentioned in the priorities above, and that’s me. There is inherent risk in orienting your life around the service of God and others that seems to put our sanity and mental well-being at risk. The question is this, do you trust God? Do you trust that if you give him your everything that He can and will maintain you?

Here are a couple verses that highlight exactly my experience in the last year as God has sustained me through this incredible and critically important change. Luke 6:38 – Give and it will be given to you, a good measure pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Proverbs 11:25 – “A generous man will prosper, he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”

Perhaps today is the day God has called you to re-order your life. Perhaps it is at this moment that He is calling you to take the risk to put Him first, God has been the same yesterday, today, and forever…something close to eternity, I think we can trust Him today!

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Recent news headlines reveal the next generation is confused, lonely, anxious, and spiritually hungry. This is why Gideons and Auxiliary are committed to sharing the hope of the Gospel with young people.

A 2023 report by Barna Research titled The Open Generation revealed that 75% of USA teens feel motivated to learn more about Jesus. Among committed Christian teens, nominal Christian teens, and all other teens, the Bible was the top trusted resource for learning about Jesus (with only “the family” tying as a top trusted source among nominal Christian teens).

While there are challenges with the ever-changing landscape of today’s cultural issues, God is still opening doors for members of The Gideons to share the Gospel. Gideons and Auxiliary aim to make God's Word available to students in fifth grade and above. This past year, we were able to reach over 65 million people worldwide with the hope of Jesus Christ, and nearly 70% of them were students in middle school, high school, or college. Youth receiving Testaments in the USA has now surpassed pre-pandemic totals (4.8 million in 2019 versus 5 million in 2024).

We know from the testimonies received over the years that an encouraging word of witness or a single Testament placed in a student’s hand can make an eternal difference. Here are a couple of examples:

A Gideon handed Gary a brand-new Testament one day and said, “This is for you.” Gary felt so proud to have that Testament.

Instead of reading it right away, he tucked it away in the top drawer of his bedroom chest. As a teen, Gary began skipping school and getting into trouble. “I needed something to help me with all the guilt and shame that weighed so heavy on me,” he remembers.

“Because of that Gideon who gave me a copy of God’s Word, I ultimately had somewhere to turn during a very dark time in my teenage life,” says Gary. He ended up on his knees beside his bed asking Christ to be the Lord of his life. Today, Gary is a pastor in Florida.

During a Scripture distribution at a large Texas university, a group of Gideons had memorable conversations with several students. One student shared that he had started heavily drinking with his newfound freedom as a freshman. Before the end of the semester, he realized that he had become an alcoholic. He had attended church with his family growing up but had only head knowledge of God. After one drunken binge, he cried out to God to deliver him. God answered, and he was born again. A Gideon prayed with him and asked Jesus to give him boldness to share his powerful testimony with other students.

This student was one of 9,000 others who received a Testament from Gideons that day. “We planted seeds and pray that it will bear fruit,” said one of the Gideons.

Gideons and Auxiliary worldwide play a significant part in giving students the lasting hope of Jesus Christ. Join us in praying for the Lord to continue moving in the hearts and lives of the next generation. Pray also for today’s youth to openly receive the only remedy that can change their life—the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Gideons. Reaching the Next Generation. September 20, 2024. David P. Kinkade and Kevin McIntosh. 

https://www.gideons.org/blog/reaching_next_generation

Both my husband and I grew up in Christian homes going to church every Sunday. Especially after COVID lockdowns, and then with the birth of our first and second kids, we struggled to get ourselves going to church. It was so easy to stay at home, but we didn't realize how much we missed and needed a church community. 

Then when our daughter was about three, we felt a strong calling to find her a bible class, like my husband and I grew up in.

Within a week, Mountain Christian Church advertised their Vacation Bible School program, and we couldn't ignore the obvious and literal sign. 

So that summer our daughter attended VBS at MCC, and it turned out to be a life-changing experience for our entire family. She came home each day filled with excitement, sharing the songs, Bible stories, and crafts she had learned. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and we were deeply moved by the joy and spiritual growth she experienced during that week.

Inspired by the positive impact VBS had on our daughter, we decided to attend a Sunday service. From the moment we walked through the doors, we were greeted with open arms and sincere hospitality. The sense of belonging and the strong emphasis on family values resonated with us deeply. As a result, we have become regular attendees and participants in the church community.

VBS not only provided our daughter with a memorable and enriching experience, but also led our family to discover a supportive and loving Christian community. 

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Lauren's story is a beautiful testimony of what the Lord does through VBS. Would you consider joining in His work for the Kingdom, right here in Cedar Crest? Talk to Cruz Talamantes today about how you can be involved. 

You will be blessed, and will also be a blessing. God may even use you to change a family's life forever.