This week, our Coalfield School Story will highlight our phenomenal “One-Heartbeat” community which, in our minds, includes the Petros-Joyner community. God blessed so many people this week through our small, but strong community. I have seen Him do some extraordinary things this week through ordinary people.
He blessed our school and community through our homecoming queens and their families as they worked tirelessly for weeks to raise incredible funds for our school. He blessed us through staff members who went above and beyond. Mrs. Jessica Beck Stubbs coordinated for high school and Mrs. Kristi Jackson coordinated for middle school. I thank Him for these ladies who willingly gave of their time and effort on top of all the other things they had going on, to run this incredible fundraiser. Also, He blessed us through the willing support of our community for giving to the fundraisers that accompanied the homecoming event and through all the family members of the queens who gave their time and effort to help make this fundraiser a success. I want to personally thank everyone who bought something, donated, or assisted our queens in any way.
Through His blessings our high school prom is now funded, our TCAP/EOC reward trip for students who earn proficiency on the state tests this Spring is now funded, our middle school enrichment (activities, supplies, trips, and programs) is funded, an effort to replace our school sign is funded. Words can’t express how thankful I am that we serve a faithful God and He has given us a small, but strong “One-Heartbeat” community who ALWAYS goes above and beyond to support our school.
God also blessed us through our small, but strong community in their support of the relief effort for flood victims. In the days since the horrific flooding event happened, our community donated an enormous amount of water, diapers, personal hygiene items, paper towels, toiletries, and so many other types of items. God provided an opportunity to serve with Petros-Joyner School to house and organize these items for transport to flood victims. Several of our students helped with this enormous amount of donations that poured into our school from our small community. Students helped load items onto a school bus for transport to Petros-Joyner School which was the pickup location to be picked up by community members for transport to the flood victims. Several staff members at Petros-Joyner and Coalfield helped with the coordination of this relief mission. I know I keep repeating this, but God overwhelmingly blessed many folks through the communities of Coalfield and Petros-Joyner this past week. I witnessed students and staff at both schools be the hands and feet of Jesus as they moved all of these donations to help others they didn’t know and would most likely never meet. They were just doing what they could, where they were, with what they had, to help out. All glory to God!
Also, I have witnessed our small community churches collect, organize, and coordinate donations and the sending of mission teams to help flood victims. Our God works through imperfect people in so many different ways.
There were so many more good things that happened in our school that I could talk about this week, but I wanted the entire focus to be on how our God has used our small, but “One-Heartbeat”strong community this week.
Please continue to lift up our school, students, staff, and the flood victims to the One Who spoke the universe into existence.