Mission Houston Newsletter

Let's multiply these stories...

From Our Executive Director, Steve Capper

Aug, 2008

The meeting in early August was held in the Administration offices of the Stafford Municipal School District. Vickie Dalton, the Compassion Coordinator of our Community Service Area (i.e., CSA) team in Sugarland/Stafford had been invited to introduce Mission Houston and the Whole & Healthy Children school initiative to all of the principals of that school district. The door to this relationship had been opened through the love and encouragement shown by the congregations in that CSA working and praying together over the past 2 years in support of the schools and school district - specifically through two campus improvement projects and through teacher appreciation gifts given at Stafford Primary School. Terry Loudenburg, the Mentor Coordinator for the school district, arranged the meeting to share with the principals her gratitude for what the CSA team had already done and her own enthusiastic endorsement of the expanded and multifaceted Whole & Healthy Children initiative

Just a week prior I had been in the office of Principal Trealla Epps at Gordon Elementary School in the Bellaire-Southwest Loop CSA. During the past year members of that CSA responded to her request for volunteers to read and spend time with at-risk students. Principal Epps enthusiastically shared one story as an example of why she wanted to continue partnering with Mission Houston and the B-SW team. Cade Burks had come faithfully to meet with and read to one student. During the months, they "connected." At the end-of-year party the B-SW team and volunteers held for the students, that young man gave Cade a hand-written card and note. He thanked Cade for being his friend, and told Cade that he wanted Cade to attend his graduations ... from high school and college! Principal Epps concluded: "One of the reasons I wanted to partner with Mission Houston is because you were offering us mentors and not just tutors. My kids need more than help with reading. They need role models who will love them and whose lives and values will help them see what it takes to break out of being at-risk and trapped in mindsets and behaviors of poverty. That's what Cade and the others started to do for my kids."

Multiply these stories hundreds of times over, and you can see why we're convinced that God has not only opened an opportunity to positively impact public school students and schools, but He has also given us the responsibility to do it ... now.

This month marks the official launch of our multiyear commitment to serving and partnering with the public schools of greater Houston through the Whole & Healthy Children school initiative. We plan to start by "adopting" 8 schools, in 6 CSAs. In each of these schools and CSAs we need your help!

· We need mentors who, for the sake of the goals of transformation in the life of a student, their family, and of the school, will go through training and commit to spending up to an hour per week with one at-risk student for an entire school year. (See the "regional" TMT Mentor Training schedule for September in this newsletter and on our website!)

· We need laborers who will help with annual campus improvement projects.

· We need donors who will give, and who will make the ask of local individuals and businesses to give, in order to enhance the educational offerings provided by the school.

· We need intercessors who will pray for the school, the students, the staff and the mentors by name every week.

· And we need you to give to Mission Houston: your gifts ensure that our staff can provide the training and resources to the CSA teams and the school volunteers that they need to succeed.

You can make a Life-giving difference! Together we can make an incredible Life-giving difference! And, as St. Francis of Assisi testified, we will discover again that "it is in giving to others that we receive." Thank you for joining us in "changing greater Houston for good!"

Steve Capper
Ex. Director ... for all of us