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God is Faithful What an amazing, change-filled, God-led 15 years of leading and learning I’ve been blessed to experience with many people sharing this chapter and journey during my tenure here. With so many experiences and stories, I can’t single one out but rather an over arching reflection: God provides. God is faithful. God is in control. I know the future is full and bright and in His hands. Mixed emotions swirl through my mind as I write these words. It’s an honor to write in the last issue and give the “last word,” but also a responsibility to encapsulate an entire school year. The words of Proverbs 21:19 come to mind, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” We all have accomplished ‘Something Greater’ this year. We’ve all experienced God’s greatness and grown in the ways our Lord ordained. The rearview mirror teems with assumed accomplishments, surprising letdowns and inspirational successes. Despite planned and unplanned twists and turns, the Lord’s purpose has prevailed. Two final thoughts linger in my mind, the first concerning this high school graduating class of 2013. This class opened our preschool doors and is the first group to walk through 14 years of CVC, enjoying many accomplishments and adventures. We know they are prepared, and we wish them well. The second flows from the many sweet and sincere “thank-yous” and “good-byes” shared on the last day of school at the “surprise” assembly given at the elementary (see page 3). The honest, loving and sincere sharing by all the students and staff was a priceless gift and is now a cherished memory. – Randy Postmus, CVC Elementary Principal
CVC TEACHER PERSPECTIVE
– by Blake Hiemstra, CVC Middle School English Teacher
Beauty in Brokenness
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ometimes the light flashes in tears, and the beauty of those tears buoys this world out of its weariness. A few weeks ago we celebrated perhaps my favorite day of the school calendar. We take the one-week-from-graduation eighth graders off campus for a retreat, a day of celebrating who they are and who God has made them to be. We call it The Next Step, symbolic of the giant leap they’re soon to make to high school and the next phase of their lives. As part of the festivities we bring kids into an elegantly lit room where parent volunteers await them sitting at round tables decorated with more elegance and charm than Martha Stewart could produce. The kids eat. They fellowship. They do some improv. They hear teaching about God’s plan for their lives. They eat some more. They worship. They go to their separate gender-specific corners to hear the truth about the other corner, their potential prom dates. They eat some more. We treat them like the adults they’re becoming with the result being a day of memories and healthy pondering of the future. We’ve all heard the saying “It takes a village to raise a child.” Well, this year at The Next Step, to ratchet up the poignancy and allow kids to touch and smell community, we invited the whole village. That is, for the month prior to Next Step we encouraged each student’s village – parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, relatives, youth leaders, baristas (with the everpresent venti frappuccino in some kids’ hands I sometimes wonder if Starbucks has more of an influence on their lives than I do) – to write letters with the general theme of “As you move on to this next stage of life.” Call it a covert compositional mission. In the afternoon each kid got a file folder to open and some solitude to read the notes. As I walked around outside and viewed kids reading the letters, beauty showed up. Smiles abounded. Heads nodded. Kids read and got faraway glazes in their eyes. And with one girl in particular, the light truly flashed. Normally she’s as cool as an assassin’s ice cubes. Don’t get me wrong. She’s pleasant, and I enjoy her immensely. She simply is not prone to the theatrics or emotion that sometimes characterizes eighth grade girls. As I walked around the corner I saw her sitting there reading the flood of notes from her village. As she read, she wiped the tears from her eyes. She was moved. Overwhelmed by community. Flooded with love. Shattered by grace. (“Beauty” continues on page 2)