CNS In Action: Thanksgiving Meals

More photos of our Thanksgiving

service project with Brother Under Christ (BYX).

These guys are awesome!

Blessings.

A Thanksgiving Come True

With the help of several CNS church sponsors (Austin Christian Fellowship, Austin Stone, All Saints Presbyterian and Covenant Presbyterian, Christ the King Presbyterian, Austin First Evangelical Church, and Lake Hills Church) Community New Start developed 100 Thanksgiving Baskets and officially handed them out on Thursday, November 19th at the end of Smart Start. The families were truly grateful and this small token of support brought tears and smiles to our families. The children were equally moved as they helped carry the groceries for their parents. I later drove from TA Brown Elementary to JJ Pickle and as drove through the neighborhood, I saw families walking proudly down the street, in hand with the Thanksgiving Baskets that they received. All thanks’ be to God and for the CNS friends, families and churches that support this effort. In addition, our newest partners, BYX (Brother’s Under Christ) members came to help in their first support of CNS and proudly delivered all of the meals to both school. They were terrific, so good that they broke into song when we got to JJ Pickle and had us all singing “Lean On Me” in a glee kinda way! It was beautiful!

Thanks to all our volunteers including Daniel Robles of RR Limousine, Amy Johnson, Suzanne Harris, Christy Robinson, Alex and Jeanette Guzman, John & Lisa Davila, Stephanie Rivers, Courtney Ousley) and all of the rest of our friends for their support. God Bless.

CNS Board of Directors Retreat

The CNS Board of Directors Retreat was held at the Austin Baptist Association and together the Board reviewed 2009 accomplishments, made advances in looking at our mission and took giant steps at continuing “Development” in 2010. These individuals are truly committed to sharing Gods love by word and deed.

CNS Family Day at Zilker Park

Last Saturday, CNS Staff and some Board Members gathered at Zilker Park for a time to fellowship away from the office and school setting. The idea was to help unity to the various individuals that keep this ministry going each week. What a great time! God is good!

Its the small things in life...

This is my first year to work with SmartStart and I love it. I love all of my kids, no matter how many time clips are moved to yellow or how many times a week my supervisor has to have a heart-to-heart with one of them. They are precious and the best part of my day. This week I had just led the kids in a prayer and one of them raised their hand and asked "How does God hear us?" I was caught a little off guard because, as kindergarten and first graders, they don't usually ask those kinds of questions. Then I was thankful that I had been given the opportunity to share with them more about the God who loves us.

Oh Happy Day

The past couple of weeks at Smart Start have been filled with rainy days. While the kids still get to play games inside, there is something special about being able to enjoy running around in the sunshine. This Thursday we finally got to head out to the park and play. And not a second of the day was wasted!
Monday through Thursday, we play a group game with all of Smart Start before heading into the classrooms in order to develop community among the classrooms. It was beautiful to see the fruits of our attempts to make Smart Start a Christ-centered family. Numerous games of tag, soccer, and football were going on all at once, teachers were swinging on the monkey bars with their classes, and the swingset was occupied the entire time.
Before we headed inside, I noticed something that made me smile to myself and encouraged me that we are making a difference. Two little boys in the kindergarten/1st grade class were playing at the swings.
Before I go on, let me tell you a little bit about these boys. While they appear cute at first glance, these two in particular always keep their teacher on her toes. They have definitely had their fair share of timeouts and parent conversations, but changes are happening and this moment helped demonstrate their progress.
Without any teachers around prompting them to do so, the 1st grade boy was pushing the kindergartener on the swing and they were laughing and having a conversation. Seeing their interaction, even though it's a seemingly small event, shows a huge step in their development. Teaching kids how to love one another as Christ has shown us to do is a huge goal of our program. There are no tests or benchmarks or quantitave data sets that we can take to measure this effectively, but today the victory was shown through two small children playing together on the swingset. God is good.

Smiles

November 2, 2009

Last Thursday at Smart Start we had a great time celebrating Halloween with trick-or-treating, coloring, and games. Some of the kids (and some of the teachers) were dressed up in costumes for the celebration. Unfortunately that day, it was pouring down rain in Austin and one of our teachers took a terrible spill on the way in, ripping his jeans and scraping his leg pretty badly. On our way into the cafeteria, I overheard to of my second graders discussing the teacher's leg. Then I heard one of them ask the teacher if the scrape was real, and of course the teacher answered yes. I laughed to myself as I realized that they had apparently been debating whether or not the scrape and blood was apart of his costume or if it was actually real. This is one of the things I love about working at Smart Start; even if I've had a bad day or things are frustrating, one of the kids always has something to say that brings a smile to my face.

Love, Joy, and Prayer

When agreeing to do this job, I had no idea what I was getting into, but was very excited to see where God had led me. After meeting my kids, I knew I was placed in SmartStart for a reason. Each day, I have to come ready to be joyful and loving. Some days I am tired or stressed, however I know that these children need joy and love to finish off their day. Usually, THEIR joy and love rubs off on me. Also, each day I learn the importance to share prayer with them and how much we all need prayer. Prayer is a way for us to give everything to God which is not in our power to change. These children have taught me more than I could learn on my own. Each day, I have to come with patience, but most importantly love and joy. This job has challenged me in my walk with Christ and taught me to rely on prayer. Each day, I have to come with eagerness to serve, love and teach.

"E" is for eager... end of the story!

After we talked about it, we all prayed together and he prayed that Jesus will help him and he wanted to do better. Well that was only the beginning, now he is participating in class, he knows the verse of the week, and he is actually sharing some of the things we talk out about in class and just getting better at everything, I know we still need to work on somethings but the difference now is he knows someone cares, he is loved and that God listens and answers our payers!

"E" is for eager-to share great news!

Hello everyone, I am "eager" to share something amazing God's infinite love is moving and showing in my kids(students), I have this particular student who has been in smart start for a few years now, so he knows the rules and also how to break them! At the beginning of the semester I knew it was going to be a challenge with him as far as discipline goes, one day he told me, Ms. I know that if I misbehave I have to go to another class and that teacher is going to make me write a letter, bla bla bla... I felt like no matter how hard I tried he would not listen or respect me at all, this day I was ready to start on the lesson and he was just being funny and decited he was not going to participate he wanted to go play with the other class, I call my site coordinator and continued with class, because I still had 9 more kids that wanted to hear the story, they all looked at me like she is not joking we will get fired they said. The folloing day he came back with his "letter" he had to write (that was the RULE) He came up to me and said HERE, here is your letter I'm back, I looked at him him and said, I don't need a letter we both know you made a bad choice and you don't have to be here. What good does to know the rules if we are not going to follow them, later this day while everyone else is doing homework I sat down with him and asked him about his mom and sibblings, he share some stories about his mom and he has a hard time expressing his feelings because"he is a man" or so he says, I share some stories to about my kids and family and said to him one way you can show love to your mom is by doing your best in school, being good taking out trash, etc. he said I do sometimes I vacumm our livingroom, I asked, do you really and he answered well my mom makes me do it. I said to him well as mom myself I can tell you sometimes after getting home from work or working around the house or taking care of the little kids, some of us still have to make dinner, do laundry,go to the store because we ran out of milk and the last thing moms wanna hear is "I got in trouble" he got quiet, then asked, so what happens if you son get in trouble at school? Do you spank him? I said no, we talk about what happen

seeing a light

This is my first year at Community New Start and I honestly had no idea what to expect when I signed up for the job. For some reason I had a feeling that it was just where I was supposed to be. The first few weeks have been very up down as far as behavior goes with the kids. Just like everyone else, we have good days and bad days. As the program goes on and I become closer to the kids I definitely see progress. There are way more good days than there are bad days. Some of the boys that would just completely not listen to anything I would say in the beginning are starting to respect me as well as see me as a friend they can talk to. This is only a few students but I think there will be more and more as we go on. I look forward to every day that I get to be with these kids and this program is truly a blessing to all the students, teachers, and volunteers.

CNS Participates at Hopefest 2009

HopeFest took place on Saturday, October 10th and Community New Start took part in this unbelievable day. The event was packed with people from both the St. John’s Community and around Austin. The CNS staff participated in the event by running a table under the Education Tent!

Over the past few months, the CNS Staff has been gathered books from our various church sponsors and friends of CNS. Book contributors include Regents High School, members of All Saints Presbyterian Church, Austin Christian Fellowships Church. This summer, Lori Grunau daughter Sarah (members of Austin Christian Fellowship Church) was touched by our Lord and decided to grace CNS with books that she and her friends collected on behalf of CNS kids living in the St. John’s Community. Sarah has a big heart, she instructed her friends to bless her with books instead of gifts for her birthday. She took these books and donated them all to CNS. On Saturday, she even gathered her friends to come help her pass out books at the HopeFest event. God bless Sarah, her family and her friends for giving so much for those who have so little.

Families attend the CNS HopeFest table and took home new and gently used books, Bibles, crayons, markers and pencils. Over two hundred books were given away in just a few hours. The event drew volunteers and friends to the booth including CNS Volunteers Peter McKee. CNS Board Chair brought his son Jonathan to the event. Bob Sleet of ABBA visited with CNS booth. The new CNS Youth Program Manager, Veronica Tutaj, even brought her grandson’s to the event. CNS Program Coordinator, Reyes Castillo-Silias, help greet families at the event. CNS was also blessed to make new friends at the event, Rachel, a member of Austin Stone Community Church also helped man the CNS table.

This was a terrific fellowship event, can’t wait for next year… Blessings to all.

CNS Breakfast with the Pastors

On September 30th, the Community New Start Board of Directors and CNS Staff held an informative meeting at the Austin Baptist Association with several Austin church pastors. The event was held with the intent to broaden awareness of the CNS ministry serving the St. John’s Community. David Smith of the Austin Baptist Association delivered the welcome and opening prayer. Stephen Hurd, CNS Board Chair thanked the attendees and acknowledge the many CNS church partners. A brief CNS overview was delivered by Sly Guzman, Executive Director for CNS. The event went into full drive with a passionate keynote address by Pastor Will Davis Jr. of Austin Christian Fellowship Church. Pastor Will Davis was followed by Donna Burkhalter and Lillie Montoya, both parents of children enrolled in CNS’s Smart Start program. They shared information for the wonderful work that our Smart Start Teachers are doing with their children. The event was closed by Bob Sleet of Austin Bridge Builders Alliance, who also helped sponsor the event. CNS was extremely grateful to all of the attendees and their guest. Food was provided by Food Heads Café and Catering. Thanks’ be to God for blessing CNS with such a successful

event and friends.

"D" for Dedication.

I have the most wonderful class. Our children are full of energy. They aren't afraid to express, how much God love them. Today we studied "D" for dedication. During the discussion one of the students said "I wanted to be a doctor if I going all the way to finish my school. After this another student said I wanted to be a policeman; a teacher; yo quiero ser un ingeniero....This was a blessing day.

This Is Cool!
October 3, 2009

About a week ago at Smart Start I had an amazing opportunity to share the Gospel and talk to one of my kids about what grace looks like. Everyday all of the students have their name on a closepin that starts the day clipped on green, meaning they are doing an excellent job. After misbehavior and a warning they have to move their clip to yellow, then red, and so on. If they finish the day on green, they are then awarded a sticker or smiley face on their behavior chart for the day. At the end of two weeks of Smart Start, if they have been awarded enough smiley faces/stickers, they recieve a prize to reward them for good behavior.

One of my students during the first round of prizes did not recieve one because he had too many days without a smiley face. Disappointed he had not recieved a prize, he and I made a pact that he was going to do better the next two weeks and recieve one next time around. So as the next week began he worked hard to improve. But Wednesday of that week, I was forced to move his clip after he lied to me about taking someone's things. He was devastated and angry, and sort of shut down.

I immediately began to explain to him that he had plenty of other chances throughout the week to earn more smiley faces and get the prize next week. I then told him that we all mess up, and even though he had, I stilled loved him. I then tried to explain that this is the same as our relationship with God. I let him know that I was going to provide him with the same grace that God has provided us. Even though we mess up all time, He still loved us enough to send His only Son to die for us.

It was just such a cool opportunity to get to talk about with a 2nd grader about the amazing love our God has for us, and I never would have thought that opportunity would have come from closepins, smiley faces, and prizes. But it just shows how the Lord is at work in Smart Start and it is so neat to see!

Favorite Story of the Week

I have one student who is not at all shy, full of energy, and not afraid to speak his mind. I love these characteristics about him, but sometimes his attitude (which is what we were learning about this week) about a situation can be bad and he'll let everyone know! So we had a rough day on Monday with this and Wednesday wasn't looking promising---until homework time at least.

I was walking around helping students with homework when I noticed he was done with his math worksheet. I checked his answers and nearly all of them were right. With each right answer I made a big deal about it and with each wrong one I asked him questions that lead him to the correct one---essentially he knew exactly what to do just messed up a few times. Each time I would encourage him, really doting on him, and you could see him just smile. His attitude towards me and with everything we did changed. So I gave him more praises telling him I would have to tell his mom how well he did today.

When his mom arrived to pick him up he came up to me, "My mom is here!" He remembered what I had said! So I talked to his mom and just bragged on him some more. He looked as if he were trying to hold back a smile. I hope that through the affirmation he felt loved by God, felt his worth, and felt valuable.

Smart Start- after completing second week

Hey everyone!

These couple of weeks have been different from what I expected, but in an exciting way! My kids started out very rowdy and did not listen to anything I said! However, they have begun to improve and tried at least for a little to listen to me! I know that God will work in marvelous ways, we need only to pray. God has definitely shown me to continue to have dialogue with him throughout everything I do. I am continually praying for his patience and love because without them, I know I can not be a light for him! I know that God has put his hand on all of us as teachers and will lead us to do great things for all these kids! Sometimes, prayer is the only thing we can do! Keep on praying! I thank God for this opportunity and can not wait to learn and share from all of you all at Smart Start!

Sunday, September 13, 2009, the CNS Smart Start Singers participated in the Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church Fall Fest. About 30 Smart Start Singers attend the event. They were picked up and driven there by our very own Michael Watt, CNS Board Member. Rylan Foster and Reyes Castillo-Silias lead the singers as they preformed twice during the event. The students also participated in games, face painting and crafts. It was a terrific time!

Today marks the first day of Smart Start classes for our students enrolled in our CNS afterschool ministry. We pray for all of the children, the Smart Start Teachers, our talented Site Coordinators and the wonderful Smart Start Volunteers. Lord, bless the young and support them all in their bidding to continue to build a strong relationship with you Lord. Guide us Lord and show us the way! Blessings to all!

Smart Start: Off to a Great Start...

Monday and Tuesday of this past week we had Smart Start teacher training for the Smart Start teachers who will be working at Brown and Pickle elementary schools this Fall. We had both new and returning teachers come to the training. In my opinion, we started Monday morning off just right...with coffee from Starbucks and lots of laughs! In addition to paperwork and walking through handbook materials and curriculum  together, we also learned songs and activities that will be taught to Smart Start kids. Some teachers may have been taken a little off guard by the liveliness of our meeting, but if they were I couldn't tell because in no time everyone was running around, dancing and clapping (which kept Austin Stone employees in the adjacent offices quite entertained I'm sure). God has already started building a family together with our Smart Start teachers.

This was my last week interning with CNS. I feel so blessed to have a new group of people entering CNS with shining faces and genuine love for serving the Lord. It was an absolute joy watching the energy these teachers had while singing songs, playing group games and sharing advice with each other on how to best mentor, love on and lead the 

children in Smart Start. CNS is fortunate to have 

them and I can't wait for God to use each of their unique spiritual gifts this semester to minister to their classrooms of children and the St. John community as a whole!

You can see more pictures from Smart Start training Fall 2009 on OUR WEBSITE.

CNS at ACF

Community New Start (CNS) had a tremendous day at Austin Christian Fellowship (ACF) on Sunday, May 3, 2009. With the unconditional support of ACF, CNS was able to debut the Smart Start Singers. The Smart Start Singers are students enrolled in Community New Start’s – Smart Start program at either T.A. Brown or J. J. Pickle Elementary. Austin Christian Fellowship, their Staff and Volunteers were remarkable! What a terrific church, great leadership, terrific Pastor, loving and caring staff and service oriented members. What more could you ask for? God is good!!!

About

Welcome to Community New Start's blog. More detailed information about who we are, our history and our programs can be found on our website: www. communitynewstart.org

Below are our vision and mission.

Vision 

CNS is working toward a future with holistically transformed families that have academically successful children, are spiritually renewed, and are socially responsible members of their community and society at large.

  

Mission

 To develop cross-cultural partnerships that focus on under-resourced neighborhoods by establishing top quality programs, founded upon a Biblical worldview, that equip and challenge students to strive for excellence as they live purposely and intelligently in the service of God and man.