Sonlight Homeschooling Blog

Sep. 23, 2010

Why Sonlight partners with Mission India

By Sarita

When Pastor John DeVries preached, I listened. As a child, my family always went to his church on vacation. I loved his inspiring stories and passion for God's Word, but then I grew up and kind of forgot about him.

Years later, John and I decided to focus our financial giving on the 10/40 window. It was surprisingly hard to find an agency ministering to Hindus. Then John remembered Dr. DeVries. God had given this humble pastor an inexplicable burden for the people of India. Out of that burden, Dr. DeVries developed partnerships with Indian nationals. Together, they started the agency now known as Mission India.

Mission India's heart is to see India transformed by Christ. I love their mission: "To assist Indian churches and indigenous mission agencies in planting reproducing churches in a systematic and measurable way."

Did you know that Mission India doesn't send any missionaries to India? Instead, they help train, equip and release Indian believers to spread the Gospel to their own nation. They do this through Children's Bible Clubs, Adult Literacy Classes and Church Planter Training.

This fall, your family and mine have a stunning opportunity to help spread the Gospel to this fascinating but broken nation that one in six people in the world call home.

My Passport to India

Surprisingly, Children's Bible Clubs (CBCs) are the single most effective way Mission India has found to plant churches. Through this year's project, called My Passport to India, your family can learn about India like never before and raise money for Children's Bible Clubs. Each dollar you give, when matched by Sonlight, will allow two children to attend a weekly CBC! We'll match all gifts up to $167,000.

Four million children attend CBCs each year. Most of these children don't have easy lives. Some work all day; some watch their families struggle to make ends meet. Many live in abusive homes. They relish a chance to gather with other children and a godly adult to sing, dance, listen to stories and play. The children love Bible club. It's the highlight of their week.

Caring teachers share the story and love of Jesus with these children. And an amazing number of them become believers. They naturally and enthusiastically share the stories and songs with their families and friends.

I can't tell you how much that excites my heart—children being transformed through Christ and going out to transform their world.

Oh, that Sonlight kids will do the same!

So if you haven't registered for this opportunity yet, I strongly encourage you to do so. Even if your family focuses your financial giving elsewhere, you can watch the weekly video clips and learn about your neighbors on the other side of the world.

I could go on and on

Someday I may tell you stories of what John and I saw and experienced when we visited India to see Mission India's work.

Stories of women changed through the Adult Literacy Classes (which Sonlighters helped fund two years ago!). Stories of fearless church planters sharing the Good News where the harvest is ripe. Stories of the great lengths Mission India goes to in order to ensure they steward every dollar as they said they would, with transparency and effectiveness. Stories of children gathered around an 18-year-old young woman as she led their Children's Bible Club.

But I should stop for now. May you consider this opportunity to impact a strategic part of your world. Click here to start.

Many blessings,
Sarita

P.S. One more thing—I've heard that over 3,000 Sonlight families have already registered! To join them and get your Welcome Packet before this adventure starts, sign up by Friday, Sep. 24.

Making an Offer You Can Refuse

By Luke

A small fire flared up today within the Sonlight online community. It's interesting what sparks these fires. Frequently it's things we do not expect.

Like when I took the time to try to capture a good picture for the Sonlight Rewards Program and got comments asking why companies always had to choose good-looking models with perfect skin.

<blink>

True, I do have some good-looking co-workers. (You can meet several of them on the Sonlight Tour.) And my goal was to take a nice picture to showcase this opportunity to bless you and your friends. And while I certainly don't want to add to the Photoshopped Reality surrounding us ...I do really like Photoshop.

Today I saw--once again--accusations that Sonlight is just a business looking to make a buck and not interested in the Sonlight community.

Well, Sonlight is a business. And while we do seek to provide a service and bless you, ultimately we do have to make money. That's how we can keep providing services and work to bless you in the future.

That's also how I get a paid. And I like getting paid.

So, yes, Sonlight seeks out ways to find others to bless and serve. We do things we hope will be helpful and bring more people into the Sonlight community. But we firmly believe that what we offer must be of value and helpful. We seek to make you offers that you--and others--will want to take advantage of.

But we realize that not everything we offer will be of benefit to you. In fact, sometimes it may even make you unhappy that we offer it. That's a bummer for us because not only did we fail to provide something that will help you, but we also failed to leech another penny from your coffer.

<cough> [That was supposed to be funny] <grin>

The good news in all of this is that: Every offer we make is one you can refuse.

And the better news is that, as a business seeking to make money to keep serving you, if our offer doesn't help you we'll have to cut it out. Otherwise, we'd quickly not be able to offer anything to anyone because we'd be out of business.

So the fact that Sonlight is a business--a business built on more than just great resources--continually urges us find ways to serve you better. And whether you believe it or not, we do truly care about you and your family's educational needs. ...even if that means you refuse some of our offers.

It's late. I'll have to leave it at that for the night.

Has Sonlight served you well? What was the most ridiculous offer you've ever received?

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

22 Comments

Sep. 20, 2010

How You Doin'?

By Luke

Life is good.

Sure, there are still longstanding issues in my life, I'm feeling the scramble of catching up after a week away from work, my car was ticketed while sitting in a parking lot, my bank account isn't bursting with gold bricks, and I've got a ringworm or five ...but, really: Life is good.

One of the 1,500+ posts I skimmed through this morning urged me to tell you that this is the time to buy, buy, buy. Granted, I'm not a fan of the "trick 'em into buying stuff" and "make money at all costs" marketing schemes. That's lame and unhelpful. I want to be helpful. But as I pondered the advice, I realized it was true: Let's focus on the positives. The economy, for all the very real problems out there, seems to be just fine for a lot of people. As my best friend, who works for a major electronics corporation, has often said while selling thousands of dollars of electronics to people: "What recession?"

I realize that there are certainly times when life is hard ...really hard. And if you're there, I'm sorry. Hang in there! But for those of us who just tend to get bogged down in the bad, perhaps it's time to remember: Life is good.

And if the numbers I've seen are any indication, just as many people were able to afford homeschool materials this year as last. That's incredibly good news considering how many single-income families there are in the homeschool community.

So, how are you doing?

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

5 Comments

Sep. 17, 2010

Guest Post from First Sonlight Scholarship Winner

By Guest Post

Sonlight is still celebrating its 20th Anniversary. And while Luke is away, I--the Amazing Autoblot™--get to share a guest post from Sonlight's first ever Scholarship winner with you!

An Autoblot^™ Post

Luke is really jealous that he can't be the one to introduce Erika to you.He told me.
~Autoblot

Automatic Blogging Robot

Erika Kidd, 2000 Scholarship Winner

Erika Kidd likes to say that Sonlight helped her meet her husband. A homeschool graduate and first ever Sonlight scholarship winner, she used the first year of her scholarship to attend Augustine College where she met her husband of nine years. She graduated with an M.A. in Philosophy and is currently teaching and writing her dissertation with the goal of receiving her Ph.D. in 2013.

She enjoys gardening, cooking, entertaining, reading novels and poetry (T. S. Eliot and Scott Cairns are favorites), traveling and sitting on her front porch with her husband.

----

Erika Kidd
August 13, 2010

The irony of enjoying my bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich at the very kitchen table on which a mere half hour ago my homeschooling friends and I had dissected two fetal pigs was, I confess, uncomfortable. But such are the liabilities of an approach to education in which school and home bleed into each other (not, thank goodness, literally in this case). I find myself wondering more than a decade later what the point of that exercise was. Having sworn off cutting open creatures, I am now pursuing the pleasures of philosophy for my vocation. Neverthless I am grateful for my entire home school experience. My gratitude stems not simply from my sense that my broad home education in science, math, history, languages and the arts helped me to become "well-rounded" (though I hope they have). Rather I am particularly and especially grateful for the attempts of my parents through homeschooling to inculcate in me the virtue and practice of attention.

My sense of the importance of attention has been developed by Simone Weil's tantalizingly titled essay "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God." I can't here summarize the whole thing, but I encourage you to spend a quarter hour with it. Weil maintains that as school studies develop attention, they exercise the soul for love of God. She writes that prayer is perfect attention; it is "the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God."¹ This attention is not to be confused with "warmth of heart," but is a focus of the soul on God and on what is real and true. School studies develop a lower form of attention, and every academic endeavor has the potential to be a training in attention: watching and observing, waiting for what is good and true to show itself.

Attention is not a matter of will power, of slavishly "buckling down." Instead, the intellect is led by desire. Therefore attention, though it requires discipline, is motivated by a love of the good, the beautiful and the true. One pays attention and learns not out of fear, but because one has caught a glimpse of some beauty. And these beauties cannot be wrenched out of their concealment but only approached through patient love.

Homeschooling parents have unique opportunities for nurturing the virtue of attention in their children. The flexibility afforded by the home school day allows for children, under appropriate guidance, to follow their intellectual desire where it leads; they have the freedom to lose themselves in a physics problem, to check out a stack of books on Gothic architecture, or to spend the afternoon working out the fingering on a Bach fugue. Ideally students realize that school isn't just a task to be completed, but a rich opportunity continually to learn. All this takes place under the tutelage of enthusiastic parents who can serve as guides and encouragers, drawing their children into the pleasures of reading and discovering as well as helping their children press forward into tasks neither pleasant nor easy (by which I mean—you already know!—dissections).

Every homeschooling struggle and joy I experienced at the kitchen table was training in the virtue and practice of attention. This training, Weil maintains, was also a training in learning to love God. As one draws closer to truth, Weil writes, one comes to see more fully "the unique, eternal and living Truth, the very Truth that once in a human voice declared: 'I am the Truth.'" She continues, venturing a thought in which I, now both teacher and student, find great encouragement: "Every school exercise, thought of in this way, is like a sacrament."²

----
¹Simone Weil, "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God" in The Simone Weil Reader, ed. George Panichas, (New York: Dorset Press, 1981), 44.
²Weil, 50.

The simple joys of homeschooling

By Sarita

One thing I've been struck with lately is how close I came to not homeschooling, and how much I would have missed had I not homeschooled. As Autumn arrives, I think we need to remind ourselves what a privilege it is to spend time with our children and invest into their lives.

I also think we would do well to remember the simple joys of homeschooling. A funny thread popped up on the Forums last month about the "real reason" for homeschooling. I got a good laugh out of these lighthearted reasons. Please don't take these too seriously! I've paraphrased some of my favorites and credited the mom who wrote it:

You don't have to pack lunches (ora pura)
You can travel when no one else is on vacation (mamamoz)
You don't have to get up early in the morning (Cindy in GA)
You don't have to do school fundraisers (Anne-Marie)
You can buy new books for every school year instead of "back to school" wardrobes (Aurora Borealis)
You don't have to deal with homework after dinner when everyone is tired (ora pura and Hoffies 5)
You don't have to tell your kids you don't remember how to do their homework (albeto)
Because regular school frowns on little boys with capes and swords, or lightsabers and baseball helmets (lisarn3)
Your kids don't think their teacher knows more than you (achild)
You get to hug and kiss your kids without embarrassing them (eleanorgrace)
You have a valid explanation (should you ever need one) for why your house is a mess! (tableforsix)
And my personal favorite came from maplesyrup: "I wanted an excuse to buy even more books. So far everyone has fallen for it."

So, what would you add to the list? If you're looking for some more serious reasons, check out www.sonlight.com/reasons-to-love-homeschooling.html.

I should also say that God has different plans for different families. I wholeheartedly believe that homeschooling is a great option for many, many families. But it is certainly not the only option! Wherever you are in your family's journey, I pray that God is guiding and blessing you.

Have fun heading back to your homeschool ... and sleeping in as the school bus rolls by.

Blessings,
Sarita

Introducing: Autoblot™

By Luke

I'm going to be away from my desk here at Sonlight for the next week-ish.^* Since I'm spending time with my family, I won't be here hanging out with you.

But I couldn't abandon you to the void of the blogosphere for that long. So I invented my Automatic Blogging Robot:

Autoblot^™

Autoblot^™ will keep you updated while I'm gone. Please keep in mind:

Autoblot^™ does not have the ability to edit his posts. If you find a typo or something else problematic, it'll have to wait until I can go in and manually fix it.
Autoblot^™, for all his advanced AI, still can't reply to comments. So I'm leaving you a blanket comment now:
Thanks so much for commenting!
I don't know how frequently Autoblot^™ will post, but it may not be with the same consistency to which you are accustomed to here on the Sonlight Blog. ...of course, Autoblot^™ may post more than once on some days for all I know.
Autoblot^™--along with everything else on this blog--is not rated by the ESRB.

Enjoy this brief break from me. And please welcome Autoblot^™ to this blog.

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

^*Now, please don't rob me while I'm gone. My house will still be occupied--by more than just Rambo the Rat--and my cubical will be under surveillance ...whenever someone wanders by and notices that it's here.

2 Comments

Sep. 8, 2010

Missing the Forest for the Path

By Luke

"Oh no," I groan, but only loud enough so my wife knowns I'm upset.

I'm not really interested in disrupting the rest of the congregation.

It's a Sunday morning and the worship team has just started an incredibly lame song. In fact, it's a song that makes me a little uncomfortable because I don't think the theology is very sound. In fact, it may be bordering on heresy. And I'm not a big fan of heresy.

Another song begins. Another loser. 'No wonder people hate church,' I think to myself. 'This song is horrible. So much of our worship music is just so lame.'

And then I see this video where p*rnographer Ron Jeremy talks about how much he enjoys worship music.

Wha...?

He says, over and over again, that the difference is posture. Christian songs make you smile, lift your face. Contrast that with rock and roll type things where people are scowling and banging their heads while staring at the ground. But worship music, you can't help but smile, he repeats.

How did I miss that? How have I walked this path for over two decades and never noticed that distinction? And why do I find myself scowling and staring at the floor so often?

I still believe that songs should have good theology and focus more on God than us. ...but my bad attitude certainly isn't honoring God. Far better would be to take my complaints to those who can do something about it. Far better to seek to make things better than to just complain. Far better to stop wandering down my path for a moment and notice the trees.

For all the rotting bark and dead leaves, the light sprinkling through the foliage is beautiful.

Sunlight through Trees

I appreciate Craig Gross' take on who it is that Jesus loves (the linked article is where I bumped into Ron Jeremy's video clip). Craig talks a little about looking outside our Christian group, and I think it's something to think about.

Aubrey

I wonder: What do we, as members of a group, miss that strangers to our midst see and enjoy? I often think, rather bitterly, about all the things the people not on the homeschool path must think of us. I rarely--okay, never--think about what joys and beauties they may notice that I've overlooked.

Has anyone noticed something about your home education that you hadn't seen before?

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Empty Nester

*I'm bleeping this word for the family filters.

8 Comments

Why Sonlight partners with Mission India

Making an Offer You Can Refuse

How You Doin'?

Guest Post from First Sonlight Scholarship Winner

Erika Kidd, 2000 Scholarship Winner

The simple joys of homeschooling

Introducing: Autoblot™

Missing the Forest for the Path

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