Dear Parishioners,

Welcome to another amazing start to our Sunday School year. We had great successes and challenges last year. We are excited to get started again. We plan to improve and expand our religious education program this year. We wanted to share our plans with the parish, so you can join us in our journey to educate our youth about our Orthodox Christian faith.

We will meet in August to plan curriculum and lessons with our teachers. We are committed to continuing the Virtual Sunday School videos that Father Angelo and Demos produced last year. We are excited to have the themes and topics set for each week of the upcoming year, so that both our teachers with experience and our teachers that are just starting out have the tools they need to be successful in the classroom. On that note, we are looking for six more people who are interested in serving our youth as Sunday School teachers. Our goal is to have two teachers in each classroom, so they can support each other throughout the year. We also would love to have some committed substitute teachers, so instruction is not interrupted for our children. If you are interested or know someone who would be, please reach out soon so that we can include you in the kickoff meetings! We’re happy to answer any questions you may have.

This year we are looking forward to continuing our study of the Old Testament. We will be starting off the year with King David, Prophet and Psalmist. Did you know that the Psalms are the most frequently quoted Old Testament scripture by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in the New Testament? We won’t stop there, we’ll cover the major prophets, selected minor prophets and the Wisdom books. Our goal is to provide a firm foundation in the Old Testament for our children so that they (and we!) may grow to understand how they point us to Christ.

Important Dates:
Sunday 8/28 – Sunday School/Greek School Clean Up Crew. Immediately following the Divine Liturgy Sunday 9/11 – First Day of Sunday School! Student registration will also be completed on September 11th

Please check our parish website for upcoming events and the school calendar.

The start of a new school year is a wonderful time to reset and start anew. It is bittersweet to leave the summer behind, but with fall comes beautiful changes in nature with leaves turning, cozy sweaters for cool nights, fresh school supplies, and anticipation for the new learning that will occur. We are excited to get started with this year. We hope to see all of our children’s smiling faces at the start of the year, and throughout the calendar year.

As always, please reach out with any questions, ideas, or suggestions to Lauren or Karina.

With love in Christ,
Karina and Lauren
Religious Education Directors