BTC Spends Spring Break In Nashville

Last week we took 4 of our BTC students to Nashville, TN for Spring Break. A highlight of the week was spending 3 days serving at the Nashville Rescue Mission. Most of the students had never done any volunteer work before so it was an even greater eye-opening experience for them. We spent one day serving lunch to over 400 men, including homeless men and men in the Mission's program. The other two days were spent in the warehouse going through various donations. We sorted over 1,700 pairs of shoes, hundreds of cans of food, hundreds of clothes, and more! The students worked incredibly hard and had a blast volunteering. The students left their time at the Mission very humbled and grateful for what they have in Kokomo. They realized that at least they have shelter, food each day, and clean clothes which the men at the Mission would not have if it weren't for the services provided by the Mission.

In addition to volunteering we had a blast exploring Nashville. We toured the Country Music Hall of Fame and TN State Museum (which the students admitted was actually interesting and not boring like they originally thought)! We attended an NHL Predators game, which was by far one of our favorite events...there's nothing like seeing a fight in hockey! We toured a few historical sites downtown Nashville, experienced the Nashville Zoo, and basked in the warm weather at Centennial Park. On the way home we stopped at Mammoth Cave in KY, exploring the depths of the cave. It was an incredible experience.

Here are some pictures that help capture highlights from our trip...

Thanks Z92.5!

A big thank you to Z92.5 for letting us guest host with them over spring break two mornings. We had a blast! It helped us spread the vision of Bridges, promote Donkeyball on April 13th and catch up on all the celebrity news. They do a tremendous job of supporting everyone in Kokomo and building our community in a positive way! We are extremely grateful for your support!

DONKEYBALL coming back to Kokomo!

Bridges Outreach & The Crossing are hosting the 2011 Donkeyball basketball game. This year we have four teams competing for the Championship: Police, Fire, Kokomo-Schools & Community Churches.

The game is at 7 pm on Wed, April 13th at Kokomo High School (South Campus)

Tickets are $7 in advance & $9 at the gate (children 5 and under are free)

We are selling tickets at Jamies, YMCA and all three Community First Bank locations.

Come out and see some hilarious entertainment and support two great causes!

National Mentoring Month

January is National Mentoring Month! This month 5 different mentoring organizations in Kokomo (Project 30, New Leaf Mentoring, the Crossing School, Parent 2 Parent (KHS), and Book Buddies @ Head Start) came together to celebrate and promote mentoring. The mayor and the various mentoring organizations in Kokomo celebrated "Mentoring Day" in Kokomo on Tuesday, January 11th. Many people from the community came to learn about the urgent need for mentors and to see how they can get involved. You can watch the presentation at:
http://www.cityofkokomo.org
It runs about 4-5 times a day on KGOV (KGOV Video Streaming or Channel 2 locally)

In case you are yet unaware, there is a waiting list of over 300 students at the elementary, middle school, & high school level who are in need of a mentor. Bridges Outreach's mentoring program is called Project 30. If you are interested in mentoring please call us at 765.452.5723 and we'd be happy to tell you about the needs for our program and the other mentoring programs in town. Make a difference in the life of a child. Be A Mentor!

Bridges Celebrates Christmas

We were so blessed to share Christmas with our students and their families. Here is a highlight video from our Christmas party!

Christmas Party 2010 from Casey Cline on Vimeo.

Colts Game

This past Sunday Bridges was extremely blessed with a rare opportunity: Sponsored Colts Tickets! We took 9 of our high school students to the Colts vs. Cowboys game. It was the first time any of them had been to Lucas Oil Stadium and for 8 of them it was the first time they'd ever been to a Colts game. Needless to say they were so excited to go to the game and they had a blast! Through the Colts Community Partnership the Bridges students not only received free tickets to the game, but they also got to have their picture taken on the field, receive a free t-shirt, and a food voucher! What a priceless experience! Although the Colts were unable to pull off a "W", we had a blast!

Giving Great Thanks!

As we reflect on the busyness of the Fall and how fast time always seems to fly, we are grateful for the season we are in. With November now upon us and Thanksgiving & Christmas quickly approaching, it always gives us an extra reason to pause and reflect on what we're Thankful for! Bridges sees God's blessings on a daily basis. We are so thankful that amidst a difficult economy God continues to provide above and beyond for our students and their families. We are thankful for our students who are getting plugged into church (and for some, it's the first time they've ever been involved in a church)! We are thankful for the students who have been consistently coming to our after school programs! The students are such a blessing in our lives and we feel privileged to get to hang out with them and get to know their stories! We are thankful for our staff and volunteers that make a daily difference in the lives of the students! We are thankful for our 270 mentors who are tirelessly going into the schools every week for 30 minutes to make a positive difference in the lives of children! We are thankful for the schools for being willing to open their doors to the community so that we can be part of the process of impacting our youth for the future! We could go on and on with this list of what we're thankful for. What are you thankful for?

Camp

We always seem to be a little slow in updating our blog! But alas, we want to share with you all about CAMP! Taking kids to camp is one of our and one of the students' favorite times of year.

In addition to taking middle school students to Spring Hill this year we also took high school students for the first time! Spring Hill introduced a new program called Diverge where youth groups (or individual students) come for a week of camp. It's set up similar to their weekend retreats where the high schoolers have their own speaker and band all week. When they weren't being challenged by Jeffrey Dean they were out participating in all the regular camp activities (blob, zipline, crafts, etc)!!! We took two high school students, Anna & Kassy, both of whom walked away challenged and encouraged to pursue a deeper relationship with God. One of the girls admitted that although she wasn't ready to enter into a personal relationship with God, she had a better understanding of who He was and began asking deep questions about why He should be important in her life!!! It touched my heart to see the girls so passionate about learning more!



This year for KAA we were blessed to partner with Zo Smith, a youth leader in town, and his students. Normally one of our biggest obstacles getting to KAA is trying to find a bus that will transport our students all the way to Branson, MO. God is always faithful, and this year He was abundantly faithful as we received a bus where the seats turned into beds at night. That means the students (and staff!) got to sleep much more comfortably than normal!!! KAA always provides us staff with an opportunity to get refreshed and to have deep group discussions with our students. Our students are already asking when they get to sign up for KAA and camp is still 8 months away!!!



Thank you to the many partners who help us send students to camp each year! Our students, who wouldn't be able to afford camp on their own, are able to experience God in a whole new way because of many people's generous support! Thank You!

We Won!

The Community Foundation of Howard County hosted a “Legacy Society” luncheon for local nonprofits to discuss charitable giving. The CFHC awarded three endowments as prizes for agencies that had at least five board members in attendance. Thankfully, our board all showed up and on the $3000 endowment (2nd prize) they pulled Bridges out of the hat. This will help us start a much needed funding source that will last for many generations to come. If you ever have any questions about bequests benefiting Bridges (wills, estate planning, retirement, endowments, etc) please give us a call and we can set up a meeting.

Summer's End

Just like it's always hard to believe how quickly the school year flies by, it's always astonishing at how quickly the summer comes and goes. Bridges had a phenomenal summer. Our Summer Slam program, which lasted for 5 weeks, had an average of 32 6th-10th grade students every day. What growth from last year! This year's theme was "Exploration"-exploring various careers and hobbies. Our students had the opportunity to visit the Kokomo airport, Howard Regional Hospital, Shearer Printing, the Police Station, a local veterinarian hospital, and more. We were blessed to have many people come in and share about thier careers & hobbies as well. The students learned about water color, Zumba exercise, the art of writing and designing a comic book, the role of the county coroner, and much more. It was an extremely fun and educational summer! Here are some pictures from our weekly field trips:

Summer Slam 2010 from Casey Cline on Vimeo.

Vamos a la Guatemala ! :)

This summer going to Guatemala was honestly the best thing I've ever done in my life! The thought of going out of the country was amazing within itself. It was even more amazing getting to serve the children and staff at Casa Bernabe. For 2 whole weeks I got to be the hands and feet of God and do nothing but serve. Every morning we would get up and have breakfast at 7 am. From after breakfast until lunch there were different groups working on different work projects. There were some people working in the garden, working on the medical clinic, and doing other various projects. It was really whatever the orphanage needed done at the time. I, myself worked on painting one of the houses. We painted 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, kitchen, laundry room, and even some furniture. Almost everyday from about 7:30 am to 1 pm was nothing but painting.

After lunch was my time to relax and shower. It was time to just hang out until about 3 when we would have "kid time". We spent time with kids, Addie would tell a story from the bible and along with the story we would do a craft and a game. On the first day of kid time the kids made bracelets and one of the older boys, Rudy made me a bracelet. It was just so thoughtful of him to make me one before himself. To this day I still wear it everyday. During kid time we got to really just spend one on one time with each of the kids.

My favorite part of the day was after kid time. Most days as long as it wasn't raining we would play soccer. ALL of the kids there were really good at soccer. I think thats where I connected the most with the kids. After that dinner was at 6 and a team meeting sometime after that. The team would just all sit around and just share our day with each other. Then it was a game of cards and off to bed.

One of the really cool things I got to do was going to church, just knowing that they worship the same God as we do. It makes me realize that God is so much bigger than we think. Both Fridays we were in Guatemala we got to get away from the orphanage. The first Friday we went to Antigua, Antigua is a market where we got to go shopping. The second Friday we took the whole orphanage to a water park. Seeing how happy taking them to the water park made them and buying the pizza after just really felt good. Another thing we got to do was go and buy each of the 9 houses snacks. Of course they are provided with food but they don't get snacks so again seeing how happy it made them felt good to know we were apart of it. There are at least 15 kids to each house, and it was kinda disappointing that they only had enough to maybe get 2 of each snack. It was still really great to see how thankful they were.

Connecting with the children was great but I also got to connect with my team. I got to bond with 25 other people who were there to serve along my side. The number one thing I've learned and that has stayed with me is that God will ALWAYS provide. He will always provide for us, and it's because he loves us. Right now my mom is going through a divorce and it seems like it's hard but I know that some way and somehow God will provide. Going to Guatemala has made me have a better understanding of that. Serving Casa Beranabe was truly one of the best things I've ever done! -Karyssa F. Pratt

Summer's Here!

It's hard to believe that summer is nearly upon us! We've had an awesome school year this year at Bridges this year! From the field trips to the time spent working on homework we've had an absolute blast this year. Check out this video to see some of our highlights:

2009-2010 Year-in-Review

Boy am I Hungry!

On April 30 Bridges participated with First Church of God in World Vision's 30 Hour Famine. The objective of the famine is to raise awareness and money to help eradicate world hunger. The key component of the Famine is students committing to giving up food for 30 hours to get a small glimpse of what it's like to be without food. Students also were tasked with retrieving water from the retention pond every hour if they wanted water or juice. We did some community service the next morning and after 30 hours broke our fast by engorging ourselves on nachos.

30 Hour Famine 2010 from Casey Cline on Vimeo.

Bridges New Travel/Shopping Site

Bridges has a new funding resource that can save you time and money and help out our ministry. "Travel by Bridges Outreach” is our new one stop shopping site that helps people save money on travel, shopping and much more. This site combines all the major sites until one and kicks back a portion (around 7%) of every purchase to Bridges Outreach. It is very similar to Kayak, Expedia or Travelocity, but many times has cheaper rates. Items that can be purchased include: airfare, hotels, cruises, rental cars, vacations, flowers, gift cards, concert/sporting tickets and all kinds of shopping items (technology, gifts, books, food, etc). Please check it out regularly and keep us in mind when you travel and shop.
Thank you! Here is our site that turns vacations into donations:

www.ytbtravel.com/bridgesoutreach

Thanks Again! Enjoy and pass it on to others if you wish.

Switchfoot in Concert

Our students have come to love Indiana Wesleyan University. IWU provides many unique experiences for our students, including their IGNITE conference. For the past couple years we have taken both middle school and high school students to this exciting one-night event at IWU. The conference has relevant speakers and stand-out bands. This year was no different. The highlight for our students was definitely hearing Switchfoot live in concert! They put on an amazing show and our students were able to be right up front in the mosh-pit. What teenager doesn't love that?!?! :)

Dare 2 Share

March 19th-21st BTC (the high school group) took 6 students to Chicago for the Dare 2 Share Blaze Conference (dare2share.org). The weekend rocked our students' lives as they were challenged to not only think about what they believe, but how to better live out their faith amongst their friends. The students were challenged by dynamic, engaging speakers like Zane Black and Greg Stier to go into their schools and share "The Cause" for Christ with their friends. The students had an opportunity to do this while we were at the conference by calling/texting friends. We also rocked out with the band Starfield (http://www.starfieldonline.com/). One of our favorite parts was the two-part skit about heaven and hell...helping us realize that hell is not this fairyland place where people are simply separated from God for eternity, but where people literally are in excruciating torment and pain, while being separated from God for eternity. After the conference was over we spent the day Sunday downtown Chicago attending 2nd Presbyterian Church, eating at Gino's East Pizza, and shopping on Michigan Ave! Here are just a few pics of our fun-filled weekend!!!

Girls Afternoon Out

What a blessing it has been to continue to pour into our students this year! We are always grateful for the opportunities we have to live life alongside the students with whom we work. One new opportunity the high school girls have had this year is to get to know each other during our "Girls Afternoon Out". Every couple weeks we get together to have fun and learn new things about each other. It's always low-key, but always a blast!

A dream is reached. . .

When Bridges began at Central Middle School in January of 2005 we knew after a semester there that it would be beneficial to offer this opportunity to all four Kokomo Middle schools. That next year, Casey and Travis split up and we were able to duplicate the program at Bon Air. We dreamed of having Bridges in all four middle schools. Last year, through a grant with the Mayor’s Community-Based Council of Substance Abuse Prevention, we were able to expand into Lafayette Park for 9 weeks in the spring of 2009. This past school year (09-10) our dream was fulfilled as we were at Lafayette Park in the fall and Maple Crest in the spring. It has been a huge blessing to have the opportunity to work with every middle school student in Kokomo. Now when the middle schools consolidate into two next year, we will know all the students in both schools!

To Save A Life

Some local youth pastors and Bridges Outreach did some work recently to bring a Christian movie to Kokomo. "To Save A Life" was the top movie in Kokomo the weekend it opened (it was in 7 cities throughout Indiana). It is a powerful movie that is extremely relevant to youth and adults. We highly recommend it to anybody 13 and older. Support this film as much as you can and encourage youth to see this positive movie.

Hangin' with Horses

This past Fall 2009 two of our freshmen Bridges students had an amazing opportunity to learn all about horses. Helping Hearts Horse Ranch spent 8 weeks teaching Maria and Samantha how to care for the horses, saddle the horses, walk the horses, and even trot with the horses! The first day the girls were a little timid by the horses, but they quickly gained confidence!!! The girls had a wonderful experience and we are all very thankful to Jay & Pam from Helping Hearts Horse Ranch for volunteering their time to teach our students about horses. We are also very thankful to Juanita who volunteered every week to drive the students to the outskirts of Kokomo to the horse ranch. Here are some pictures of the girls' time out at the horse arena.