Dear Village Families,
Last week our 7th and 8th Grade students embarked on an adventure to the 4H Camp on Jekyll Island. Over the three days, our students explored, dissected, and discovered God’s creation, from marine biology to ornithology to forest ecology. The richness of the world was brought to life, most fully, through our relationships. Woven throughout the camp experience was service learning. As our students served each other in the cafeteria or cleaned the cabins or carried luggage, a sense of community was built. And over those three days, two classes became one, as we moved from our individual needs to our shared responsibilities.
According to research, having someone in your life who really cares for you, feels close to you, loves you or wants to help you, can significantly lower your risk of disease. Epidemiologist Jeff Levin, puts it this way, “…experts have singled out love as foremost among the human emotions capable of promoting and maintaining health and achieving healing.”
We are in the Advent season, a time to prepare for the celebration of Christ’s birth. What are we preparing for this year? What will we experience this Christmas?
Our hope is that we find the same experience as our students did on Jekyll Island.
As Paul says in Galatians, serve one another in love, for everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. For our school, Service as action is a foundational element of our Middle Years Programme (MYP). Through IB we seek to develop caring members of the community who act to make a positive difference to the lives of others and their environment.
This Advent, our Service as action is to bring Christmas to 10 families in transition on 192 as part of the Hope Center. Over this week, we will share details of how you can share God’s light this Advent with these families who so desperately need the hope of Christmas.
Thank you for walking alongside us as together we find God’s joy in serving others.
With Gratitude,
Derek Cummings
Head of School