Recruit the next generation … and celebrate yours.

By Alumni Director Wayne Lewis

Another class has just enrolled in Word of Life Bible Institutes around the world, and a great year is under way.  Students are showing an eager anticipation for studying the Word.

As always, it is thrilling to see alumni returning with their children, and parents bringing siblings of their older children who are now alumni. As an alumnus, you are the greatest resource for new students, and I want to encourage you to start recruiting now for next year.

Please pray for all the staff as they teach, train, and disciple these students, many of whom have high expectations for what the Lord is going to do in their lives.

The Bible Institute isn’t just training a new generation, though — it’s also celebrating and continuing to encourage those who have walked through its doors in past years.

The biggest way we do that at Word of Life is through our Memorial Day and Founder’s Conference weekend. We are already making plans for May 24-27, 2013, when we welcome all alumni to enjoy Word of Life, reconnect with each other, and grow anew in Christ.

We have specific reunions planned for certain classes, too. Every class that has done a reunion in the past has been blessed beyond measure. In fact, most are planning to gather more frequently.

We want to encourage five-year reunions this year as well as 10-year reunions. So, Classes of 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008, come and join us!

If you graduated one of these years, get on Facebook, the phone, email, or whatever, and get your class together.  You will not be sorry you did!

Click here to learn more about how you can help plan a reunion.

Here are some of the details about who will be speaking:

• Friday, May 25, 7 p.m.: George Murray
• Saturday, May 26, 9 a.m.: Stanley Toussaint
• Saturday, May 26, 10:45 a.m.: George Murray
• Saturday, May 26, 7 p.m.: Harry Bollback
• Sunday, May 27, 9 a.m.: Stanley Toussaint
• Sunday, May 27, 10:45 a.m.: Don Lough, Jr.
• Monday, May 28, 11 a.m.: Memorial Day rally: Jeff Struecker

Class reunions: How to make it happen.

We want to host special class reunions for the Classes of 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008 this year at our annual alumni gatherings for Memorial Day weekend and Founder’s Conference.

We need your help, though, to invite alumni from all over the world to come and make the weekend a great experience for everyone. Some of you have already expressed interest, so we’ve pulled together some information of what we’ve done in the past to help you get started.

If you are willing to help coordinate a reunion for your class, here’s a “plan of action” that we found worked well for other classes:

• Form a planning team that will help you promote the event.
• Put a working schedule together and get it out on Facebook, asking for ideas. If more people get involved in planning, more people will be excited about making the trip in person!
• Take time to track down old classmates on Facebook, and start a group devoted to your class or your reunion.
• Work toward creating an experience, not just an event, by incorporating themes your class can unite around. For example, create class T-shirts, make a handout booklet, or have a theme of the journey your class will take throughout the weekend as you take part in different events. We’ll have several options for you at Word of Life, such as dinners, meeting times, campfires, or sharing time at Council Hall. But you can also take advantage of spring in the area and go to Glens Falls (shopping, go-karts, bowling, Martha’s ice cream, Great Escape), check out Lake George’s tourist attractions or cruises, take a family hike up Mt. Severance, explore the Adirondacks via whitewater rafting, or try any of the other excursions the area has to offer.
• Create some competition by challenging other classes, such as seeing which class can get the most people to come for the weekend or bring the largest family, the longest or newest married couple, or the lowest (or highest) cumulative number of demerits from their Bible Institute year. We can help provide judges and rewards.
• Encourage creativity from class members so they make it “their” reunion.
• Create “buzz” — keep telling people about the reunion, and bring up memories (or future memories you want to make) that will encourage class members to come.
• Tell us how we can help. We can send an email to alumni, post specific updates on our Facebook page or group, or use our blog to keep people updated. We want to make it a success for you!

As always, please let us know if you have specific questions. You can reach us at alumni@wol.org or waynel@wol.org.

Update from Alumni Director Wayne Lewis.

I am rejoicing in the way so many of you have joined the effort to “wake the giant” and encourage greater alumni interaction.

We have moved out in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest with alumni gatherings, and your responses have been so encouraging. Additionally, several of you are taking the initiative to send us your testimonies and also share what the Lord is doing in your lives today.

Reading and hearing what God is doing through Bible Institute alumni is absolutely amazing! I have come to agree with Wesley Yerkes from the Class of 1986 reunion, who said, “Hundreds of thousands of people are being impacted each year through our class alone.”

This year we passed the 20,000 mark in the number of alumni from the U.S. campuses. You do the multiplication — that’s an amazing impact!

Thanks to each of you who are keeping in touch. Thank you for joining the effort to help deserving students, and thank you for continuing to be the number one source for new students year after year. Thank you.

Past meets present: How you can help.

Take a minute and imagine yourself as a Bible Institute student again. You’re looking at your dirty shoes and thinking of the next time you’ll do laundry, which makes you think of where you’ll get laundry money, which makes you wonder if you’ll ever have money again, or if you’re set for a life of being destitute, a la Paul, Barnabas and all of those pious people you thought never had anything in common with you until you ended up at the Bible Institute and suddenly realized that an amazing God had a grip on your life.

This past fall, one alumnus was in town for the Class of 1986’s “25-year mega reunion.” He walked the path to Colombia, his old dorm, tracing his steps from decades ago to the bed that had been his.

In his old bed was a current student, fast asleep at 10 a.m. after a weekend of ministry — the classic Bible Institute pose since 1970.

The alumnus took $25 to commemorate the 25-year anniversary and slipped it under the student’s pillow, bookending his journey with a gift toward the future.

The amount, he said, “wasn’t a lot, but I figured the students’ need of money hadn’t changed in 25 years.”

Think about what you remember of your time at Schroon Lake. What made a difference for you? What would you not give up if you did it all over again?

Whether it be a gift or a word of encouragement, let us know how you are able to minister, and we will try to connect you with students who could use your prayer or help.

We also encourage you to take the invitation from Word of Life to “come on home.” Take time to revisit the place where you spent a year — or two — seeing God work in your life. And, if thinking about your days at the Bible Institute compels you to help the current student body, bring a small gift to share with whoever now sleeps in “your” bed.

“And His mercy is on them that fear Him from generation to generation. … That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children” (Luke 1:50; Psalm 78:6).

Contact alumni@wol.org or waynel@wol.org if you'd like to learn how you can help current Bible Institute students.

Making the most of youth: A message from the chancellor.

By Don Lough, Jr.

Young people have enormous potential to make a difference for Jesus Christ. At Word of Life, we believe in challenging children and teenagers with early opportunities to share their faith and to step up in serving the Lord. I’ll never forget Jack Wyrtzen’s periodic challenge to me as a young man: “Donald, let no one despise your youth.” He was basically telling me, “I believe in you – don’t let your young age hold you back from living out God’s Word.”

Several weeks ago, I had the privilege of meeting a young man from Mexico who recently joined our missionary team. His testimony was anything but ordinary. When he was 20 years old and a sales manager for the Ford Motor Company, he met an 8-year-old boy who boldly shared the Gospel with him and led him to Christ. No, this is not a misprint, nor is it the end of the story. After the young sales manager was disowned by his family for his newfound faith, the little boy swung into action and began personally discipling him. He assigned him 10 chapters of Bible reading every day and then took the initiative to connect him with Christian families and a local church. Today, the fruit of his ministry is a full-time missionary!

We need to be so careful not to allow negativity or low expectations to seep into our interaction with the younger generation. The reality is that it doesn’t take much to discourage a child or a teenager. What are you doing to encourage and motivate the young people in your sphere of influence to step up for Christ? Just think of the possibilities.

Thanks for standing with us as we challenge young people to “know, grow, and show” all over the world.

Drawing from the Truth: Alumnus of the Year Sergio Cariello.

In a world where most people portray Jesus as a kind, mellow guy Who spent most of His time wearing a long robe and telling stories to His friends, Sergio Cariello has a different idea. If you flip through the pages of The Action Bible, it’s clear that Sergio sees his Savior as the ultimate superhero.

Think of it as a Nazarene in action: an athletic man, performing miracles and saving the world.

The Action Bible portrays God as the original action hero. With sketches and ink, Sergio vividly depicts plagues, miracles, and creatures of all kinds. His illustrated approach to the Bible invigorates the ancient stories, engaging readers of all ages and languages in enduring tales of truth.

Sergio’s career in art began when he was a child in northeast Brazil. He doodled on napkins and church bulletins, and by age 5, he had decided to become a cartoonist. At 11 he landed his first gig drawing Frederico, the Detective, a weekly comic strip he invented for his local newspaper, Diario De Pernambuco.

Growing up, Sergio attended church every Sunday, but it wasn’t until he stepped into the electric world of Word of Life camp in Recife that his relationship with Christ really came alive.

"Every visit to Word of Life was a spiritual injection,” Sergio says. “An extreme boost to my spirit.”

Sergio responded to Christ’s call at camp when he was 15, but soon after, he started to struggle in his walk with God. He dealt with many of the challenges teenage Christians face, and he lost momentum.

Then, the following year, Sergio began to return to his faith. What made the difference this time was his pastors, Roberval Lyra and Sergio Lyra, who were both involved with Word of Life.

“They nurtured me back to church” when they asked him to draw charts for a church fundraising campaign, he says.

Sergio recommitted his life to Christ and soon enrolled in the Bible Institute in Recife in 1981, just after high school. There, he was surrounded every day with a full dose of Word of Life’s discipleship, ministry, and personal growth formula: Scripture memorization, Quiet Time, and ministry opportunities such as Open Air Evangelism, sharing the Gospel door-to-door, travels across Brazil with the Collegians, and children’s ministry at local churches.

Sergio stayed connected to local pastors, and eventually his story made it to George Theis, the founder of Word of Life Recife. Theis turned to the Word of Life scholarship program to see if there was a way Sergio could go to the New York campus for further Bible study under the Bible Institute and School of Youth Ministries program (now second year).

For Sergio, moving to the States and attending the Bible Institute as a more mature believer was a dream come true. He deems his experience at the Schroon Lake Bible Institute campus “phenomenal.”

“It was a new land with new dreams,” he says, “(The Bible Institute) in Recife was great, but New York was greater.”

A children’s Bible memory revolution: John Tice, Class of 1990.

When you turn to an online game or app to help your kids pass the time, John Tice is hoping it isn’t Angry Birds — he’d like you to check out some of his Scripture memory programs.

Impress Kids, a 13-year journey that became an official company in 2010, isn’t like most Scripture memory methods. It has gone beyond note cards to full-fledged, color-filled online interactivity — and it’s set up so anyone can take advantage of it with their own Bible Memory plans.

John first thought of the idea for Impress Kids when he and his wife, Andrea, were serving as Local Church Ministries missionaries in western New York. He was troubled by the way the children’s Biblical curriculum was disjointed as kids tried to learn through several programs at once.

“They had Sunday School and mid-week programs; some went to AWANA or learned Bible verses at school. The problem was that none of it was connected. I kept thinking we could do better,” he says.

In 1997, after driving home from church, John says he began to dream of a Bible memory program that could complement what was already being done in churches, schools, and homes — something fun for kids and useful as a ministry tool.

John would work on his idea some, lose clarity, and then neglect it. But he kept picking it back up.

“It was a dream God never let me put aside,” he says.