Woodburn Foursquare Kids

09/10/2024

Thought for the Day:

There is a pin that teachers seem to enjoy wearing that says “I Touch the Future, I Teach.” This pin should be worn by every person who comes in contact with any other person, because we all teach. Our influence on the world and its future is far greater than we can ever imagine. The nature of our influence will determine the direction the future takes.

The choices you make as you come in contact with those around you today will influence both their outlook for the day, as well as your own. If those choices tend to be negative, so will your day, and possibly the day of the other person. But a positive choice, a kind act can create an influence far more powerful than you can imagine.

If you choose to turn a negative act that has come your way, into a positive response, you may have started a chain whose links reach far into the future. If you make someone else's day brighter because of your act of kindness, they too will be likely to act with kindness, creating not only a chain, but a web that can spread.

Think how good you feel when someone does something kind for you. Think of the times this has happened and, as a result, you have then purposefully shown kindness to someone else, felt better about yourself.

Most teachers can think of a time when they were able to intervene in a conflict between two or more of their students. Often, it was a simple kind word, a smile at just the right time, a reminder to those in conflict of their positive potential, that turns the situation around, and turns angry expressions into smiles, and sometimes laughter.

The power of the simplest act of kindness is beyond imagination. When we teach this to our students (everybody around us) by example, we are empowering them. We are giving them the tools to make their lives less stressful. We are demonstrating how they can raise their self-esteem. We are showing them how to create their own positive environment.

Being positive and kind in a negative world is not always easy. Often it takes creativity to overcome the negativity all around us. But, remember that kindness is the key.

Try it. Touch your world with kindness today. Teach your students, whomever they may be, by your kind example. “Touch the Future, Teach (kindness)”

Fall in love with Jesus,
Paul V. Schmoll

08/06/2024

Thought for the Day,

It was early evening and my wife had come home from her day’s activities. She was standing by the in our kitchen preparing something to eat, and looking out the window into our back yard and beyond. All was quiet, the lights were off, and the light of the evening dusk was filtering into the room.

I got up from my work, walked into the kitchen to greet her, and on the way turned on the kitchen lights. I walked up to her, kissed her, told her I loved her, and asked her about her day. Her reply was, “Can we have the lights out, dusk is my favorite time of day, and I want to enjoy it.”

I remember over the years, that she has come home of an evening, and worked with the lights out, but never thought to ask or notice how much she enjoyed the evening light. I knew that when we were out on our bicycles, she always liked to watch the sun go down, disappearing gently below the horizon. However, I had never connected that with dusk being her favorite time of day.

It seems amazing to me, that each day I learn something new about her. You would think that after more than half a decade of marriage we would know all there is to know about one another, but we don’t. Perhaps that’s what keeps our relationship exciting, there’s always something new.

I know that when things get a little routine, I like to bring home a flower, or a gift just to brighten her day. She does the same. Not expensive things, just something that happens to suit the thought that we have for one another at that time. That usually gets things going again.

Since I like to write, sometimes I’ll write her a love note. Before I give it to her, I look at it and read it over and over to myself, reminding me of how much we love one another. It makes me feel good. She doesn’t like to write like I do, so she will just write “I love you” on a sticky note and leave it in unusual places that I will notice.

Not all in our marriage is as peaceful as this sounds. Two people can’t live together as long as we have and not disagree occasionally. However, even in the poorer times, we seem to have a way of working through it. We try to never go to bed angry with one another. That makes for some wonderful times of forgiveness and love. When these occasions arise, I will sometimes just think, “I don’t agree, but it really isn’t worth the frustration of an argument,” and I suppose she thinks the same thing. She will say, “That’s OK, I love you anyway.” and gently places her hand on my cheek.

When you choose to love someone, the way I have chosen to love my wife, there are lots of rewards. It isn’t the big rewards that make it worthwhile, rather all the little daily rewards. The kind and gentle touch, a loving word, a cup of coffee brought in at an unexpected time.

For us, love has always been being willing to say we are sorry, giving love without any expectations, doing things for each other just because we wanted to, and not expecting things in return.

I cherish our love and never take it for granted. I always look forward to learning something new, and from now on I will never turn on the kitchen light while she’s enjoying her favorite time of day.

Fall in love with Jesus.
Paul V. Schmoll

08/04/2024

Thought for the Day

“SMILES”

Smiles are everywhere, just look and you’ll see,
In the bloom of a flower, or a squirrel in a tree.
On a beautiful rainbow, or a sight in the wild
Or that magical toy you’ve bought for a child.
Yes, smiles are everywhere, and they want to be found
They’ll just pop up to take the place of a frown.
You can’t get away from them, but who’d even try?
‘Cause they’re there to please, to help you get by.
So, if your day’s sad, or a little bit blue.
Or you have a problem and know not what to do.
When things get difficult and seem out of hand
Search for a smile, they’re all over the land
Just look for a smile, they hide in every small corner.
Then grab one, hold on, and your day will get warmer.
For this is the reason that God made a smile,
It’s his way of giving us love and peace for a while.

By: Paul V. Schmoll


Look at your children’s faces. Can you make them smile today?

Fall in love with Jesus,
Paul V. Schmoll

08/02/2024

Little Thought for the Day:

Smiles are always worth giving, friendships are worth keeping. Smile as often as you can, and tell your friends you love them whenever you can.
The best way to teach children about making friends is to involve them in your friendships in any way that you can. As they see you develop friendships, and as they see how much you value them, they will begin to develop the skills themselves. Remember to reinforce that friendships come from within us, and are not the responsibility of the other person. To be a good friend, we accept others as they are, overlook their mistakes, become quick to forgive, find as many ways as we can to do things for them, and always keep in mind that helping is a way of showing love.

God loves you, love Him back,
Paul V. Schmoll

08/01/2024

Thought for the Day:

Several years back, I met my biological mother. As a child, my adoptive parents had told me who she was, and I had seen her occasionally. However, for reasons that only they understood, I was allowed only limited contact with her, and after a while, even that pretty much disappeared. As a result, I had not seen her since I was a child.

I must admit that, as a child, I had a hard time thinking of her as my mother. My adoptive mother was the person I recognized as my mom, and that’s how it should have been.

I had prepared for our meeting for weeks. I made an album of pictures of my life, and I wrote pages and pages of accompanying stories about events that went with the pictures. I also made a book of collected Thoughts for the day to give to her. My wife and I put together a basket of Oregon products. I specifically bought her an angel, to represent her as my Angel Mother.

As I approached the door, I could see her--She was beautiful!!!-- I had the angel in my hand, and as she answered the door, I said “Are you Jean Essert?” She replied that she was. I said “I have a delivery for you.” She asked what this could be all about, and as she swung the door open to receive the delivery, I said “I’m your son, Paul.” I don’t need a picture to forever remember the look on her face. We immediately embraced. We hugged for the longest time.

We spent the remaining time together talking, meeting family, hugging one another, and just finding one another again.
As the story of my adoption unfolded, I found in it an incredible amount of love. I knew that even discussing it was uncovering a lot of pain. However, what else I found was a beautiful lady of incredible strength and character who loved her children, including me, very deeply. I remember looking at her as she stood a few feet from me and thinking, “is it really possible that this wonderful, beautiful woman is really my mother?” I don’t know what I imagined that she would be like, but whatever that was, she was so much more.

At the time she was 79 years old, and got around like a person years younger, and ran a business out of her home. She was artistic, articulate, knowledgeably deep, and wise with a wisdom that only comes with years of living.

Our visit made me keenly aware of how deeply she missed me, and how difficult it was for her to give me up to someone else.

Part of the story was that she had been misled into giving me up. None the less, she said to me “You must never feel badly about your adoptive parents, they loved you deeply, and you were best off where you were.” Without getting into detail, I now believe that and understand a little better what love really means.

When we left to come home, she said “let me go in the house and close the door before you leave, I don’t want to see you leaving, that way I’ll know you will be back.”

I told her, “Don’t worry Mom, I’ll definitely be back. Soon!”

She is gone now; in fact, I am slightly older than she was at the time of that meeting. I did get back to see her, actually I was able to do so a few times each year until the time of her passing.

Every once in a while, I think of her and how courageous she was throughout her life. Yes, like all of us, she made some choices that made her life a more difficult than she had wanted. However, she was a woman who loved intensely, and I was fortunate enough to be a recipient of that love. She had suffered at times, but was resilient and each time she had a misfortune she managed to come out on the other side of it still positive and more determined than ever to make love her most important attribute.

She was an amazing woman, and I am proud to have been a part of her story.

Love has a way of conquering the most difficult of situations. However, love is also a choice, and it is important that we continually keep making the choice to love, especially when it is most difficult.

Fall in love with Jesus,
Paul V. Schmoll

07/23/2024

Thought for the Day:

What accomplishments have you achieved lately? We don’t often ask ourselves that question, or if we do, we fail to answer it correctly.

Every day of our lives we achieve things. Most of them aren’t big things, instead, most often they are little ordinary things. However, each is significant in some way.

When we fail to take note of our achievements, all that’s left are the failures. The fact is, nearly everyone has far more accomplishments than failures. Yet we linger, even worry over the failures, and never seem to notice what we have achieved.

Did you make someone smile today? Did you do something for someone? Did you complete a task that has needed to be done for a long time? Were you complimentary to someone? Did something you say seem important to someone, or to yourself? These are just a few of the possibilities.

Every morning, the first thing I do when I get up is to kiss my wife. She may not notice so much when I do, but she notices if I don’t. The accomplishment is that I have caused her to notice my tiny moments of affection. That is not a big accomplishment, but it is one that I enjoy.

Every day when I was teaching, I would do things for my children that would make them smile. They were extremely small things, but each one was an accomplishment.

While writing this, I began thinking about my day. I can hardly think of one failure. Oh, I’m sure there were failures, but concentrating on what has been accomplished, makes the failures seem far less important, and thus easier to put aside. Besides, I always try to find some reason to make my failures a lesson to help me do better. Then a plan evolves that is positive, and suddenly, just the plan becomes an accomplishment.

I watched a child have tears come to his eyes when he failed at something. I told him that we should make a plan to succeed. We did, and he succeeded. Then we celebrated. He learned that his accomplishment was far more important and worthwhile than worrying about his failure.

Today, as you go through the day, make note of your accomplishments. Celebrate each one, no matter how small. It might even be a good idea to write them down so that you can review them at the end of the day. If something happens during the day that causes you to fret, take out your list, read it carefully and remind yourself of all the good things that you have done.

Do this with your children. Children accomplish far more than they fail. Help them to notice. Then celebrate the results.

Love the Children,
Paul V. Schmoll

07/17/2024

Thought for the Day.

We all have a need to be noticed. We need other human beings, for at least a moment, to look at us and give us some attention, even if it is in passing.
Everyone tries, in different ways, to get attention. The number of ways to get attention is as vast as the number of individuals.
The manner in which we get the attention of others tends to raise or lower our self-esteem. The interesting part is that each of the things we do come as clear and conscious choices. Therefore, we can choose to get the attention of others by doing bad things, weird things, funny things, kind things, or things that will build up others. The choice is ours.
If we choose to fill this need by our acts of kindness, good will, and trying to help others feel better about themselves, we will find that the world around us is better for our having been there.
There is no better way to build self-esteem than by helping others build theirs.

Fall in love with Jesus,
Paul V. Schmoll

06/22/2024

Have you registered your kids yet?! Or told your friends and neighbors?!

The fun kicks off tomorrow night🎉🎉

Jesus gives us the most amazing reason to party. That’s why we believe God’s love and the Gospel of Jesus is the best news ever.We are looking forward to seeing you at VBS 2024!All kids entering Kinder through Completed 6th are welcome to register!

06/11/2024

Spread the word and invite your friends🎉
Also pre-register now!!
This helps things go so much smoother for our registration crew💙

https://woodburnfoursquarechurch.churchcenter.com/registrations/events/2303538

Save the date! Spread the word🎉
Registration will open soon!

06/07/2024

Register by THIS Sunday for the $95 discount!!

Kids Camp will be held at Canby Grove Conference Center in Canby July 8-11, 2024. Camp is for kids entering 3rd grade through completed 5th grade. This is a PRE-REGISTRATION for kids camp. Once we receive your $200 payment we will send you a coupon code that will hold the full $295 that you will app...

05/03/2024

Kids Camp will be held at Canby Grove Conference Center in Canby July 8-11, 2024. Camp is for kids entering 3rd grade through completed 5th grade. This is a PRE-REGISTRATION for kids camp. Once we receive your $200 payment we will send you a coupon code that will hold the full $295 that you will app...

03/18/2024

Thought for the Day:

I’m admitting that I am old. Now that I have my first “great” grandchild, I must admit that I’ve truly reached the stage of life called “Old!” That being said, I began thinking of all of the wonderful inventions, cures, and other devices that weren’t around or were invented but not popular yet when I was a child.

Let’s consider when I was eight years old. At that time, although it had been invented, we had never heard of television. In fact, in the city where I grew up it would be another year before the first television station began to broadcast and the first television was purchased. In addition, that the first television was either paid for in cash, or using in-store credit or a bank loan, because the first credit card, the Diner’s Club credit card, was only a year old at the time, and was yet to be widely used or accepted. Also, it would be several years before a color television could be purchased in my city, and three years before a nationally broadcast color event would occur, which, by the way was the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California.

I recall, that on January 20, 1953, I was in school and the classes were taken to the auditorium where a black and white television had been set up, and we watched the inauguration of President Eisenhower and part of the inaugural parade. To say the least, we were both excited and amazed, and I think that may have been the first time I had actually watched television, at age nine and a half.

When I was eight years old, my parents had just bought their first refrigerator. Before that we had an ice box. An ice box is simply a large wooden box that is insulated and has a section for food and a section for a block of ice. At that time there were ice companies that had regular delivery of two-hundred-pound blocks of ice. We would purchase a block of ice on a regularly scheduled basis, and my Dad would keep it in our garage covered with burlap bags to keep it from melting too fast. As needed, he would take an ice pick and chip off smaller blocks of ice to place in the icebox. Refrigerators had been around for several years, but were expensive for the average family, so many families had yet to have purchased one.

Going to church was something everybody did, and it was common to ask “what church do you attend?” We didn’t go to church just on Sunday mornings, we went Sunday evening, and Wednesday night as well, then when I became a teenager, there was a youth night on Friday evenings. Like today, there were many faiths, but nearly everyone had one and was unafraid to let it be known by attending a of worship regularly.

Some of the things that had not yet been heard of, or were not yet in popular use yet were electric typewriters, tape cassets, CDs, FM radios, contact lenses, ball point pens, air conditioners, copy machines, lazer beams, panty hose, dish washers, clothes dryers, computers, cell phones, seat belts in cars, and the internet.

The telephone had been around for a while, but most people had a party line, either two or four party. A party line was a number of homes that were connected to the same phone line, so you could pick up your phone and one or more of the other parties on your line might be on a call and you couldn’t make your call till they ended their call and hung up. (And yes, you could actually listen to another party’s phone conversation.) Push button phones did not come around for another ten years, and cordless phones for the home came along many years later. The idea of a phone that could receive pictures and be on your person wherever you went was popularly an imagined device in the comic strip “Dick Tracy” where part of the story always included what was called a “Two-way Wrist Radio,” but I don’t think in the wildest imagination of the average person they ever thought it might someday become a reality. When I was eight, long distant calls were extremely expensive, and had to be made by calling a telephone operator and asking her (I don’t think there were any male operators yet) to make the call, then you would hang up and the operator would call back when the connection had been made.

When I think of all of the changes that have taken place in my lifetime, and the new and exciting inventions that have come along, I kind of wonder about when my great grandchild reaches my age what will she look back on and recognize as having come then gone away. --“Just think, back when I was young, everybody had to depend on something called a “Smart Phone.”

Fall in love with Jesus,
Paul V. Schmoll