A Gift of the Gaithers

The college years are special no matter how you look at them.

For many students, going to college means leaving home for the first time, meeting their first serious girlfriend or boyfriend, or getting their first taste of real independence.  The college years represent the promise of a successful future. They’re filled with hard work, new ideas, exciting events and the type of friends you keep for life.

For Sean, a 22-year-old, third-year Shepherds College student, they also turned out to be a time when a childhood dream was realized – he got the chance to see the Gaithers in concert for the first time!

Sean has been a southern gospel music fan since he’s been a little boy. The Gaithers are his favorite band and their song “It is Finished” is his favorite song. “They remind me of God and Heaven,” he said with a soft smile. “I like Bill Gaither the most.”

Imagine his excitement when Miss Pollard and Mrs. Cyr found out the Gaithers were going to be in town and arranged with Sean's parents for him to attend the show!

But his excitement didn't end here. As a result of some excellent communication from the teachers, Sean had another surprise coming – 

Mrs. Cyr said, “Miss Pollard and I wrote a letter to the Gaithers explaining that Sean had purchased tickets and that he LOVED their music.  We talked about how much the Gaither’s music ministers to Sean and some of the other students at SC.  We asked if there was a meet-and-greet time when Sean could get autographs.  We also included a video of Sean’s reaction to finding out that he got to go to the concert.  They then e-mailed us back and said Sean could come backstage before the concert and meet Bill Gaither himself!”

On April 13^th, Sean and his two awesome teachers drove to the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee prepared to experience an exceptional evening of music, worship, and meeting a childhood hero.

 

They arrived at the theater and met a woman named Deana at the sound booth. She took them backstage where Sean and his teachers were introduced to Bill Gaither. Bill signed autographs for Sean and gave him a signed group picture along with a Gaither Homecoming Magazine. Our little group of devoted fans also had their pictures taken with Bill.

Then Sean did something that just blessed my marketer’s heart – he gave Bill a Shepherds College brochure and bookmark.

The concert was everything Sean hoped it would be… and more. 

At one point during the concert, Michael English pointed at Sean while Mark Lowry spoke into the microphone,“We met a young man tonight. Sean, this song is dedicated to you.” And they sang “He Touched Me.” 

  

They called Sean to the stage where Mark leaned down to shake Sean’s hand. At the end of the concert, Bill called out, “We love you Sean!”

Sean cried. Miss Pollard cried. Mrs. Cyr cried. Miss Houk cried when they texted her. I cried when Miss Houk emailed me. 

Other members of the audience greeted Sean after the concert and said, “Sean, you’re famous!!”

What an amazing evening! And what a blessed memory these gifted people gave to Sean with their thoughtful acts of kindness toward him. 

I talked to Sean and Mrs. Cyr this week. I asked Sean if he learned anything new about God during this special concert. He said, “Their music taught me how to surrender my life to God.”

After Sean left the room, Mrs. Cyr shook her head and smiled gently, “We spend so much time teaching students to brush their teeth, take a shower, and show up on time for an internship, and yes, that’s important.  However, in light of eternity, it’s not what matters most.  What matters most is that students understand that Jesus died on the Cross for their sins and that they have accepted him as their eternal salvation.  Even if we don’t succeed in getting students to make their bed every day, but they know the significance of Christ on the Cross and have accepted Him as the one to pay for their sins, then we have succeeded, because that’s what truly matters”  … and Sean knows what truly matters.

Shepherds College would like to extend a very special thank you to Bill Gaither, Mark Lowry, and everyone else involved in making this extraordinary evening possible for Sean.

 


Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.

Teacher Tuesday: You Know the Drill

I grew up as the daughter of a carpenter. My dad was a big guy with leathery skin from long hours in the sun, wide, callused hands, and muscles on top of muscles on top of massive muscles from shouldering planks and beams and plywood up and down ladders for most years of his life. He loved his work, and his perpetual smile left no doubt as to that fact.

I adored him and wanted to be around him whenever he was home. You can say that I was a daddy’s girl. I knew my way around a tool box better than I could figure out all those odd little gadgets in a sewing kit. He taught me that having home maintenance skills was important – you could save a lot of time and money handling repairs on your own. I learned that tools could be girly and fun as well as functional, and that I could fix my own clogged sink and still maintain my femininity.

These were skills I never learned in school, and knowing them has benefitted me more than all my Algebra, Chemistry and European History classes put together.

I recently asked the Shepherds College instructors what they were teaching the students. My heart went a little gooshy with memories of flatheads, levels and grease guns when Mr. Gaschke responded that he was teaching Home Maintenance and Repairs in Daily Living Skills. 

Here’s his outline for the lesson:

Introduction

            Stewardship: A biblical basis for taking good care of things God has given to us

The difference between “repairs” (fixing something that’s already broken) and “preventative maintenance” (taking good care of something so that it doesn’t break)

Basic Tools

A hands-on overview of basic tools needed for basic repairs and maintenance, like measuring tapes, hammers, screwdrivers, drills, etc…

Basic Repairs and Maintenance Projects

An overview of basic home repairs and projects our students may do in the future like hanging pictures, plunging a clogged drain, assembling a bookshelf or installing shelves, oiling a squeaky door hinge, etc…

Over the next couple of weeks in Daily Living Skills, the students will be visiting a hardware store to learn how to locate various tools and supplies.

Mr. Gaschke will have the students using tools he brought from home to do some actual hammering, sawing, and drilling in a classroom “workshop.”

The students will also have the opportunity to assess their own dorm rooms for safety and maintenance or repair issues like leaky faucets and burned out lights.

What a perfect class for students who are learning to be appropriately independent!

 

Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.

The Office: Out in the Field

Twice a year, the Shepherds Field Representatives travel in from all over the country to meet together, learn what’s happening on campus, and pray for and encourage each other.

Since today happens to be the first day of the April field meetings, I thought I should tell you about our reps!

These men and women are the voices and faces of Shepherds for those of you who aren’t near our Union Grove campus. You may have first heard about Shepherds when Al or Don visited your church to introduce your church family to Shepherds College. 

Al Pick

Don Long

Or maybe you saw Dan or John at a disability conference handing out college brochures.

Dan Dark

John Mitchell talking to our residents

You may have invited Donn or Bill to visit your home and show you the Shepherds College video.

Donn Mogford

Bill Stevens

Or you might have received a letter or phone call from Kim to follow up on your inquiry about supporting Shepherds through a planned gift.

Kim Longo with her assistant, Sarah Mays

It’s a big job to represent Shepherds! These people are our cheerleaders, our speakers, our ambassadors, our relationship builders, our Public Relations department and our fund raisers. 

It takes character and plenty of personality to do this job well, and they all have that to spare – they’re passionate, loyal and dedicated. Since they work from remote offices, they need to be responsible, self-starting and highly motivated. 

They also happen to be a group of very friendly, Godly, and warm people that you would feel very comfortable inviting to your home or church for a personal introduction to Shepherds and our ministries to people with intellectual disabilities. Please feel free to call on them any time:

For a church visit in IA, IL, IN, MN, MO, NE or WI
Call Al Pick at 262-878-5620 ext. 2308

For a church visit or home visit in AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN or TX
Call Bill Stevens at 904-260-2425

For a home visit in IA, IL, KS, MI, MN, MO, NE or WI
Call Dan Dark at 515-210-2334

For a church visit in AK, CO, MI, OH, UT, WY
Call Don Long at 231-689-5865

For a church visit in AZ, CA, ID, NM, NV, OR, or WA, or a home visit in AK, AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, OR, UT, WA, or WY
Call Donn Mogford at 208-283-5930

For a church visit or home visit in CT, DE, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, VA, VT, WV
Call John Mitchell at 610-438-2840

And for a home visit in IN and OH, or to discuss Estate and Planned Giving in any state
Call Kim Longo at 937-708-1695

Dan DiDonato, VP of Development (and our boss)

Now, those of you who are very observant might have noticed, as I did, that the great state of Hawaii isn’t on this list. If you live on any of the islands and dearly desire a visit from a Shepherds rep, please call my boss, Dan DiDonato, and request that an unlisted rep named Susan be sent out at once.  I, er...she, will come bearing Shepherds pens and lots of amazing stories about our students to entertain you as you luau and hula together.


Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.

Teacher Tuesday: The Book on Love

My first disclaimer - The pictures in this blog may not represent actual couples. They were selected because they had a male and female in the same shot and represented the topic of today's blog.

My youngest child is a 14-year-old daughter. 

Needless to say, we have rules that govern her social life – no dating, no kissing, no hugging, no slow dancing, no eye-gazing, no flirty smiling, no texting, no calling, no emailing, no skyping, no IMing, no Twittering, no Facebook-friending, no visiting and no eating at the lunch table - with boys.  Ever.

She cooperated nicely with our rules for a minute. Earlier, she had decided that she didn’t ever want to get married, and she was never having children because she wanted to be the best aunt in the world. Apparently, in order to be the best aunt, her attention couldn’t be divided by husbands and kids so she eliminated them from her future.

My husband and I liked that plan. We thought it might get us safely through her teenage years.

But then a “really, really cute guy” came into the picture, and there was eye-gazing and a lot of texting. Their school-hallway relationship lasted less than two weeks.

Then another “really, really cute guy” came into the picture, and there was more eye-gazing and endless texting. This guy even bought her Lucky Charms and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese for Valentine’s Day, but he only made it half-way through Day 3 of the relationship. The silly kid was texting another girl, and my daughter broke up with him for “cheating.”

Recently, she came home from school and made the announcement that she was “dating.”

I asked, “Does he drive?”

“Mommmmm, no! He’s only 14!”

“Well, then how are you ‘dating?’”  

I still haven’t gotten an answer from her – I guess it’s a pretty dumb question to a teenager – but I’ve figured it out on my own. Fourteen-year-old “dating” is nothing but exclusive texting at 9:00pm and changing your Facebook status to “in a relationship.”

Now that we’ve reached this stage of life, we had to make some real rules – real rules that had valid reasons behind them that she could understand. Rules that made her think, ‘I may not like these right now, but my parents love me, and they’re for my own good.’ We stated our expectations clearly and plan to give her all the help she needs so she can be successful in following our rules and focusing on the things that really matter at this time of her life – like school.

Shepherds College does much the same thing for our students.

Our Student Handbook states, “An important part of any individual’s development and pursuit of independence is the ability to develop healthy relationships, including relationships with members of the opposite sex. In an effort to encourage healthy male-female relationships and promote social development outside the realm of dating, we established a dating policy that intentionally seeks to prevent unhealthy interactions between any pair of students.”

To this end, we’ve set sexual purity/dating standards and hold each student to them:

1.       Respect personal boundaries. Avoid unnecessary physical contact, and don’t reveal all your thoughts and feelings.

2.       Resist temptation by maintaining control of yourself physically and mentally. Carefully manage your thought life.

3.       Refrain from being alone with a student of the opposite sex, and avoid becoming emotionally consumed with one particular person.

4.       All interactions that are sexually oriented need to be avoided.

5.       You will be held accountable for your behavior and will be subject to consequences should you choose not to follow the rules.

Mrs. Kolkman, as the instructor in Personal Development 1, is now giving the first-year students tools to help them through the next three years of relationships and, hopefully, her teaching will guide them through the years of relationships to follow their time at Shepherds College.

Her class is studying Love. 

“By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”  ~ 1 John 3:16-18

They’re discussing three different types of Love:

Agape – the unconditional love God shows to us, and that He makes possible for us to show in return through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. 

Philos – the affectionate love of friends or the sentimental love of an object

Eros – the love reserved for a married couple

Mr. & Mrs. Kolkman

Because it’s so easy to confuse the different types of love, Mrs. Kolkman chose to illustrate them by showing clips from several movies: Mean Girls, Juno and The Passion of the Christ. Based on the clips shown, it turned out that true love was only demonstrated in one of the movies! Now the students are watching the movie Fireproof and will start talking about the differences between men and women. The tough topic of abuse will also be covered.

The students have already defined love and talked through the dating policy I summarized above.

They also had a heart-to-heart about important issues in dating, like integrity, discernment with our relationships, purity not only in body but in spirit, and why there needs to be rules.

Mrs. Kolkman brought in a mousetrap to demonstrate temptation and how it can lead us into sin, or being trapped, just like the little mouse who only wanted a bit of cheese…

The rules help us set boundaries so we can maintain our integrity and purity, and they help us use discernment when we’re faced with choices. 

It’s our love of the students that determined our rules in the first place. We want what’s best for them in their education, in their relationships, and throughout their appropriately independent lives. 

Isn’t that what love is all about?

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  ~ John 3:16

 

Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.