Michigan—In 2004, the staff at Great Lakes Adventist Academy (GLAA) decided to try to inspire the students to think beyond their world by making them aware of a specific mission project, giving them the chance to respond and take ownership. The results have been amazing!

Because of the unique Sabbath school situation at Great Lakes Adventist Academy, where students meet in the academy chapel and the school covers Sabbath school expenses, students have the opportunity to take on some unique mission projects.

Normal student participation in projects in the past was approximately $100 per year, but when the first project was launched in 2004 to raise money toward an Adventist Frontier Missions truck, the students gave a remarkable $500. Next, the students teamed up with Maranatha for the $10 Church Project in Peru, raising $667. In December 2004, disaster struck in the form of a tsunami in Indonesia. Students responded generously, giving $730 to the Indonesia Tsunami Disaster Relief Fund. At the conclusion of the school year, an amazing $1,897 was raised for these projects by enthusiastic students and staff!

The plan was carried into the 2005–2006 school year, and the results were just as amazing! The first project was helping a young couple with their mission in Bolivia. This couple came and shared personally with the students about their mission. The students raised more than $780 to further God’s work in Bolivia. Next, a total of $255 was raised to help send a group of students and their parents on a mission trip to Africa to share food and water with starving people there. The final project was for a mission group who went to El Salvador in July 2006, and $242 was raised to help the Adventist church in El Salvador. The 2005–2006 total was remarkable once again—$1,277.

God had been working on the students’ hearts. As an aid to these special mission projects, goal devices were displayed and reminders were given out, such as Lifesavers candy with a note attached for the Tsunami fund, encouraging students to be a “Lifesaver” and remember their money for the tsunami mission fund. Paper airplanes carrying a reminder message flew into the students' mailboxes to encourage support for the Bolivia mission.

At the beginning of the 2006–2007 school year, the father of one student came and shared his story of going through the genocide in Rwanda, losing his wife, and running and hiding with his two children. Instead of just leaving those memories and experiences all behind, he has a passion to help those who are still there. He raises money to buy cows for the widows of the men who were killed. The purpose is threefold: first, the women can drink the cow’s milk and gain nourishment; second, they can sell the extra milk for income; and lastly, they can use the fertilizer for their gardens, thus enabling them to survive in a very difficult time. Each cow costs $200, and students were challenged to raise enough for three cows. Instead, $875 came in for this project in Rwanda.

Currently, students are raising money to purchase four airfares to send a missionary family from Adventist Frontier Missions to Ireland.

The staff at GLAA is seeking to teach the students the joy of giving. These special mission projects are just one way for them to see how God can do great things when we work together for the good of others.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Arlene Leavitt, assistant development director at Great Lakes Adventist Academy