First Semester Down!

Friends,

The first semester has come and gone! It is hard to believe that we’ve made it through the first semester, and that we are half way done with our first year with Worldview at the Abbey. The semester in review has been a huge opportunity for growth, learning, new relationships, adjustments on the fly, and grace, grace, and more grace.

Since my last update Thanksgiving has come and gone, and then students finished up their last several weeks of work. Finals per usual were stressful for everyone, but Hannah and I worked to create a few stress relievers intermittently, including a Christmas party, a pumpkin smashing escapade, and ice cream snacks.

The class that Hannah and I have been teaching finished well too. Students presented a paper on their top 3-5 vocations, the research for which included salary levels, interviews with people currently in those vocations, and degrees or recommended qualifications to get to that career. The writing guideline can be found here. Hannah and I are using the prompts and guidelines that we put together this semester to form a more comprehensive curriculum for next year already, and I’m hopeful that these lessons can be formatted to share with any Worldview Academy student who is interested in answering the question of what vocation to pursue.

Christmas has brought a welcome break for our team and for me a pretty hectic travel schedule to visit friends and supporters in the next several weeks. This week has involved being with my entire family under one roof (which hasn’t happened for over a year), and the coming 2 weeks include traveling in a loop across Texas to see friends that I haven’t seen since I left for Colorado.

I will hopefully be back in Canon City on January 4^th, will be picking students up on the 6^th, and will begin my first day of teaching economics on the 7^th! I am incredibly blessed and excited to have the opportunity to use my passion for entrepreneurship and background in finance to teach students this semester, and I can’t wait to get started. In preparation for class I have been going through a curriculum that our Provost, Jeff Baldwin, has used before, but much of the introductory concepts are being formulated by me from resources from my college days in finance. For a list of books we will be getting through this semester, checkout the syllabus on our website.

Please keep my team and me in your prayers this Christmas season! Everyone is either traveling or having relatives visit them, which is absolutely enjoyable, but as I’m sure you understand, sometimes not very restful. Please pray that we would be rejuvenated in Christ and will be ready to return to a new semester.

Please also keep our spring semester in your prayers, as we have much work ahead of us, and I anticipate being very busy. We are hoping to find 24 students for our class next year, so pray that the Lord would send students our way who will be serious about their education and about growing in the Lord. We will definitely be trying to come up with ways to get our name out in the spring, but in the end we recognize that it will be the Lord who will bring students and parents our way that are willing to trust us with two semesters of their lives. If you know if anyone who would be interested in our program, please point them to our site, or encourage them to come visit us! 

All in all, this semester has been enjoyable, challenging, and full of grace. I absolutely love the team I have been working with, and we have seen progress in students and in the program. Thank you for your faithful support, both financially and in prayer. We must be with both as we continue to move forward and seek to grow this program, and we wouldn’t be here without you. 

Below are a few pictures of some of our adventures from the semester!