Here We Go!

two:fiftytwo After School Program - New kids, new director, new safety protocols, and of course, new challenges. We hired a brand new After School Program director who is new to 2nd Mile. His name is Holden and he has previous experience as a middle school teacher. It seems that each new week of school, he has more students signed up to participate in the after school activities. As we get to know and learn about the new students, there are already some good signs as far as the value of this program. Each day, the students journal about their feelings, energy level, and a gratitude for their day. Some of the students ask for the spelling of the adults' names that help out to put down as their gratitude, others write down "being here" as their gratitude. There's no doubt that having safe spaces where students receive extra attention and love is highly valued by kids and their families. Pictured below is an activity where students made paper rockets that would be launched off of a straw with their breath. Pray for Holden as he adjusts to 2nd Mile, adjusts to more and more students, and prepares for a long but fun-filled year of smiles, tears, and laughter.

BLOCK Middle School Program - Back in the building in person, I'm excited to invest a lot of time in these kids, growing them into leaders and giving them a greater understanding of who they are and who God has made them to be. So far we have a solid five students and the years they've been a part of 2nd Mile are 7 years, 5 years, 4 years, 3 years, and 2 years. It's been great to see the kids in person. Our current project has been constructing a new ping pong table we got for the program. The kids learned about different tools, tool safety, and working as a team. One of the kids who is obsessed with Legos has really taken to working extra time on it. Hopefully, when it gets finished, the kids will have much more appreciation of it knowing they had a hand in building it. In a few weeks, three of these students and I will be going to see the musical Hamilton as a part of a potential new partnership with an organization that I'll share more about below. This past month I had the privilege of celebrating Jabarie's birthday at Top Golf. Jabarie has been with 2nd Mile since he was in 2nd grade. He is now in 7th grade. He is a perfect picture of resilience and has got a good heart. I'll just say he's been through a lot more than any kid his age should have to go through. It's good to see him still smiling.

Young Life - Pray for this to be a good partnership for 2nd Mile. Because of our small staff, the number of events involving high school students is down. Doing virtual programs during the pandemic and having nothing in person was a major blow to being in touch with those students. Thankfully, we had a meeting with someone in charge of the Northwest Jacksonville region of Young Life. I know Young Life is a Christian organization all over the country. As of right now, they have students, staff, the program, just no physical space to operate due to restrictions with extra curricular activities in the public schools. Rather than 2nd Mile reinventing the wheel, we are hoping to help be a part of something God is already doing with this organization, hopefully being able to provide the space for high schoolers to have fun, grow, and be safe.

Exciting things coming up - We are having our Family Fall Festival October 23rd! We missed last year due to COVID, but we're hoping to bring back the excitement in community with lots of trunk games, candy, food, music, and raffles. One thing we definitely could use help with is candy. If you would like to donate candy to 2nd Mile, you can ship it to:

1650 Margaret St. Suite 302, #339, Jacksonville, FL 32204

Or, you could make a donation on our website at 2ndmilejax.com and in the comments write, "candy for Fall Festival".

Other ways to get involved or even see more of what's going on with 2nd Mile.

-Check out our facebook page (2nd Mile Ministries)

-Follow 2ndmileministries on instagram

-Follow block_brentwood on instragram (our middle school program)