By Staff
Pray for the robbers who struck church construction site
To the editor:
Many in our community have noticed the construction work going on at Trinity Lutheran Church on Highway 39 North. Recently we attracted the attention of some people who then came and burglarized our job site. Can you believe it? On the evening of the Lord's day, they robbed the Lord and His people who are giving of themselves, their time and their offerings to advance the Kingdom of God in this place! Lord, have mercy.
Our Laborers for Christ construction manager, Bob Jacobs, has worked on 22 job sites helping churches build all around the country, including one job site in a rough neighborhood in inner-city Houston, but this is his first experience with church job site theft. Welcome to Meridian.
While delayed, disrupted and disappointed, we intend to pray a special blessing on the perpetrators. We will pray that they bring woe upon themselves by this robbery and any other robberies they commit, until they confess their guilt and truly give their lives to Jesus.
Of course, we know they will not get away with this. Ultimately, no one ever does. If you don't come clean in this life, you will have to answer to God on the Day of Judgment. For this reason, we Christians regularly confess our sins and ask for forgiveness.
This is why we will pray for these people this special blessing of temporary earthly woe: We want them to confess and come clean so they can be recipients of future blessings both in this life and in the Life to come. The only alternative is for them to delude themselves into thinking they "got away with it" until the Day of Judgment. We don't want that for anyone.
Who knows, one day they may even become our co-workers in Christ. This is what we want for everyone.
Rev. Philip C. Wottrich
Pastor, Trinity Lutheran Church
Meridian
Kate Griffin journalism students say thanks
To the editor:
The eighth grade journalism class at Kate Griffin Junior High School would like to thank you for three things you did.
We would like to thank you for taking time to read our letters. Secondly, we would like to thank you for publishing statements we made in our letters. We would also would like to thank you for the positive comments you made about us in the paper.
We really appreciate everything you did, including your patience and time you spent helping Kate Griffin students get recognized. It would be our honor to have you visit our class and speak to us about the newspaper business at your convenience.
Sherisa Strother
Meridian
The benefits of Explore program
To the editor:
Our Explore class recently wrote a speech about the benefits of the Explore program. We want to share the following speech Maurice Hodges gave at the Meridian Public Schools Explore Parent Support meeting:
We always say expect the unexpected in Explore. When we walk in the door we know we will be flying into a world of creativity and problem solving. Explore forces us to be on our toes and think out of the box. Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
In Explore we work together in groups whether it drives us insane or not. We learn that not only does everyone have different opinions, but also we have to agree to get the job accomplished. While it may be slow going at first we do learn to respect our differences and become part of the Explore team.
We find that although we are all called gifted we are not alike. Our talents, thoughts, skills and feelings are different. We learn in Explore that thinking differently is good. We do not have to be like the person sitting next to us in class. It boosts our confidence, creativity and determination.
We learn from watching each other. Skills, which seem impossible, become possible once one of us is successful. No one wants to be left behind. We help each other improve.
Explore teaches us to share our talents and our hearts. Last year we earned Red Cross Volunteer badges and made comfort bags for disaster victims.
We are grateful for the opportunity to be ourselves in Explore. We are never down for very long, and our confidence is up, because our teachers let us be who we are.
Brieanna Bajus, Kelli Blackwell, Nathan Carroll, Jennifer Cody, Matthew Collins, Amber Edwards, Katie Fletcher, Layken Gibbs, Maurice Hodges, and Meredith Wilson.
Magnolia Middle School
Submitted by Susan Cumberland, Explore teacher