"A new command I give you: Love one another!" John 13:34
Each year, it is the responsibility of the current sixth grade class to select the theme for the upcoming school year. After much intense debate and deliberation, last year's sixth graders selected "Love is Everything We Need" as our "battle cry" for the 2022/2023 school year.
As I spent time this past weekend reflecting upon the 2022/2023 school year, I was reminded of these precious memories that occurred and provided our students with numerous opportunities to share God's love with others:
*Starting the first week of school with a power outage! God's love was shared by many people helping those with no power and coming to the school's rescue by housing all of our hot lunch food!
*Collecting materials to assemble 216 school kits for Lutheran World Relief to distribute to children in need
*Assigning homebound congregational members to each classroom so the students can correspond and pray for these people throughout the entire school year
*Various classrooms volunteering to become prayer partners with numerous International classes in which interactive activities occur and written expressions of God's love are distributed throughout the year
*Hosting our "Back To School" assembly with the Exotic Zoo
*Mrs. Rohman and Mrs. Osbron hosting a "PB & J" Fall Family assembly for Preschool and Kindergarten
*St. Matthew Lutheran Church hosting "Trunk or Treat" where over 700 people attended
*Fifth grade sponsoring the "Spreading Sunshine over Florida" Bake Sale and raising $7857 for hurricane victims
*Supporting the World Vision Detroit Marathon, where students Paul Szpara, Joe Lancaster, Elodie Breen, Cameron Adams, and their families participated to help children around the world obtain clean water
*7th/8th graders picking 3,695 lbs of peppers at The Forgotten Harvest Farm for those in need
*6th grade working at Wixom Campus Community Garden and helping elderly residents with yard clean up
*Hosting this year's 12th annual Turkey Trot, raising $10,600 for Lutheran World Relief. Thrivent also matched our donation 50%, which allowed this total to evolve into $15,900 to help those in need
*6th/7th/8th grades working for at day at Camp Restore Detroit, helping assist residents in that area
*Hosting "Donuts with Pastors", where 100 children and their families celebrated the birth of Jesus
* Preschool/Kindergarteners and Grades 1 - 4 leading beautiful Christmas programs where hundreds in attendance heard the message of the Gospel
*Celebrating National Lutheran Schools week with a whole school field trip to Defy
*Hosting Kids Against Hunger and having our entire student body assemble 10,124 bags of food packaged for needy children around the world
*Our Eighth grade Destination Imagination team collecting over 160 birthday gifts for children at St. Paul Pontiac. This team then qualified to participate at the Global Finals and placed 6th in the world! More importantly, God designed to have this team partner with and show God's love to a team from Ukraine!
*Assigning each classroom to be a prayer partner for each member of the St. Matthew India Mission Team and faithfully supporting them in prayer throughout the entire mission trip.
*Praising God for the birth of AJ Osbron to Mr. and Mrs. Osbron
*Praising God as we were in awe of the generosity of our school families during the "Hearts for Jesus" Chapel offerings project. 74 "Treasures", which are MP3 players that have the Bible recorded in the language of the recipient, were distributed through World Missions
*God blessing us with an amazing Spring Musical: "The Wizard of Oz" that 560 had the opportunity to attend!
*Our choir and orchestra glorifing God with their talents during our Spring Concert
*Blessing 49 students/parents/chaperones enjoying a wonderful time in New York City for 8th grade Class Trip
*Treasuring memories throughout our entire year of athletics, but highlights include allowing our Soccer team to win the conference championship and our 8th grade A boys 4x100m track relay team to win first place at the State Track meet and set a new school record!
What a tremendous year the Lord blessed us with; these are only the highlights!
In addition, abundant opportunities were available in which the Holy Spirit was working diligently to equip our students to grow closer to and more like Jesus and share His love throughout our student body.
To all of our parents: Thank you for your tremendous love, encouragement, and support that you also showered upon us this school year! Your partnership is deeply appreciated and treasured.
To our eighth graders: God's richest blessings as you begin a new chapter in your academic journey! After just spending three entire days with you in New York City, it is so apparent that God has equipped and prepared you to do great things for His Kingdom. Just remember that "His love is everything that you will ever need!"
To the rest of our St. Matthew school family: have a wonderful summer and amazing fun in the “SON”! We are excited for what God has planned for us during the 2023/2024 school year, and we look forward to seeing all of you when we return on August 28th!
With Much Love and Appreciation,
The Staff of St. Matthew Lutheran School