Glaa-tober

Hey strangers! It’s been a while since we last talked. I hope this post finds you in good health and in a time of good cheer! No matter what’s going on in your life, take a second to breathe, sit back, and enjoy an update from the last month at Great Lakes Adventist Academy.

I’m not a camping person. Let me rephrase that. I’m not a camping without my cellphone type of person. The second I got on our bus going to the Junior-Senior campout, I started freaking out in my head. My palms started sweating and I was growing a bit anxious. Then we got to Camp Au Sable, and spent four days there that will be a memory I keep in my back pocket for years to come. Memories like running around in the dark and trying to scare the other cabins, (keywords: trying to), riding horses, and talking for hours and hours outside with the girls who would soon be my best friends. Maybe I am a camping person after all. I just needed to be with the right people.

It’s crazy to think that in just a few years I’ll be graduating high school and I won’t be able to be here every day. When you graduate from Great Lakes Adventist Academy, you don’t stop being a part of the GLAA Family, you just change titles from being a student to alumni! Our annual Alumni Weekend is something I look forward to. Generally, it’s a great time to see former students and staff members. Unfortunately, due to COVID, our Alumni Weekend was changed to a virtual format just weeks before the scheduled date. While we weren’t able to physically be together, we were able to connect with people who graduated from Adelphian Academy, Grand Ledge Academy, Cedar Lake Academy, and of course, Great Lakes Adventist Academy. These alumni are now living all over the world, but many were able to come together during the programing on Facebook and YouTube. We even had the CLA 50 year graduates rent a space in the Cedar Lake Elementary School for the weekend so they could get together in a smaller group. While it wasn’t ideal, we still enjoyed musical performances by current and past students, an updated roll call, and so much more. If you missed the program, you can find it on Facebook. We’re already beginning plans for next year’s Alumni Weekend, which will hopefully take place on campus the weekend of October 14, 2022.

Here at GLAA, we are always looking for new ways to have fun, and this month, we introduced roller skating! A skating rink not too far away recently went out of business, and we were able to purchase almost 200 pairs of skates at a very low cost. Students can now grab a pair of skates during designated recreational time, lace those bad boys up, and show off their moves, all while smiling ear to ear. This isn’t just a student thing- oh no-no. You will see many staff members gliding across the gym floor with sparkling eyes as they relive some of their memories.

Proverbs 18:24 says “one who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother”. As you look through the pictures from this post and our social media sites, you will notice that people are holding onto other people for support. This isn’t just a roller skating scenario, but rather something we live by here at Great Lakes Adventist Academy. It’s not unusual to see the students spending their free time helping other students, even though they may have their own priorities. I see our student body regularly go above and beyond for others. It’s inspiring to see young people serving, not only adults, but their classmates and friends. All the friends that we make here will undoubtedly last us a lifetime, and knowing that I can count on anyone here reassures me that Jesus is alive and active on this campus day by day.

As we come to the end of this month’s update, I want to encourage you all to pray for our school as we enter Week of Prayer, that our campus experiences an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Stay tuned on our Facebook and Instagram pages to get frequent updates. As for the blog, well, I guess you’ll just have to subscribe and wait until next time. I hope you all have an amazing week and that you can remember – a bad day is just a bad day, but our God is a good God.