Destiny came to the Honor Academy not knowing what to expect. Now, after her first year, her life is completely turned around, and she is leading other interns as they continue to reach their generation together!

The biggest thing learned I learned at the Honor Academy is humility and considering others greater than yourself. I used to think I was all that, but I’m not. Humility is a big lesson.

It was a hard year! But it was absolutely worth it. Even those hard things were only momentary compared to what I learned and what I gained. The books we read, classes we took, even the ministry placement, all of it was completely worth it. I feel like I am 10 times the person I was before.

For my ministry placement I was an encouragement representative with Global Expeditions. I really didn't think I could encourage other teens to get on the mission field but my supervisor was really a huge support. She really inspired and equipped me. Feeling the weight of responsibility to call 70 missionaries was huge. I realized that if I didn't make those calls, they might not be going on the mission field! I was never given that type of responsibility before.

Now I am staying a second year to be a supervisor for other Global Expeditions callers. Some of the biggest lessons I will take with me are humility and faithfulness, and I have a passion for passing along this urgency to support these missionaries. 

I just heard this story and thought I’d share it with you.

Robin went to Monterrey, Mexico on a mission trip. She was expecting to learn a few new things, but she had no idea what God had in store for her:

What really touched me on the trip was the kids and how they connected to the drama we did, watching their eyes tear up, and seeing God in them. But I also I got to lead an adult to Christ for the first time and it was awesome.

I don't know Spanish so we talked through translator. He came up to me and I could tell he wanted God, you could see it in his eyes. He was so hungry and started asking all these questions. I've never seen somebody so hungry for God before. We prayed together and he accepted Jesus!

On the trip, I learned that people have to look at your actions before they hear what you have to say. I didn't think that I could ever change somebody else’s life through my actions. I know that if I can influence people here, I can influence them at home.

My goal is to turn my youth group upside down, and show them that it's by actions that others will see God’s love in us.

When I got on this trip, I took off my mask. The person that I am here is the person that I want to be at home, and that's the person that follows God, not the person that hides behind the bush.

I started turning my life all the way around when I went to Acquire the Fire. Before that I lived a lie. I was spiritually dead. On this trip I've learned to keep on going, to keep on opening the Word every day. I'm alive now, and God's alive in me!

I am not a big game person myself.  I am like everyone else who lets their brain go numb while watching something entertaining, especially after trying some games that weren’t competitive enough.  Board games were fun for an “unsophisticated generation,” like when I grew up.  Now it seems we have a very sophisticated society, and we need to be attentive to that.  Video games fit the bill, right?  Maybe, maybe not.

Video games can be very addictive.  There is data that shows that many people who start gaming when they were young continue into their 20s and 30s.  They spend endless hours playing really competitive games that lead to nothing.  Of course, there are video games that you can play against each other in the living room, but that interactive playing may or may not happen, even though that is the intention.  There are other really some good interactive board games that will engage your kids’ attention, like Mad Gab, Catch Phrase, Apples to Apples, Imagine If, Clue, Scattergories, Monopoly.  And there are lots of great card games that are fun and force you to think and engage with your kids: UNO, Phase 10, Pit, Spoons, Hearts, Spit, Hit the Deck, Skip Bo, to name several.

You can create some great memories while playing interactive games or reading funny books aloud.  We used to read at the dinner table.  I remember laughing about a story we were reading and discussing the issues the story brought up.

Try to stay away from having every family night be about watching a video.  That is the easy way out.  There are always so many movies to pick from, and we ourselves have had to guard against only watching videos on family night.  Think about an indulgent time spent absorbing Hollywood’s values versus laughing hysterically together throughout a competitive game.  Which would you choose?

Sometimes you all just need to relax and let your hair down.  But if you get in the habit of doing that, and not engaging your kids, you will end up with 16-,17-, and 18-year-old couch potato slugs absorbed by media because all their family time was spent silently in front of a viewing screen.

Christmas Day after opening presents, gather together and read the story of Jesus Christ’s birth in Luke 2:1-20 from the Bible. Afterwards serve others by volunteering at a soup kitchen or evangelizing to the homeless with hot chocolate and the Gospel.

All throughout our kids’ growing up years, we had a special Christmas morning tradition. After eating breakfast, we got ready to leave the house for what my wife and I felt was one of our most important holiday traditions before opening gifts: We would serve the meal at the local Salvation Army. We did this to send a message to our children that Christmas is about serving, not just indulging ourselves. Inevitably, we would end up having some conversations with people who were really hurting, listening to them and praying for them. Look for various ways to plant seeds in your kids about being others-centered.

One of the greatest things you can do is help your kids want to serve and impact other people. You can provoke this by giving them experiences that are way out of the box. Sending them to summer camp is great, but finding a camp that doesn’t indulge them makes a bigger impact. Look for something that teaches them to be closer to God or gain a skill. Some examples would be leadership camp like Student Leadership University, basketball camp, acting camp or anything that will give them a skill they can use even in their high school years to serve others and become excellent at something.

One of the greatest things you can do is help your kids go on a missions trip to another part of the world. There they can see how other people live who are far less fortunate than we are in America. Start doing this at a young age. (We started taking kids on Global Expedition trips with Teen Mania at just 11 years old.) In 2 days, nearly 300 teens will leave to go on a missions trip with us. Please pray for them.

If MTV is targeting kids at younger and younger ages, then so must we. We must plant in our kids a desire to really make a difference and change the world. Give them opportunities to reach out in a very practical way. This may mean digging a well in India, reaching out to orphans’ in Africa whose parents have died of AIDS on missions, or feeding the homeless, and ringing the Salvation Army bell with you this Christmas to help the community. Whether it’s a two week mission trip or a day of service, they realize that life is more than the stuff they accumulate. Even though they may not become a missionary later in their life, at least this experience gives them a taste of doing something that is definitely not self-centered.

Letting our children have this experience is a test for us as parents, a test of our trust that God will take care of our kids. Allowing them to go out of the country sends our children a message while they are young that they were born for greatness and destined to impact the world.