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Back to School

September Newsletter, 2015  Rick McPherson

As a kid I never liked Labor Day.  Why name a day for work and then celebrate it nationally?  Mostly, I didn’t like it because it meant summer vacation was over and we had to go back to school.  Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to go, it was just a fact that school followed the holiday.   July and August were a memory and there was a September calendar on the kitchen wall with a red circle drawn around that fateful Tuesday.  Like it or not, ready or not, it was back to school. 

The halls and classrooms and gymnasium always had a unique smell.  The vice-principal stood on patrol and the new home room teacher wrote on the chalk-board, “Welcome, my name is Mr. Horton.”  At least that’s what I remember from 4th grade.  Had he not been my first male teacher, I probably wouldn’t remember anything at all.  What is in my memory are the books, reports, assignments, tests and report cards.  Learning had a curriculum and there was a master plan that I didn’t know.   Much later I learned that learning was a lifestyle that would never stop.

Now I’m reliving my childhood vicariously through my grandsons.  Nothing has changed much.  They too think that Labor Day is an intrusion into a perfectly wonderful summer schedule of camps, paintball, fishing and baseball.  Why bother with school?  But somehow I hear myself talking and trying to explain to them that there is indeed a greater plan and learning is a major part of it all.  Although they’re listening, I’m not sure they’re buying it, yet. 

Then I remembered these words that Paul the Apostle said to his young friend, Timothy.  “But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”  II Timothy 3:14-15

In our ministry here at Pacific NW Outreach, Inc., we are constantly learning. 

Everyday there are problems to solve, reports to be written (like this one), facts and figures to be processed,  projects to be organized, schedules to be  made, people to be coordinated and things to be learned.  It never stops.  Learning is a lifestyle. 

The Apostle was right when he said, “you must continue…”   Not only do we continue to work, we continue to learn.  We continue to learn the Native American culture, we continue to learn what works and what doesn’t, we continue to learn how to pay our expenses, we continue to learn how to save money, we continue to learn to pray, to forgive, to serve.  It never stops!

And many of you who receive this newsletter have, “continued.”    You have not stopped your lifestyle of learning, praying, giving, helping.  Thank you and God bless you for staying in school and not dropping out!

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