Monday, September 28, 2015

SEW 2015

Currently: watching Step Up! #roomietime 

     Every September, Bingham middle and high school students have a week to focus on their spiritual walk. With a week of daily chapels, the students hear from a special speaker and ponder questions of spirituality and life. This year, we had two favorites of the Bingham community, our principal and vice principal from last year, Tommy Farrell and Alyssa Harrison.
     
     Tommy spoke to our high schoolers about Jesus’ “I AM” statements in John and challenged them to look at their life and truly consider Jesus and what he says. Alyssa shared God’s promises and encouraged our middle schoolers to stand (literally and figuratively) stand on what God has promised to them.

     The end of the week culminated in a night of games, worship, and a time for the students to share. The best moments were hearing some of our students encouraging one another to own their faith, no matter what their friends might think. Please keep these students in your prayers that they will be empowered by the Holy Spirit to do just that. 

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Bingham Academy 2014-15 Highlights

As we look forward to our new school year at Bingham Academy, we also want to reflect over God's faithfulness over the last year as well.



Here's to another wonderful year at Bingham!

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Coaching Soccer

Currently: much happier now that the sun has come out!

This spring, I had the chance to coach Division Two girls soccer team (equivalent to JV). It was so fun to be able to further relationships with the girls outside of the classroom as well as see their soccer skills improve. And it turned out to be a pretty great season as we won our division with an undefeated season!









Highlights: 

My co-coach, Beat, and I had an agreement from the beginning of the season: he knew soccer and I knew the girls, so we could each bring our part to the table :)  


Seeing the girls skills improve so much over the season- we went from a scattered mess to a goal-scoring machine! 


A special time at the end of the season party when each of the girls sat in the "hot seat" so that the rest of the team could share what they loved and appreciated about that person. It was so sweet to hear the encouragement, especially for our three girls who played their final season at Bingham this year. 


I do love the opportunities to do more than just teaching here at Bingham! 

 

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Pirates of the Caribbean!

Currently: enjoying coffee. I love living in the land of excellent coffee. 

Being in my third year, there begins to be a pattern to the school year- events, busy times, exam leave, etc. One of the most exciting and dynamic times is the high school banquet! In the last few years, we have taken the kids to Wonderland with Alice, Mad Hatter and the crew, and visited a thriving jazz club in 1920s New York.

This year, after many weeks of hard work, the students had a night on the Black Pearl ship and a visit to Treasure Island.



 We turned our Gowans Center building into a ship and the basketball court beside it into an island. The students had dinner on the ship and had games, dancing, and a bonfire on the island.


Photo credit to Jenni Ray!  


 All the staff are so wonderful every year to go with our crazy ideas and participate with such enthusiasm!








Always a fun time with the staff and students!

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Fun outside of the city!

Currently listening: to the competition of my iPod playing Bethel worship music with the church service next door going on its third day of (very loud) prayer service. We're all worshipping Jesus, so its all good.

These last couple weekends have been extra fun as there have been lots of opportunities to get out of the city and see the beautiful countryside with friends!


Bingham Staff Retreat
We have an amazing staff here at Bingham, so we took the chance to get out of the city and spend a weekend away from school and busyness of it all. We stayed at the SIM Babogaya Retreat Center in Debre Zeit- a place that holds many memories from my childhood. It remains to be a beautiful compound- the gorgeous, fragrant flowers, the cool, refreshing lake, the warm sunshine- all ingredients for a lovely weekend.

  

Debre Zeit with old classmates
I returned to Debre Zeit the next weekend with a friend Jay, former 6th grade classmate, to hang out at our friend Alessia's house, classmate in all of middle school, for the weekend! We went hiking, explored an awesome lake, rode some go-karts and had a fabulous time together.







Hiking Menagasha
Having last Monday off for the Battle of Adwa, a group of us decided to go hiking at a mountain close to Addis. Only one of us had been there before (me.), so we went on a bit of an adventure in finding new "trails" along the way. Thankfully, one of the guys had marked where the van was on google maps, so we did make our way back eventually. I still think those types of adventures tend to be the best kind :)