Happy New Year from Character GPS
Happy New Year from Character GPS! First of all, we sincerely hope that you enjoyed the holiday season, spending time with loved ones and celebrating our Savior's birth! Reflecting back on 2024, we see so many blessings God has provided from our labor.
Yes, this last Fall 2024 semester was demanding, but we would like to share some of the interesting and inspiring highlights!
We held a Character GPS Graduation for Immanuel Lutheran School and Church in Brandon, Florida this past December 19th. The picture above actually is making our eyes a little teary as we think back to when we presented a recruiting challenge to the Immanuel Lutheran Congregation. We needed church members to volunteer to mentor 30 youth in our 7th & 8th grade Character GPS classes!! To Pastor Phil Ressler's joy, through everyone's efforts, enough members stepped up and were trained. The 1st Miracle! As there were more Boys than Girls, this required more Men to step up, which they did. The 2nd Miracle! As these Members learned to embrace the importance of this role as Mentors, they came to realize what a great need it was to help support the Students' successful development in overcoming our current, toxic culture for kids, the 3rd Miracle! The picture above shows how the Mentors made it a priority to attend the Graduation to cheer the Students on to pursue the great plans God has for their lives!!! Praise be to our almighty God!! He never fails to provide!! Many thanks too for Pastor Phil Ressler's professional photography, producing so many beautiful photos that captured this special Day!
A Mentoring Miracle!
This Mentoring Miracle not only benefitted the youth, but Jeff and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the volunteers from the Church, who we found were great people taking time out of their busy schedules to pour into a young person!
Another part of our Character GPS Ministry has been working weekly with the youth at Sheriff Grady Judd's Polk County Juvenile Detention Center (Grady Judd's "Boot Camp"). This has been a special opportunity for us to coach, spend time with and Mentor these boys. Sheriff Judd allows us to instruct them using our Faith-Based version of Character GPS. The boys are very open to changing their lives by building their faith to be forgiven and find a truly productive path for life, where they can make a positive difference in this World.
We decided to go there on Christmas Day as we wanted to let them know that they weren't forgotten about, which is often how they feel being incarcerated on such a special day! We were there to be witnesses that Jesus is always with them and thus why we celebrate Christmas as Jesus' Birthday where he came down here to share the struggles of life with us all. As they ate home-made Christmas cookies, sang Christmas Carols and heard us share silly Christmas jokes to give them a chuckle, we let them know that we chose to prioritize being with them to let them feel just how "PRICELESS" they are to God! They thanked us for coming!
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When we told the youth that we like to visit them and that they behave better than some of youth in the schools, their reply was, "The kids in the schools don't appreciate what they have. They don't appreciate their freedom! As we used to as well until we lost our Freedom."
As Partners with the DJJ, we attended the State-wide "One Mentor, One Child" Conference on January 14, 2025. We shared the Mentoring "Best Practices" we have developed over the years.
May 2025 bring you peace, joy and a fresh outlook on life!
Your Friends in Christ at Character, Debbie & Jeff Cain
If you would like to donate to our work with Youth you can do so at this link: