Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church is located in peaceful SE Boise.  Our campus houses the church and the Margo Borden Christian Education building, dedicated to the outreach ministry of Beginning Years Early Childhood Learning Center.  Surrounded by trees and a seasonal creek, we are home to diverse wildlife that give us great teaching opportunities.  Under our modular building we are currently housing a raccoon family.  Last year we had a  badger - yikes !  This past summer the little seasonal creek was dammed up by a beaver who chewed down two of our aspen trees across the church walk to use as building material.  What fun we had reconstructing his dam after animal rescue took him away!  How blessed we are to have the opportunity to take our teaching outside. 

 

          Beautiful Savior has 2 outreach Children's ministries:  BSLC Preschool, the traditional part time school year program, reaches children with a stay at home parent whereas Beginning Years is our full day year round program for working parents.  Both offer academics, Bible teaching, music, art and great child development programs.

            Beginning Years takes children as young as 1 and has a before and after school  program, bussing to three local elementary schools.  Very few children are from a Lutheran background and many are completely unchurched which gives us great outreach opportunity.  Being close to Micron, we see children from all over the world.  We've had parents from India and China ask us not to teach their children about Jesus and we respond that Jesus is what we're all about and our #1 goal is to share God's love with the children as we teach them the Bible.  Many have entrusted us with their children and in doing so we have witnessed to them through parent letter devotions, scripture bulletin boards and through the Bible lessons and prayers their children bring home.  We are planting seeds!

            The children at Beginning Years reach out to our community in many ways.  We visit the "granmas and granpas" at an assisted living center several times a year and share Jesus songs, finger plays and artwork.  Then we spend time with them doing crafts, singing old time songs together and giving lots of hugs!  At Thanksgiving we collect food boxes and at Christmas, mittens and scarves to donate to needy families from the local elementary schools.  On a global scale we participate in Operation Christmas Child sending shoe boxes of gifts overseas.  Additionally we sponsor a little boy from India named Monty.  From the coins the children bring in each month Monty is now able to attend a Christian school as well as get food, clothing and medical care.  When we sing " Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World"...they really understand and believe it!

            Two big events at Beginning Years are, of course,  Christmas and Easter.  We spend all of December learning about the Nativity through songs, dress up, dance, bells, books and making lots of crafts.   Each year we have a Christmas pageant that all of the children participate in from our tiny one year olds dancing, to our school age kids reciting scriptures and everyone in between.  Our pageant night is filled with smiling faces as the children share Jesus with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends.

            Easter brings our "Journey in His Footsteps"  event in the upper rooms of the church.  The children experience the sounds and sights of Jesus' time as they wash each others feet, share the last supper, pray in the "garden" and nail their sins to the cross.  The time is unforgettable and they bring their parents back to walk through in the evening.  It is an outreach tool that we also share with the congregation on Easter Sunday.

   What a wonderful God we have to let us participate in children's ministry!

                                                            -Sandy Edmondson, Director of Beginning Years

                                                                        BeginningYearsCC@gmail.com