Geeking on a wave at a Santa Monica private school

By Kayla Armstrong, LCA sophomore –

Can you imagine getting up at 6:00 am in the cold dark morning?! Especially if you have trouble waking up and feeling like a mummy walking around and putting on swimwear to get in the cold ocean! Well, at the Lighthouse Christian Academy, Pastor Josh Scribner teaches a surfing elective us Christian high school students! It’s nice to have a school right next to the beach of Santa Monica.

His surfing class is a very fun experience for me.

You won’t like the fact of getting up in the morning, but when you get to the beach and just looking at the gigantic waves you get very geeked and excited and it’s lots of fun.

Some heart-beating moments is when you are getting ready to catch the wave and sometimes the wave is so big that when your laying down riding on the wave you can see the sand that is at the bottom of the water and it’s a heart beating moment cause you are so high up that it feels like you are going to fall right into the sand and it the floor but you don’t because as soon as you stand up your weight pushes the surfboard down a little bit to where you are able to ride it and you feel accomplished.

Some funny moments is when looking at one of your classmates, and they don’t see a big wave coming and they get wiped out (the wave knocks them down) and it is very funny because you can’t do anything about it but watch the wave wipe them out. Some people don’t like getting wiped out because sometimes if the wave is really big or another one comes after it you constantly are underwater but as long as you are not scared and know you are going to come back up then you are fine! Because you are able to stand back up.

Surfing class is not for everyone Read the rest of surfing elective at a Santa Monica private school.

Trump’s track record on abortion

Before Inauguration Day, liberal magazine Mother Jones moaned that Trump would be a “nightmare for abortion rights.”

Today, pro-life leader Cheryl Sullenger is hopeful about the pro-life movement under the Trump administration.

“He’s been their worst nightmare,” said Sullenger, senior vice president of Operation Rescue. “They’re desperate to keep their funding. These people are a business. I don’t care if they call themselves a non-profit. They’re making money doing abortions, and fewer and fewer women are going in for abortions. Basically, federal funding is propping up a failed abortion industry.”

According to Sullenger, Trump has done more to save babies than all previous Republican presidents since Roe v. Wade.

“All the other Republican presidents just gave lip service to the pro-life movement. It’s been really frustrating,” said Sullenger. “Even Reagan did nothing substantial to move the ball down the field.”

“Trump’s been great,” she said. “The only reason he hasn’t done better is that he’s met with resistance in Congress. It’s not for a lack of trying. There’s been no other president who has done more” to protect babies from the death industry.

So why hasn’t Planned Parenthood been defunded yet?

Ironically, it’s a handful of conservative and moderate Republican senators who stymied the repeal of Obamacare, which enshrines abortion funding, Sullenger said. Read the rest: Trump’s track record on abortion.

Gonzalez’ tenure denial shows universities close ranks to exclude Christians regardless of their credentials

Guillermo Gonzalez’s rise in astrophysics was meteoric, but when he openly espoused Intelligent Design, a scientific theory that allows for God’s involvement in creation, his university dumped him.

Gonzalez had written 68 scholarly articles for peer-reviewed scientific journals, including important work on the Galactic Habitable Zone concept. The Chronicle of Higher Education noted that he had at the assistant professor level “amassed a better publication record than almost any other member of the astronomy faculty,” according to Jeff Schloss on Counterbalance.

Nevertheless, when Gonzalez came up for tenure approval in 2007 at Iowa State University, he was denied.

Just prior to his tenure review, a petition disavowing Intelligent Design had garnered signatures from 130 Iowa State faculty members who feared “the negative impact of Intelligent Design on the integrity of science and on our university.”

It used to be that “free-thinker” meant you weren’t “constrained” to follow a biblical world view. But now, university professors are compelled within a rigid atheistic orthodoxy. Academic freedom is a slogan being emptied of meaning.

Some controversy ensued after Gonzalez was denied tenure. University officials superficially denied that his faith factored into his firing. They said his publishing had declined and he had not won funding for research. But the Des Moines Register obtained emails through a request for public records that indicated that the controversy over Intelligent Design was indeed a factor.

As early as 2005, there were emails discussing how Gonzalez’ belief in Intelligent Design might adversely affect his candidacy for tenure. Iowa State Physics Professor John Hauptman even noted that the anti-Gonzalez sentiments were “starting to smack of a witch’s hanging.” Read the rest of Gonzales’ tenure denial.

Jesus freaks? Oh ok. But you can feel the love…

By Hailey Johnson, LCA sophomore –

Before I came to LCA, I was a student at John Adams Middle School.

If you’ve never visited JAMS , a 1-word summary of the school would be: disorganized. The school was filled with around 1,000 kids, each equipped with a sailor mouth.

It was my last year at JAMS, and I didn’t feel very motivated. I started doing less of my work and hardly showing up for my classes. Towards the middle of the school year, I begged my parents to transfer me to somewhere else.

To my surprise, my mother found a a Christian school in Santa Monica. Within a week, I was enrolled at Lighthouse Church School, which is the elementary/middle school counterpart for LCA.

My family wasn’t really all that religious, so it was a new experience for me. On my very first day, I thought that everyone was incredibly eccentric and I thought of them as “Jesus freaks.”

I was so prideful that I distanced myself from everyone for the rest of the school year. A couple of months later I moved on to the high school, Lighthouse Christian Academy, where I also distanced myself from others but not as much.

However, at the beginning of my sophomore year I somewhat came out of my shell and started socializing with all sorts of unique and distinct people, who encouraged me to get more involved with the school.

I ended up going to events I’d never even think of going to such as the Walk to Africa, Senior Dinner, and Harvester’s Homecoming.

Out of all the schoolwide events, I highly encourage incoming students and parents to go to Senior Dinner. Read the rest about the Jesus freaks school.

Editor’s note: Usually I edit my student’s articles heavily to bring them up to journalistic standard. But with this piece, I barely touched it. I just love how Hailey lets her sincerity shine through. And, yes, I laughed to see she called me and others a “Jesus freak.” We love you, Hailey!

 

A water roller coaster

Most people think of camping as something they would never want to experience: Sleeping on the dank ground, eating only unsavory camp food, days without showering and nothing to do. But going on a trip at Lighthouse Christian Academy will change that.

I came to the Lighthouse when I was in seventh grade. They also offer the rafting trip to the students who attend our gradeschool counterpart the Lighthouse Church School, but it wasn’t until my freshman year that I decided to go on the rafting trip. What shocked me was the lack of people that wanted to go. With the urging of Mrs. Lisa Clancy, I decided to go and had a great time.

Now during my sophomore year, the trip rolled around and no one seemed like they wanted to go. Granted some people had other engagements but the group of people that went was small.

Even though the group was small, it was a fun time. The drive to the campsite seemed short because you bonded with the people in the car — or slept. When we arrived at the campsite, all of us from the Santa Monica Christian school were all taken aback by the breathtaking nature around us.

The campsite that the school goes to every year was better than any campsite I had been to before. There was indoor plumbing, a pool, and a small shop if you wanted to buy snacks. This made the camping part of the trip so much easier.

The rafting part of the trip was both frightening and entertaining. We rafted one of the more harder rivers, and though some people had a better time than others, the scared feeling before you rafted is worth it. There is an adrenaline rush you feel when you’re riding a literal water roller coaster. Read the rest of the rafting trip story.

After seeing the sex slave market, ISIS recruit flees terror group

By Jamie Roman

After seeing ISIS capture and sell Muslim women as sex slaves, recruit Abu Abdullah defected and told his story on a YouTube video uploaded by the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism.

Wearing a black head covering the effectively masks his identity, Abdullah tells how he was drawn to ISIS because of the chance to live the golden age of authentic Islam, as written in the Koran.

But after seeing jihadis bid for women on the auction block, he now utterly disavows the extremist group that is progressively losing the territory they seized between Iraq and Syria in 2014.

“As a brother in the faith, I swear to Allah: they don’t know anything about Islam,” he says in Arabic, according to translated subtitles. “They are not Islamic. They are not really Muslims.”

As a new recruit, Abu was made a prison guard. Almost immediately, the hoped-for utopia was a madhouse of hellish Vikings where pillaging and raping is condoned as hallah, permissible.

“They turn women into slaves,” he says. “They take the girls as slaves and behead the parents. Then they sell the girls.”

What disturbed Abu most was the auctioning off of Muslim women. A literal interpretation of the Koran allows for captured women to be war spoils as long as she is not Muslim. But ISIS, who are sunnis, expanded that permission to include Muslims of a different type, perhaps shia.

“Is it OK for a Muslim woman to become a sex slave?” he asks. “In what religion can a woman be a slave?”

As he narrates, clips are shown of clandestinely-filmed videos of women slaves and ISIS fighters joking about getting girls. The video is part of a series by ICSVE, a Washington-based collective of researchers dedicated to countering extremism in any religion. Their website clarifies that they have no government sponsorship, and they don’t collaborate with spy agencies. It is not a Christian group.

He personally saw the auction block. Iraqi women were up for sale that day.

“Some of the brothers tried to get me to take a woman,” Abdullah says. “I told them, ‘This isn’t right.’ He said, ‘She is a slave, so it is halal.’ I told him, ‘Don’t you know those are Muslim women?”

Abu made the extremely risky decision to escape from ISIS. If he were caught, he would be executed. But Abu made it to freedom, by means he doesn’t tell in the video, and he’s unmasking the rapists masquerading a faithful followers of Islam.

“In the anme of Allah, the most merciful, the most gracious, I address my brothers and all young people, Europeans and Arabs, don’t join ISIS,” he says grimly. “They know nothing about Islam.”

Launched in July of 2015, ICSVE is taking to the same social media that ISIS uses to entice new recruits.

“Given the prolific use of media by terrorist organizations such as ISIS to spur their global reach and propaganda, fighting ISIS and similar groups in the digital and information realm has become a major pillar of our research activities,” the website declares. “We take pride in our field-based research and evidence-based educational video materials that are carefully crafted t counter the efforts of extremist and terrorist organizations to publicize their propaganda and garner support for violence.”

This article was written by Jamie Roman. It was intended to be published on God Reports, but my editor simply didn’t publish it or explain what his intentions were with it, despite the fact that he assigned the article. After waiting weeks for a response, I decided simply to publish it here. Jamie Roman completed this assignment for extra credit at the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Santa Monica.

Joy of teaching

The greatest joy of teaching is NOT seeing heads full of knowledge but hearts full of Jesus. Of course, we do (try to) cram in a lot of studies into these youthful brains. We do (try to) prepare them for 4-year institutions. But sending them off to make millions and lose their soul is NOT what we are about.

Lighthouse Christian Academy has been my plowing terrain for six years, and another school year has concluded. Since I got off the mission field, it has been my mission field in America. We give the kids Bible and love. It turns out a lot of studies need love, and a lot of students want the Bible.

I taught U.S. Literature and A.P. Spanish this semester (and journalism). The kids learned about unforgiveness through The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick and A Cask of Amontillado. They learned about transcendentalism, realism, modernism and post-modernism. They really got the chance to see if they want hopelessness to be their life compass.

What can I say about Spanish? Resulta que nunca nadie se esfuerza tanto como yo quisiera. Es difícil porque tratamos de reducir tres cursos de un año a tres semestres y ni modo los resultados no alcanzan mi esperanza. Pero todavía espero que ganen el examen de A.P.

And journalism? That’s always a favorite for me, though I think I put more effort into it than the students. Oh well.

A toast to all my fellow teachers out there.

 

God’s team: how Christianity helped the Warriors win the NBA

Nice guys finish last, right?

Wrong! The Golden State Warriors just buzz-sawed their way through the 2017 NBA finals winning four out of five games.

Pundits are busily babbling about the sheer talent bursting from the team. But there is another critical factor that helped make LeBron and crew look like school children. A majority of the players, and especially their leaders, are strong Christians who attend chapel regularly. The Gospel Herald called them “God’s team,” and World Religion News, “the NBA’s men of God.”

Does God favor one team over another? No. Do prayers help win games? No. Does God care about basketball? No, He cares about souls.

So what the heaven does Christianity have to do with their resounding win? Well for one, Christianity tends to make players humble, and humility limits ego clashes and ratchets-up team dynamics. It bonds players as brothers.

So when juggernaut Kevin Durant, a devout Christian, snatched the spotlight from 3-pointer ace Steph Curry, also a firm believer, no feud erupted. Instead, the court erupted with a volcanic version of vying for the title.

“That’s just something that we all have, a spiritual connection,” Durant told the San Jose Mercury News last year. “Seeing all the guys that they have in chapel, you can tell that they really love Jesus.” Get the rest of the scoop: God’s team, the Warriors.

Joyce Meyer overcame rape

Joyce Meyer, one of America’s most prominent Christian speakers and authors, overcame sexual abuse by her father.

“My father did rape me, numerous times, at least 200 times,” she told Charisma Magazine.

Meyer, a down-to-earth public speaker with a high-flying prosperity gospel ministry, finally broke years of silence in 2012 by revealing her childhood trauma. She decided she needed to share her testimony to help others suffering similar hurts.

“I was sexually, mentally, emotionally and verbally abused by my father as far back as I can remember until I left home at the age of 18,” she said. “He did many terrible things…some which are too distasteful for me to talk about publicly. But I want to share my testimony because so many people have been hurt, and they need to realize that someone has made it through their struggles.”

Meyer grew up in St. Louis, Missouri with a dad who “was born in the hills — way back in the hills. In his family, incest was just part of the culture,” she told Charisma.

At age 9, she told her mother what happened. But mom did nothing. When Meyer was 14, her mom caught her dad in the act. But mom was emotionally incapable of confronting the situation and left instead.

In response to her trauma, Meyer accepted Jesus in a local church at age 9. But her mind was in a state of confusion. Shortly after graduating from high school, she married a part-time car salesman, who cheated on her and persuaded her to embezzle from her employer. After she divorced him, she married her current husband, Dave Meyer, an engineering draftsman in 1967, according to Wikipedia.

Then one day in 1976 she was praying intensely while driving to work and heard God call her name. She describes what she felt as “liquid love” flowing from God. The emotional experience was the start of a closer walk with God that would bring her into ministry.

With a no-nonsense folksy style that ingratiated her with her audiences, Meyer rose quickly through the ministerial ranks in ever-larger churches until she resigned to launch her own ministry in 1985. “Life in the Word” began with broadcasts on six radio stations from Chicago to Kansas City. In 1993, she and her husband launched a television ministry.

Meanwhile, her book-writing ministry also prospered. Publishing house Hachette Book paid Meyer more than $10 million for the rights to her backlist catalog of independently released books in 2002, according to Wikipedia.

On the outside, things were going well. On the inside, Meyer had to deal with the emotional scars from her childhood.

“I was so profoundly ashamed because of this,” Meyer said. “I was ashamed of me, and I was ashamed of my father and what he did. I was also constantly afraid. There was no place I ever felt safe growing up. I don’t think we can even begin to imagine what kind of damage this does to a child.

“At school I pretended I had a normal life, but I felt lonely all the time and different from everyone else. I never felt like I fit in, and I wasn’t allowed to participate in after-school activities, go to sports events or parties or date boys. Many times I had to make up stories about why I couldn’t do anything with my classmates. For so long I lived with pretense and lies.

“What I learned about love was actually perversion,” she added. “My father told me what he did to me was special and because he loved me. He said everything he did was good, but it had to be our secret because no one else would understand and it would cause problems in the family.”

Meyer eventually reached a place in her life when she knew she had to forgive her father.

“I’m happy to say that God gave me the grace completely, 100%, forgive my father,” she said in YouTube video. Read the rest about Joyce Meyer rape.

Their military marriage, a long distance relationship brushed with divorce

He was trying to fix her, and she was trying to fix him, until they got to the point of signing divorce papers.

Gage Jalbert – of French lineage –met Rikki on payday outside a Walmart in Oklahoma. She was a pretty blonde recently divorced from the father of her child, and they struck up a conversation.

He was due to leave for Japan with the Marines within a week, so they hurriedly got married in 2006. Rikki’s ex-husband would not allow their 3 year old daughter to go overseas so the newlyweds decided on a long-range relationship.

Gage had attended church as a young person but had drifted far away from God, drinking and watching porn. For her part, Rikki was smoking pot daily and committing “indiscretions.”

After the first year of marriage, Gage found out about his wife’s failings. Remembering the God of his youth, he told her she needed to go to church. He himself occasionally went to chapel but wasn’t stirred much by the service. Rikki didn’t appreciate his judgmental attitude. She knew that Gage was slipping up too.

“We were not saved,” Gage says. “We had all this sin in our lives. It was an unhealthy relationship.”

Gage began to pray for God to rescue his marriage.

The couple talked on the phone, mostly arguing and threatening divorce.

By October 2007, they decided to end the marriage. Gage’s superior had a father who was a lawyer who agreed to handle the legal details. In the meantime, Gage was offered a six-figure job with air traffic control, his specialty in the Armed Forces, in Denver. Simultaneously he struck up a romantic friendship with a model whom he had known in school.

Because he was praying, and because everything seemed to be lining up, Gage decided this was God’s will.

Two months later, he gave his wife one last shot to see if they could revive their marriage before resorting to the backup plan. But Rikki didn’t want anything to do with him. They argued: “Yes, I did this. But you did that. What you did was worse.”

In a heart-breaking moment, her child, Hannah, only 4 years old, told her step-dad: “You’re not my dad. You made my mom cry. You need to leave.”

In one argument, God broke through and spoke to Gage: “Look at the situation you’re in. Look at what you’re going through. You’ve been praying for six months for things to change. Why haven’t I changed things?”

Gage didn’t know the answer. Inside his head, he prayed and asked God why.

“I haven’t changed anything because you have refused to surrender.”

A Marine never surrenders. Surrendering means you give yourself up completely to your enemy.

These words pierced Gage’s heart. He fully understood the implication.

“I realized I was an enemy of God.”

By continuing to drink and watch porn, he was no better than his wife who smoked pot and was unfaithful.

Gage left the apartment and went home to his dad’s to pray. With just a few days until the divorce would be finalized, he decided he would pray, read his Bible, read Christian books and worked at fully surrendering to God. He would contend for his marriage.

On divorce day, he went to pick up his wife. He asked her one last time if she would try to work it out. She was adamant.

They went to the attorney. While the lawyer lectured Gage about trying by all means to avoid divorce, Rikki stayed in the car. She didn’t want any lectures. All she wanted was to sign divorce papers.

Gage figured he’d done everything he could to save his marriage. He was now free to pursue the career and the girl in Denver. In the meantime, he had to report back for duty in Japan, and he would work on fully surrendering to God.

A couple days after signing the papers, Rikki needed to see her husband about some issues and went over to her father-in-law’s.

That’s when she spied Gage praying in his room. She nearly cried.

While Gage had been trying to seek God in Japan, Rikki was working on her own relationship with the Lord. She secretly yearned to be married to a man of God. But all she knew about was a husband who drank and viewed porn. When she saw her husband praying, her heart broke. Maybe he was sincere about trying to work things out.

“I remember feeling like I was going to cry,” Rikki said.

Was it too late to undo the damage of signed divorce papers?

While Gage flew back to Japan, Rikki went to see her pastor, confessed her sins and fully and deeply repented.

She went down the courthouse and, saying she had power of attorney for her husband, asked for their recent divorce filing. It was probably a breach of protocol, but the official gave her the paper, and she ripped it up right there.

She called her husband and gave him the shocking news: “I tore up those divorce papers!”

Gage was flabbergasted. It came completely unexpected. In fact, he had given up and figured that God had the other girl for him. His response was far from warm.

“I told her not to call me, not to text me, not to email me,” Gage said.

Find out the romantic finale of their near divorce.

‘Earthquake’ Kelley’s visit to Hell: Haitian voodoo priest converts to Christ

From a very young age, Curtis “Earthquake” Kelley was designated as his father’s successor in Haitian voodoo, but after he visited hell on a drug overdose, he decided to turn to God.

Curtis’ great, great grandfather emigrated from Ireland to Haiti — then called Hispaniola. But slaves invoked witchcraft and his crops failed, so he moved to Texas with four slaves. From one of the slaves, he fathered Curtis’ grandfather, according to his testimony on YouTube.

His father moved to New York and had six children. When mom got pregnant with Curtis, dad tried to force her to abort. She was unwilling, so he kicked and beat her trying to provoke a miscarriage.

“God saw to it that He spared my life,” he said.

Curtis at age 4 watched his older brothers shoot up heroin and wanted to try. But his brothers wouldn’t let him, so he figured out how to “huff” on his own. At 6, he smoked marijuana. At 10, he snorted cocaine.

His family was steeped in voodoo. A priestess working for his father infiltrated church meetings and invited Christians to her own meetings offering potions and spells for jilted spouses, material wealth and love. Because Curtis was seventh-born in his house, he was a “chosen vessel.”

He lusted for power and money and began to learn paranormal techniques for casting night terror, but involvement in the occult opened him up to many torments. The priestess taught him not only witchcraft, but how to manipulate clients and keep them coming back with only partial relief.

“She took advantage of people,” Curtis said. “People believed that if God took too long, the occult would bring a quick fix. She would charge $20. That was a lot of money back then. I would watch husband after husband, boyfriend after boyfriend, come back.”

The priestess had a doll that conversed; a demon inside produced the poltergeist, he said.

“It told her what person was coming each night and what problem they had,” Curtis said. “Every time she would ‘prophe-lie’ — I call it ‘prophe-lie,’ not prophesy — the people would just throw money at her.”

She set up fetishes in his room, but that produced horrifying spectacles.

“I would see these demons coming through the floor and running around my room,” he said. “One day I was laying on my bed and felt it shaking. I turned on the light and looked underneath my bed and saw my dad. His skin tone was green and he was all scaly. He came out and smiled, and then he dived right through the floor. I got freaked out. I was so scared. I said, ‘What is this? I didn’t know all this was involved in this. What am I into?’ Read the rest of Curtis Earthquake Kelley.

Mum shut out by school, clinic, courts from helping her son not rush into gender change

A divorced mother was completely left out of the decision-making process while her teenage son, living on his own, sought and obtained help from the school and health authorities to “transition” to the female gender.

Anmarie Calgaro, of Iron Junction, Minnesota, was shocked in November to learn that her son was taking female hormone therapy, a year-long process prior to a “gender-reassignment” surgery — all aided by government agencies who never bothered to consult or inform her.

Just last week, a federal judge dismissed her lawsuit as “meritless.” She had sued doctors, social services and the St. Louis County School District for usurping her rights and responsibilities as a parent.

“We are pleased that this outcome supports her (the “transgender” teen’s) access to essential health care and other critical service,” said Asaf Orr, an attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights’ Transgender Youth Project in San Francisco who aided the minor.

Enter the government. Exit the family.

Now 17, the youth, identified in court documents as E.J.K., “came out” as gay at age 13 and moved in with his dad — with permission from his mom — at age 15. But when his father was jailed, he moved in with relatives and friends and eventually got his own apartment.

E.J.K. portrayed his parents in court documents as unstable and substance-abusing, saying his mother became abusive after he told her he was homosexual. Later, the mom didn’t want to have anything to do with him when he lived on his own, he alleged.

But Calgaro said this portrayal is a distortion that was coached by gay activists.

“The news that county agencies and health service providers, the school, and other county and state officers were completely bypassing me came as a total shock.” Calgaro said in the UK Daily Mail. “Why wasn’t I even notified?”

In November, Calgaro sued for financial damages the school district, the principal of her son’s high school, the director of the county’s Health and Human Services agency and two nonprofit health clinics. Calgaro also wanted to regain parental control of E.J.K. and prevent healthcare providers from offering any further treatment.

At the center of the case was whether E.J.K. became an “emancipated” minor, a legal term for a teenager who has earned the right to act as adult on his own behalf due to abuse, neglect or criminal activity of parents. Gay advocates argued that E.J.K. qualified under Minnesota law because he had rented his own apartment, worked a job while studying in high school and essentially took care of himself.

But this “emancipation” was never granted by court order, Life Site News reported.

“If there had been a court order of emancipation, then Anmarie would have received notice and an opportunity to be heard,” Calgaro’s attorney Erick Kaardal of the Thomas More Society explained. “The U.S. Constitution says that parental rights are fundamental rights, that can’t be terminated without due process.

“Her minor child has been piloted by third parties through a life-changing, permanent body-altering process by organizations that have no legal authority over him, and that have denied his own mother access,” Kaardal said. Read the rest of: mom lost suit transgender son.