Greetings!
It is a bittersweet time in Redwood City. Although we are incredibly excited about a number of amazing things happening in the next month, we are also aware of the pain felt by our precious neighbors in NFO whose school is closing in June. Some are still making decisions about where their children will go. Please pray as many are beginning to experience much sadness. At GU we are grateful you have been on this journey with us! There is no way we could do this without your heart, love and ongoing encouragement!This month we celebrated our 12th year serving Redwood City Schools and reminisced with some dear families as we celebrated Easter together.
May is a time of transition. We are asking you to consider joining us on a number of fronts. You are welcome to come out and join us as we bid farewell to the Fair Oaks students on Friday, 5/10 – interestingly enough, that is Mother’s Day in Latin America. Our plan is to bless the families with a beautiful send off and gift cards provided by our very own Rica Ruiz.
Moving and School Closures
With the transition of many students in RCSD we have been asked to clear out our 3 classrooms. The schools needs to make many changes to their existing campuses to make room for the influx of students. We will be wrapping up our programs as follows:
John Gill – A2 – last day for RWCR Monday, 5/13
Fair Oaks – Room 20 – last day for AEC & RWCR Friday, 5/10 – Dia Del Nino
Roosevelt – Programming continues until the end of the school year Friday, 6/7
We will pack up the classroom, but not until 6/3.
We Are Hiring!
We are hiring a team member to assist us in closing our classrooms and preparing for summer. We will need your assistance with this endeavor. There will be lots of packing of books, supplies, materials and of course some heavy lifting as we determine where we will move/donate or toss items.
3 Week Summer Outreach
Monday, 6/17 — Friday, 7/5 (no program 7/4)
We are incredibly excited about our summer programming. We will have a tremendous outreach to our families from North Fair Oaks that will be hosted on the Redeemer Lutheran campus. This has been a long-standing dream to offer a program like this and we would love for you to join us! We have identified some teachers who will join us and already have volunteers signed up from Redeemer! We will provide transportation for the families in NFO and have a goal of a total of 60 children in attendance (40 from NFO and 20 from Redeemer Lutheran), This has never been done and we are excited to offer a cross cultural experience for children and families. It’s a local mission trip right in our city!
We hope you will join us as we will continue to offer reading, but in addition to that we have a full schedule of great programming for the whole family. Mothers of the children are invited to join us as we will provide breakfast and lunch, sports, VBS, games, ESL, and so much more. We will have a movie night, Zumba, field trips, music, Bible stories and we’d love to have you join us! All of this needs to be bathed in prayer – we’ll have lots of opportunities for that! While many are on summer break, we are on summer MISSIONS!
Backpacks – Our Annual Drive
We are so grateful for our partners and plan to distribute 1,000 backpacks to children as we have for 6 years. We will need help with that endeavor in July.
Lastly, in the Fall our plan is to continue on all 3 RWC campuses. We are grateful for our relationships in Redwood City! When the time is right, I’m sure we’ll need help moving some items onto the campus! Be on the lookout for more information on that in July as well.
Our deepest gratitude to you we couldn’t fathom doing this without you. Please continue to pray and ask God what part you can play in this great endeavor.
June Save The Dates
Saturday, 6/1 7pm Century Redwood City, Generations United to sponsoring this movie with Bravemaker http://www.collisionsmovie.com/
Friday, 6/7 Last day of school
Saturday, 6/8 Benefit Concert (featuring our very wonderful Benita Hopkins 5pm Irvington Presbyterian, Fremont
Tuesday and Thursday, 6/11 & 13 Volunteer Orientation 5-7pm
Saturday, 6/15 AAD Dance performance, Redwood City