For administration class, A+. Actual volleyball, a C, at best.
Lighthouse Christian Academy of Santa Monica won four out of nine games this season in varsity volleyball. Girls from all different levels banded together and put forth their best effort. On Wednesday, the Saints limped out of its season against Westmark School of Encino.
“We all got in our heads,” says Sarah Montez, sophomore. Our emotions got to us. When somebody wouldn’t do good, we would think, Oh, well, she’s not going to get anymore. We got frustrated with each other. That was our worst game we’ve ever done.”
But while LCA’s volleyball has fallen off from the years when the slashed their way into playoffs, other skills associated with participating on team soared.
Namely, Sarah Montez became an entrepreneur.
When she found out that LCA wasn’t going to even have a team due to lack of interest among the girls, she spearheaded a move to assemble a team.
“Sarah and her parents were a major driving force in wanting to make sure there was a team this year,” says LCA Principal Josh Young.
Sarah, with the help of her parents and her close friend Laken Wilson, communicated with all the school’s girls and encouraged, cajoled, persuaded, spammed by text until enough players relented from the low self confidence and agreed to integrate on the squad.
Then, having mastered the business strategies of forming “a staff” and motivating them to their optimal performance, Sarah forayed into a search for a CEO. (There was no coach, which is a volunteer position.)
She held brainstorming session with interested parties. She formed a search committee to identify and recruit a ideal candidate. (She got her parents involved.)
They used software to scoure LinkedIn. Just kidding. They thought of who might pitch in from the Lighthouse Church, LCA’s oversight organization.
They zeroed in on Felipe Rodriguez for all his merits: He had time. He liked working with the youth. He was an expert at sports and teams.
There was only one drawback: Felipe didn’t know a thing about volleyball.
But options were few, and Felipe had the will to serve — even if he didn’t know how to serve (a volleyball).
Felipe contacted his good friend and fellow youth worker, Xiovana Moraida, who assists her husband, Lucas Moraida, as youth leaders in the Lighthouse Church of Santa Monica.
X — as she prefers to be called — agreed immediately to be head coach while Felipe was assistant. X had played volleyball in high school and played soccer in college, so she knew about competition and team dynamics. Read the rest: Learning business schools at a small school in Santa Monica.
He used to get in trouble by dishonoring God. Now Demario Davis gets into trouble by honoring him.
Saints fans spent the whole game Saturday against Meadows School waiting for Lighthouse’s now-typical late game rally.
Overconfidence preceded lack of confidence.
Seun Otukpe, known as Christian emo rapper S.O., has had a life punctuated by tragedy.
With each album, S.O., now 30, pours out his hurt in melancholic musings that mix vulnerability, despair and Christian hope in astonishing sincerity.
She grew up fatherless in India. Her mother was poor, so they could not do anything when Ishwari started to have trouble seeing.
Ishwari had a case of bilateral degenerative cataracts, a cloudy area in the lens of the eye. This eye problem can cause blurry and less colorful vision.
A Christian man said he forgave and loved the killer of his brother in court Oct. 2. He then asked the cop to turn to Jesus and gave her a long hug at her sentencing in a case that is sending goose bumps up and down the spine of the nation.
Xiovana Moraida
Starting at the ripe old age of 5 years old, she played and loved soccer.
For 30 years, Wanda Jo Taylor was gay, butch and a stud.
“You’re fighting and there’s the jealousy, the envy, the drama that’s in that lifestyle,” she says.
“I didn’t know a lot about Christians, but I was pretty sure they didn’t like strippers,” says Harmony Dust.
“Not because she was horrible or bad but because she taught me what she learned when she was a young girl being abused,” Harmony says. “And that it’s my fault. If you didn’t wear tank tops or shorts that wouldn’t be happening. You should know that’s how men are.”
Angela had no parents.
Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem represented a watershed in Jewish history, ushering in the era of the captivity. The carnage in Jerusalem was catastrophic and was lamented by generations of Jews.
“What we’re finding is the result of that destruction. It’s the kind of jumble that you would expect to find in a ruined household following a raid or battle,” says Shimon Gibson, professor of history at the university. “Household objects, lamps, broken bits from pottery which had been overturned and shattered and arrowheads and a piece of jewelry which might have been lost and buried in the destruction.”
King Solomon’s temple was stripped of its treasures and razed. The wall around Jerusalem was leveled.
After her third miscarriage, Carrie Underwood got mad at God.
It turns out the country music sensation hadn’t lost her child that night. Today, the singer of “Jesus, Take the Wheel” and her husband, NHL player Mike Fisher, have two children.
She auditioned for American Idol and was quickly included in the contests and advanced to the #1 spot. Her subsequent release in 2005 of “Inside your Heaven,” which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. That same year, her Some Hearts album debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Country Music. She has sold 65 million records, earning the moniker “country music’s reigning queen” from Billboard.
In 2017, she and her husband tried for a second child early in the year, and she miscarried. She got pregnant again in the fall and again lost the pregnancy. When she lost a third pregnancy in 2018, she began to question her faith.
Over her whole adult life, Evelyn Cartwright suffered unbearable headaches that she thought were due to high blood pressure.
An African American drove Michael Kent into a neo Nazi hate group, and another one pulled him out.
By the time he was 15, he started cooking up methamphetamines and getting involved with neo Nazis, even working closely with the higher-ups. He began passing out hate pamphlets and participating in marches on the state capitol.
When he made the switch from racing to daredevil trick riding, Ronnie Faisst got sponsors, pay, notoriety… and a drug habit.
For 10 years, Ronnie soared at the top the emerging Freestyle Motocross, or FMX, pioneering tricks and competing on tour. But while his motorbike flew, his soul was sinking into the depths of sin.
“This dude speaking on T.V. was talking about faith, and it spoke to me because he was speaking about fear. I experienced fear everyday,” he says. “I thought, ‘This dude has such a cool view on life. I’ve never really looked at it that way.’ I got saved in my bedroom just watching this program. It makes you feel good. God’s on your side. God starts blessing you.”
She changed her name to Jake and tried to forget she was born female.
“Transgenderism will lead to depression because it’s not real,” Laura told Black Christian News Network 1. “It is a lie from the pit of Hell. You cannot change your gender. It’s just not biologically possible.”
His Jewish mother was smuggled out of Nazi German by nuns, but tragically, she later died in a mental hospital.
As a young boy, Seif was sent to a Yeshiva– a very strict, religious Jewish school. It changed his mindset about following Judaism because, by nature, he was rebellious.
In prison, Jameel “Zuki” McGee vowed revenge on the cop who framed him unjustly.
Jameel was quick to forgive. Evil was overturned by grace.
In a court decision with implications for Christian Hip Hop at large, Flame won a plagiarism suit against pop star Katy Perry, who stole his beat from “Joyful Noise” and included it in her #1 song “Dark Horse,” according to a Los Angeles jury.
Perry and her lawyers argued that her song-writing crew never heard “Joyful Noise” and didn’t even know of Flame. They contended that beats can sound similar from one song to the next.
Tamara Bennett didn’t believe the doctor when he said her husband had AIDS and was dying.
Tamara went to the bathroom and stuffed all the toilet paper into her face as she cried.
Touring with iconic superstar Bob Dylan may have been a life changing experience for Jennifer Goetz, but that wasn’t the only transformational aspect of the journey.
“Allahu Akbar”, the crowd chanted, “Allahu Akbar”
In the dramatic video, the woman is dressed in traditional Muslim garb, including a hijab, and her voice is altered to thwart identification.
“Most of my life, I was alone, by myself, alone,” she says. “I was a broken person in need for love from my family but I never received it from them.
For piping hot yet tender delicious fillets, a 
Hadiyah-Nicole Green lost her adoptive parents to cancer, so she threw herself into the study of physics to cope with her loss.
It was at this moment of elation and euphoria, when everybody was celebrating her academic success, that her aunt announced that she had cervical/ovarian cancer.
From age 6 to 16, Lisa Luby Ryan was raped by her dad.
Only Jesus could straighten out the chaos of her life and heal her of the pain stemming from her childhood.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and Cole Walowac, a Washington D.C. native, didn’t know which to take: the assured but boring career path or to follow his dreams combining music and ministry.
Cole liked the music, not the drug abuse.
By Lortourme Hang’andu —
But instead of confronting the couple for standing them up, Joe got confronted by the Holy Spirit in the sermon. At the altar call, the lanky, longhaired, rough and tumble character responded to the invitation for salvation.
Merari Rodriguez earned the nickname “the Black Widow.”
Her mother eventually picked up on the activity and intervened to put a stop to it. But when Merari was 11 years old, a family friend took advantage of her. Her mother confronted him with Merari present, and the man opened the Bible in front of them, put his hand on top and swore to his innocence.
When Merari was 18 she thought she found the answer through witchcraft and Goth subculture.
At age 10, Ruslan became a decided atheist after his father, immigrating from Azerbaijan with the family, dumped his mother and married another woman.
“No! No! No!” Marina shouted in Russian, as narrated by Christianity Today. “We’re not Armenians. Look, my son is circumcised!”
As part of his probation, he was required to do community service, so he decided to perform it at a church where a lady named Charee, an ex convict who converted radically to Christ, attended. He cleaned the church but also heard the Word. People kept prophesying to him: “You’re going to do things for the Lord.”
Tobe Nwigwe’s dreams of making the NFL pulverized when the top-ranked linebacker suffered a career-ending foot injury. On lengthy bedrest, with no one visiting him, his crutches out of reach, his left leg in a full cast, the University of North Texas MVP and captain had to Army-crawl to the bathroom. That’s where, lying on the floor, he broke down.
“If you would’ve asked me what my purpose was back in college, I promise you I would’ve said something like, ‘Hit the league, money, cars, clothes,’” he says. “I literally got to the lowest of the lows because the only thing I ever dedicated all of my time, effort and energy to was football and when that was gone, I literally had to rethink life. I became like a monk as it relates to the study of purpose. Once I was able to cut off the mania of the world, I was able to figure out who I am and what my calling is and what my natural gifts are.”
Tobe evokes the poignant experience of being a poor child of immigrant parents and fighting to survive in much of his music. He was a “hard-headed” kid who smoked weed, listened to Biggie and snuck out at night, to the chagrin of his mom, who prayed for him and counseled him. They were five kids in one room.
Bob Hamilton was still a college student in the throes of getting a medical degree and becoming a doctor when his young wife delivered shocking news.
The stated goal of the book is to reassure overly-worried newlyweds that parenting is still possible in the perfection-obsessed 2010s and that having children is delightful. It might as well have been a how-to guide as he delves into the nitty-gritty details of changing diapers, scheduling sleep and coping with colic.
As president of a Jewish synagogue, Steven decided to divorce his wife when she started attending a Christian church. But later he did some soul-searching to find the truth and made a surprising discovery.
In college, a musician friend introduced Steven to drugs. The sensation induced was like nothing he’d ever experienced before.
Steve Olin, a Jewish boy from Brooklyn, made and lost millions, fell into drugs and was close to becoming homeless when he found the ultimate answer to set his life on course.
Still he honored his parents. He received a full scholarship at St. John’s University, where he is listed as Steve Olshansky on their ’65-66 roster. (Steve Olin who played for the Cleveland Indians is a different person.)
After “coming out” as homosexual in June, Jeremiah Givens, a gifted lyricist who stormed Christian Hip Hop, just announced he has HIV.
Givens was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from USC when he was introduced to drugs.
Rappers who praise drugs should be truthful about the negatives, Givens said. They should say, “Yo if you go down this road, you’re gonna feel like a superstar at the party, but it’s gonna lead to this and this and this and this.’”
While drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman sits in a New York jail waiting a likely life sentence, his mother in Sinaloa lives modestly, attends church and prays for him to “turn himself over to the Lord to serve Him before it’s too late.”
Her simple house doesn’t look like a mega drug trafficker furnished it. It can only be reached using rugged dirt roads that wind into the mountains.
By murdering rivals, El Chapo amassed an estimated fortune of $14 billion and lived in resort-like mansions with gold-plated AK-47s and diamond-encrusted pistols. He reportedly bragged to have killed up to 3,000 people to stay at the top of the world’s largest drug cartel.
They are simply dangerous foes. They send you into drugs or some other sin.
Al Fadi was proud to be a Muslim born in Saudi Arabia, the center of Islam. As a teenager, He was so proud that he even wanted to join the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan and die for his convictions under the leadership of Osama Bin Laden.
“Maybe the version of Islam I had learned was a little bit twisted in its teachings,” he said.
“It was very baffling to me because I asked myself, ‘Where did they get this moral value from?’ I had been taught that their Bible was corrupt. But I felt like a spiritual midget compared to them.”
Strapped for cash in college, Brittni De La Mora found it pretty easy to fall into sex work. She started with stripping and made great money compared to her peers at school in Santa Barbara.
“There’s nothing romantic about a porno. I knew what they were talking about and I figured, ‘I’m already promiscuous, and I already take my clothes off for money, so I might as well take it one step further.’”
“The first time I filmed a porn scene — weird. It was like, gross. It was really bad,” she remembers. “Emotionally, I just started to go downhill.”
The human condition is fallen, sinful, failure-riddled. Can we defeat temptation? Jesus is our only hope.
His father brought American-born Hazem Farraj back to Jerusalem to teach him the ways of Islam. But the then-12-year-old stunned his parents by adopting a different path, one that would lead to his family’s rejection.
“I was getting trained culturally as a Muslim, but the Islam I found shocked me,” he says. “Instead of running into the god of Islam, I found Jesus.”
“I was observing all the happy Christians raising their hands and worshiping God, singing to someone they knew was real. To see these people happy and so alive in Jesus was a shocker,” he says.
Nicknamed the “Archer,” Rams wide receiver Brandin Cooks celebrates touchdowns by mimicking a bow and arrow shot as a reference to the Bible.
A devout Christian, Cooks shoots plenty of scriptural arrows through social media.
He began to show promise in football playing for Stockton’s Lincoln High School. He grabbed 141 receptions for 2,508 yards and 28 touchdowns, which ranked him the 26th-best wide receiver and the 240th overall prospect in his class, according to the Recruiting Network.
The mind-blowing part about Wreck-It Ralph was that it aimed to teach kids empathy. It was also a brilliant idea and tightly written script. In fact, the only thing wrong with it was its publicity: an unappealing gorilla of a man.
But when it comes to underlying theme, Ralph Breaks the Internet disappoints. The lesson? Be secure enough to let your friends go. Vanellope wants to driver around in an online game called Slaughter Race with her new friend Shank. Ralph doesn’t want to let go.
Ralph Breaks the Internet prefers a clever plot with smooth jokes over a transcendent theme. The princess scene is delightful, and the King Kong part a handy evocation of past cinematography. You can enjoy the sequel with your kids. It’s safe. But if you’re hoping for your mind to be challenged and heart to be stirred to growing nobility, you’ll be disappointed.
He was a gentle man. You never would have guessed that he made a living in Guatemala’s Lucha Libre, a the rough and rule-less version of today’s MMA. When Demetrio Monterroso came to the Lord, he softened.
They graduated and moved on. Their father mended his ways and started following God.
“I wasn’t wearing the right clothes. I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t have the right haircut. I didn’t play the right sport. I wasn’t part of the cool crowd. I was part of the loser crowd,” he says. “The worst experience was to bowl alone. I would always pray that there would be an even number of kids so that somebody would join me, but when we had an odd number of kids, I would find myself alone on the lane.
The military has guidelines to prevent overt proselytizing in the name of the Air Force, but the controversy stems from the general’s private and personal website.
A year ago, Ken Parker marched with the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, putting feet to his affinity with the white nationalist movement. Since then, he’s gotten saved, repented of racism, gotten baptized and attends an almost all black church in Jacksonville, Florida.
First he joined the KKK and ascended up the ranks to become the Grand Dragon Master. But the white-hooded men who burned crosses weren’t racist enough for Ken. So somewhere in his six years out of the Navy, he joined the Neo-Nazis.
Ken spilled his virulent hate with proclamations of “white power.” He hated Jews and gays too.
When he showed up he found that he, his fiancé, and another church member were the only three white people in the 70-person congregation. As he listened to the worship music and the sermon, he found his heart softening.
Tedashii Lavoy Anderson was out to make his mark at Baylor University. He strove to be responsible and do the right thing, to be well-liked in school, in sports and on the social scene.
Tedashii’s competitive side suddenly flared, and he launched into a tirade insisting no one should judge him, especially someone who knew nothing about his struggles and background.
This time, there was a completely different response. “A light bulb came on. I felt like I got a hug from the Father. I just dropped to my knees on campus and prayed to God. ‘I get it. God, I need a Savior.’”
