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!