TRANSCRIPT
Shanxi: Hello, this is Shanxi Omoniyi, host of MPE’s Homeschool Hints podcast to encourage you wherever you may be on your homeschool journey.
Today’s episode is a special one. We’re celebrating 40 years of Midwest Parent Educators, and I’m sitting down with someone who was there for much of that story. Todd Kangas joined MPE about two years after it was founded in 1986 and went on to serve as president during the organization’s most significant years of growth and maturity.
My mom served as Todd’s administrative aide and MPE office manager for almost his entire tenure, so much of what MPE became was built by the two of them together. I’m looking forward to hearing more from Todd about that partnership and about my mom that I may not even have heard of before. Todd, welcome to the show.
Todd: Thanks, Shanxi. It’s just a joy to be here with you. I love you and love your family.
Shanxi: We love you too, Todd.
Todd: Let’s just not get into a debate. (laughs) I don’t want to lose today. (laughs)
Shanxi: What did MPE look like in its earliest days, and what drew you into the organization just a few years after it got going?
Todd: I got transferred here with a new job with Hewlett Packard in like October of 1988, and as we were exploring - we were living in Omaha, Nebraska - and my wife and I both prayed about where should we live? The office where I’d work was near Swope Park. Should we live on the Missouri side, buy a house there, or should we live on the Kansas side?
And so we both prayed ahead of time and felt God had spoken to us that we should live on the Kansas side, each one of us separately.
Then we started doing research on homeschooling in Kansas. And we found out like a year before, a lady got arrested for violating school truancy laws and put in jail for homeschooling.
And we looked at each other and said, Was that the Lord?
So when we moved here in ‘88, as they were unpacking the moving truck, neighbors came over to introduce themselves.
The lady next door to us worked in the school cafeteria, was a manager at the school our children would go to for the neighborhood school.
And the lady across the street would have been our oldest child’s schoolteacher at the public school.
So the guys were still taking stuff in off the truck, and Pat was calling HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association) to make sure our membership was current because we remembered what had happened.
And so when we got here, there was a desperation. We were pioneers. You know, somebody once said, it’s hard to be a pioneer because they’re the ones with the arrows in the back. We were there.
And it was a very diverse group. I still remember there was, like, 44 families in ‘88 when we got here. They’d been going a couple years now, ‘86 and ‘87, and we were here at the beginning of school year basically. And there was like a field day at a local park. We got to mingle and meet people.
But one of the things that was so important at that time was the need for fellowship and encouragement. In Nebraska, we went to a big church in Omaha. more families in our church and homeschool than here in Johnson County.
The biggest need was, How do I identify? Because everyone went to different churches. I mean, like, two families went to this church. They were brother and sister, and their families were homeschooling, and another family went to a different church, and there wasn’t like a strong community of people in any one church.
So when we got here, there was the desperation and need for one another because nobody was an expert. We were all beginners. And what did you hear? I mean, what are you doing? And we’d been homeschooling for a few years already.
Today people may get started homeschooling differently than we did, but my wife heard a James Dobson Focus on the Family interview with Raymond Moore about how homeschooling would be a valuable thing for your family.
And our daughter was about to start kindergarten, and she brought it up to me, and I said, Well, let’s do it as a one-year experiment and we’ll evaluate one year at a time. I thought, my wife is a registered nurse. I thought, well, really, I didn’t go to kindergarten, and it probably hurt me because everything you learn, you learn in kindergarten. I started school in first grade, I skipped kindergarten, but I thought, oh, how can we hurt our daughter by homeschooling her that first year?
We evaluated and after 30 years, we said, okay, after all eight of ours graduated from homeschool high school.
Shanxi: What did you imagine success looking like, or were you even thinking about what success would look like when you stepped into leadership?
Todd: Well, the first thing success looked like was legal protection for our homeschool families. A lot of my vision centered around how do we have a voice in Topeka?
One of the things we did – we had, like, internship programs where some of the older kids would go serve as interns in the House, Kansas State House and Senate. My daughter and Jonathan Akridge both addressed how House Committee on Education or Senate Committee and they were interviewed by them and they both did excellent, did a wonderful job there.
That’s a pretty telling, powerful testimony when you’ve got kids that are homeschooled articulating what they’re doing.
And I would go and speak to every year to people coming up through the ranks politically. I would get invited to come and spend an hour with them talking about educational policy regarding homeschooling and the benefits and all.
So I would be out there speaking to up and coming politicians. We would have Day Under the Dome where we would go, homeschoolers would invade Topeka, and go around and everyone would bring something to their local representative, whether you voted for them or not. You just went to let them know homeschoolers are here, we talk well, we look like we’re not from outer space.
And so, success was letting people know who we were, that we weren’t weirdos, that we were registered voters, always important in the political environment.
Shanxi: What was the hardest part of representing homeschooling to people who didn’t understand homeschooling?
Todd: Their fear. They all thought that you’re raising cult members.
You know, a lot of grandparents didn’t believe their children could teach their grandchildren. How do you convince them? Because they sat there and thought, well, unless you’ve been trained to educate, you can’t do the job.
It would just be a matter of saying, well, we have the studies to support that homeschooling is succeeding. Oh, socialization was off the chart. You know, they can’t believe.
And so I would be prepared to say, here’s first off, what is socialization? And homeschoolers score again better than their school peers, they work better in an age-integrated situation because they’re in one, in their one-room classroom. They know how to speak to adults more comfortably than their public school peers. And they’re leaders in their peer groups outside of homeschooling.
And so, all sorts of data.
So, the big thing was for me, being prepared with answers that were scientifically backed and that I could present to them and say, Hey, here’s what’s going on. That, I think, really helped. I mean, that’s why I got I got invited.
I was on a lot of different panels with different public school leaders, parochial school leaders over the years, just addressing Chamber of Commerce.
Wherever it was, I would go and speak and represent home education as a viable alternative.
Second thing is, if you’ll notice, I bet even today, homeschoolers are typically pretty fiercely independent people, and I’d often say leading the homeschool group was trying to herd a group of cats. I mean, everyone’s going their own way.
At a graduation ceremony, someone would sit there and say, well, if you’re using that song, my child can’t graduate because it was published by this church and I don’t agree with that church. And the children, the students, not children, I mean, you were one of the seniors. You picked your own music. You voted on it.
So it was like, how do we get people to focus on the most important things? Some things that might look like a compromise. What’s the give and take that we can go with? I mean, we weren’t playing songs that were not honoring God. The words honored God, but some people, well, “That had a rock beat.” They just can’t, you know?
Shanxi: It’s a slippery slope, Todd. (laughs) Just kidding.
Todd: Oh, I’m telling you. And it was like, so success was, how do we try to bring the group together? The Bible says that the world will know that we are your disciples by our fervent love for one another.
Well, in a homeschool community, it’s hard to love one another because you’re different than me. You go to a different brand name church than me, and it was hard.
Shanxi: Was there something about homeschooling itself, the sacrifice that it involves that seems to shape a mother’s faith, even if she started out not quite sure of herself or regardless of her confidence level, so to speak?
Todd: No, no, that’s a great thought to ponder here, because you think about homeschooling, you’re doing it, Shanxi. It’s predominantly a mom’s role.
You could be in the marketplace making pretty good income, okay? But you and every other mom, I mean, like I said, my wife was a registered nurse. We chose to live on one income.
So one of the sacrifices was how do I manage? Because almost everyone was single income at that time, it was almost exclusively the moms doing the homeschooling. They gave up promising careers, income, vacations, nicer vacations, all sorts of things that these were sacrifices.
And what they’re doing, they were enrolling in a 24/7 career that didn’t have benefits, at least immediately, that didn’t look like benefits, that didn’t pay, that didn’t seem rewarding, and that they were totally sure they were going to fail at.
I did not know a homeschool mom that didn’t have some level of insecurity because again, they were launching out into virgin territory, so to speak. They have never done this before.
And everyone, I mean, their parents would say, what are you doing? You can’t teach my grandchildren.
One of the things I’ve seen over the years is because of that desperation, because of that fear of failure, the moms really had to plug into their relationship with Jesus. And to me, the ultimate compliment I would have for the homeschool moms is the fact that they invested their time first and foremost to get something from Jesus so they could live to have something to give to their children.
So I just saw women of faith in the homeschool community over and over again.
Shanxi: Yes, and I would just add to that too. I think that first generation was so important in setting up the foundation for the next generation because I know my mom, she gave up her job as a doctor just to be a mom first, and then from there, natural progression to homeschooling. And so I grew up thinking, I’ll do the same thing when I have a family.
And it’s interesting how God has now raised up a new generation of moms who work and homeschool on the side, but I would say it’s still a sacrifice. You have to juggle so many other things in addition to your full-time job of homeschooling your kids.
Todd: Yeah. Well, yeah, let’s talk about your mom, you know, and the confidence she had. You know, you think about it. Here’s your mom, a practicing physician, an MD. I remember her talking about how she was set up to fail.
She goes, “I have been trained to practice medicine, not to teach my daughters.” She goes, “How can I teach them anything?”
And so, I’m sitting there going, “You’re a doctor, Mei. You should be able to read. You should be able to study something. You should be able to communicate.”
And so your mom and dad felt the most important thing in your family was to raise you and your sister to be followers of Jesus, and they thought the best avenue for that was through homeschooling.
And so I would say the majority of people that we knew were sitting there saying, “There’s a worldview difference that we want to impart to our children different than the government schools are doing.”
And so at the beginning, it was a worldview battle. And like I said, your mom wondered like most moms, would she damage you?
It’s like people were coming from different backgrounds. And like I say, now people are doing working and homeschooling part-time.
One of the biggest things in the initial homeschooling time was overcoming the stronghold of how we did school before. Well, we figured we had to have school from 8:30 to 3:00. No, you don’t. Our kids could have all their schoolwork done before noon.
So you really don’t need to spend that many hours because it’s not time on task that was important. It was mastery.
You know what? I have never known a homeschool mom graduate a functionally illiterate child.
Because if you can’t read, you’re not gonna fool your mom. She will know. And believe me, she’ll go to whatever ends it takes to make sure you learn how to read. If she can’t do it, she’ll find the help.
If your child’s got a need, I mean, we had special needs. We had people come into our house and coach us on how to parent special needs children.
Shanxi: That was further down the road or at the beginning?
Todd: Yeah, that’s what we had child and teens identified on the spectrum. We needed help, so we went and got help. It was hard.
Shanxi: I can imagine, especially when you had other children before that…
Todd: Yes, that were not like that.
Shanxi: Let’s move a little bit further into the time that my mom served as office manager. I recall that you hired her. So, what was my mom like to work with day by day?
Todd: Well, first, she wasn’t a very good negotiator. (laughs) I mean, she didn’t require an MD salary.
It was like the best hire ever. I mean, a previous president, Dennis Miller, had the idea to hire like some office assistant and he actually, I was off the board at that particular time, and he hired my daughter. It’s the first one.
So she did it a year, and next president hired somebody else. And so what I found though is like I have certain giftings and skills, and I have glaring weaknesses.
And I am not insecure about my weaknesses, you know? You know, it’s like, and the problem is I’m probably too secure in my strengths.
And one of the best things about your mom is that the areas that she had amazing strengths and ability complemented so well my weaknesses, the details. I don’t even know how to spell detail, much less remember them.
All right, here you go, Shanxi, true story. Pat was going through her journal a couple months ago, and she goes, “You remember what happened three years ago?” I said, No. She goes, “You remember I had my appendix taken out?”
See this blank look?
She goes, “You don’t remember? I had my appendix, you took me to the hospital.” I said, “Pat, this is why you don’t take me in for medical history. Details are not important to me.”
This is what your mother had to work with. (laughs)
And she was so detail-oriented. I could express the visions and dreams I was having about the organization, and we could collaborate together. And then she could help to put the pieces of the puzzle together. That was one.
I didn’t have a scarcity mindset and we were very generous at MPE because I came in, I’d been a president before and Dennis was after me, and another, and then Kevin Trembly, and so a few years later I came back on the board and then I had like about a 19-20 year term after that, and that’s when we hired your mother.
Shanxi: Yes, definitely. What did you see in my mom that she may not even have seen in herself?
Todd: Well, I talked to my wife, Pat, about this too. Both of us, the first first word when we think about Mei, your mom, is faithfulness.
And another word is servant. Your mom sometimes I think had a hard time receiving acknowledgement and praise and tried to deflect. I think it was a cultural thing.
And so sometimes I felt it was hard for her to actually believe people were so blessed by her. And then I’d have to say, You know, we spoke initially about her doubts. “Can I ever teach my daughters anything?”
Well, I think her doubts were vindicated. I know both you and your sister were National Merit Scholars, and I know both your mom and dad are so proud of that, and rightfully so. So yeah, I mean, what I saw, I mean, is just, she’s wonderful.
Shanxi: Yeah, I was just blown away one time when I actually saw her, it was like conference season, and I think it was like 2014, so over 10 years ago, and I just Sitting down one evening, and I thought it was going to be a slow evening with her, and I just heard “ping,” and then a few seconds later, “ping,” and then a few seconds later, “ping,” and I was like, “What in the world is that noise?”
And she’s like, “Oh, it’s just the membership renewals coming in before conference.”
And I’m like, “This is happening every few seconds. How are you processing it? It’s literally like hundreds coming in all at once.”
And she’s like, “It happens every year.”
And she had never told us until that point. There was no reason to. It was just happening in the background.
And it just blew my mind that this is one person, and she’s literally handling hundreds of emails, and It was just what she did.
Todd: Yes, she’s a high-capacity person. When we talked about the finances and how she’s so gracious, no one feels shame.
Your mom always had a way of making people feel valued. That is a wonderful trait. It’s just the love of Jesus coming out of her.
She was always, I think, gentle with weakness. She never let a person’s situation cause her care for them to be diminished in any way. So, I mean, if you’re weak, the smoldering wick, the bruised reed, she wouldn’t extinguish the wick. She wouldn’t break the bruised reed. She just cared. And she had a gentle way of caring. She still does.
Shanxi: If you could say one thing to my mom right now about what those years meant to you, what would it be?
Todd: I think the biggest thing is in Matthew 25, Jesus was talking about the the talents and the one that get 10, 5, and 1.
Your mother was given talents by God. I mean, obviously academic and rational, logical skills, being a medical doctor. But she took the talents she had and invested them in you. She invested them in MPE. She was an excellent steward of the talents God gave her. She didn’t go and bury them. She used the God-given talent she had and blessed many other people.
Like you said, a lot of people wouldn’t got in the conference if she didn’t put in the extra time to sit there. I mean, homeschoolers are famous procrastinators. Did anybody ever try to sign the graduation after the deadline? (laughs)
But what I would say is that what Jesus in the parable spoke about the people that doubled the talents they were given. He said, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.”
Your mom’s, because of using her talents the way she did, she’s given great joy to Jesus because He loves to see people doing what He’s gifted them to do. And the many around her are blessed by using her talents so well.
I know you know, but I do think your mom is wonderful. And MPE is where they are because of the fact that she kept the things at the office moving wonderfully well. And I think it was like, was it 18 or 19 years she did that?
Shanxi: Yeah. It’s almost like, you know, we left the nest and MPE became her child. That’s what we joke about. (laughs)
So, moving on to the conference, one of the highlights of MPE. Walk us through the growth of the conference from what it started and to now the event which brings over 100 vendors every year. What was the turning point for you?
Todd: Well, basically, we started in a church building where vendors were in the lobby with a table and there weren’t that many families there. And MPE was growing, and then we ended up at a church that had a gym. Another place, we ended up two churches right down the street from each other and we scheduled people so that the vendors were at both buildings.
And I said, “This isn’t working well.”
And so, I went and the Overland Park Convention Center was just about to open up the next year. And so, we signed the third contract with them for the conference. And so, I think we did that two or three years.
But the problem was the city of Overland Park was glad to have us initially because they needed people to book it, but they wanted hotel, restaurant, and bar revenues from the conferences that were coming in there.
Well, guess what? The homeschoolers are pretty cheap. They didn’t want to get a hotel room at the and they weren’t going out to eat, I mean, I’m saying they were thrifty, not cheap. And so, we were not providing the tax revenues that the city of Overland Park wanted.
And so, they wouldn’t give us a contract in enough time for us to make the thing.
So, we had to look for alternative location and ended up at KCI Expo Center. They were very willing to work with us and have done for many years. It started from a small within a church, like maybe 15, 20 vendors, a few 100 people attending. and now you know it’s a pretty big event.
Shanxi: What are some of the memories from conference that really captured to you what MPE is all about?
Todd: I think first off is the involvement of the homeschool students because we had homeschool students totally running the children’s conference.
We started when they were 16 years old and I said here’s the vision: We’re doing skits, Write out the skit. We’ve got a six-year skit program so when you age out of this the next has the script you did, no sense in reinventing the wheel.
It works because by the time the younger children are older, they’re going to be volunteering in either the vendor hall or in the children’s ministry.
I specifically oversaw that myself, okay? And if you know my management style, they met at our house, and I let them do their thing.
Because you know what? It was not me doing it. It’s like, give the students the opportunity to succeed, express themselves. So I am not a controlling person. They did wonderfully well.
Students working in the vendor hall wearing ties at that time and dresses and serving and the vendors would go, “We just can’t believe how helpful your students are.”
We helped people unpack their (vendor items), and pack up to leave. And then all the kids got to get together for free pizza. We’d go to a restaurant. They loved the fellowship, and people loved seeing capable young people doing wonderful things.
Of the memories, that is the most important to me. Because as a parent, what I am, I’m running with a baton, the baton of faith, I’m trying to, and of work ethic, wisdom. I’m trying to hand that to my child to carry.
And so here we were teaching them to serve the Lord, to have a good work ethic and to and just to move forward. That was the best thing.
The logistics and everything. We had a great conference committee. We’d have somebody handle hospitality and vendors and workshop speakers. You know what we did? We’d meet like seven or eight times a year. I sat there and said, “Hey, you’re empowered. Go do it.”
But the whole thing was, it’s hands off, and just recruit and identify people that are talented. And so in the conference, conference committee, very talented people put that on, and it went very well.
Shanxi: How about some of the other traditions started through MPE? The Women’s Encouragement Day?
Todd: I sat there and said, “What’s the ministry of homeschooling? Who’s it ministering to? It’s the moms.”
I mean, Pat would just talk about things that people she’s interfacing with.
And I said, “You know what, why don’t we do what I would call a women’s encouragement day?”
And my wife is like your mom, a detail person. And I sort of explained my vision for it.
I said, first off, it starts with a lot of chocolate. And it starts with like an excellent lunch. Everything’s free and just linen laid out and stuff.
And then telling the dads, “Hey, your mom’s got the day off. You’ve got the kids one Saturday and don’t let them burn the house down and don’t let anybody die. Otherwise you’ve succeeded as the dad.”
And so make it a low bar so they can handle it. (laughs)
And so the Women’s Encouragement Day was so recognized as a benefit that other organizations around the country following that example. I think our very first speaker might have been Brian Ray’s wife. And there’s maybe 30 or 40 people at that one.
And it grew. I mean, and it’s a wonderful way to just honor the moms, to say thank you. They get together, fellowship, and just a day of spoiling.
And then the other thing is like, just seeing how the graduation evolved and became so important, and different things.
Like for me, I went off the board one year because in the old bylaws, you had to leave after three years, I think. But my son was going to be a sophomore in high school, or freshman, and I said, “Hey, let’s start a homeschool football team.”
And MPE, like one of the things we would do as an organization, we would help with seed money. One-time help to get things launched. And so, they helped with some seed money to help us do that. And it’s grown and it’s now called Christ Prep Football.
They’ve won some national championships. I mean, homeschoolers and Christ Prep students work together. I mean, just a huge thing that started from that. And so many other things that I’ve seen I mean, homeschoolers find a need and like the debate teams. Did anybody find that to be an enjoyable event?
Shanxi: Absolutely. (laughs)
Todd: I mean, so, so many good things that happened there.
Shanxi: I know that graduation also became a major event during your tenure?
Todd: So that was another that I oversaw because It was so important to me because I – all right, now this is going to sound a little judgmental maybe – but homeschool moms sometimes want to vicariously live their experience through their child’s graduation and they want it to look a certain way.
Well, I was the mean guy here and said, “The kids pick everything out.”
I mean, I had a couple of moms go ballistic when the kids picked the Hallelujah Chorus as like the processional. It was in the processional, recessional, whatever. And they’re sitting there and I mean, they’re just letting me have it.
And I’m sitting there saying, “I didn’t vote for it. You know, the kids did. And it was pretty unanimous. They love good music and that was what they chose.”
And because to me, I wanted things to be about the students. Here they are. They’ve run the race. It was like, it was really hard in the beginning. I don’t know what it’s like now, but there was some really challenging conversations.
So the homeschool, the graduation turned out to be, I mean, I think we had like 60, 70, 80 graduates, but it was precious.
And one of the things I felt important is that every parent would give a blessing to their graduate. And we would always try to give some sort of honoring thing to the moms at the graduation to recognize them. And the students would go out and give roses to everyone that had impacted them. They had a certain quota.
And so it was an amazing testimony of love between parents and students and the blessing time. Oh man, give me a Kleenex. I’m gonna need something during these. It was just a precious thing.
And how God just helped us to see what could we do to bless and honor not only the parents of the graduates, especially the moms, but also the graduates having the parents speak over to graduation.
Now we did have some people that would go over the timeline, and I’d have to sit there and tell the guys in the sound booth, cut it off there. And I warned, because they’re friends of mine, I warned him, it’s gonna get cut. I know you’re gonna go too long, because you did at a previous graduation and I am alert. (laughs)
So, you know, again, things that we went through and growth pains, but you know, it was precious to see.
Shanxi: I wanted to cover briefly the men’s mentoring group that you ran for homeschool dads for over a dozen years. What was the reason why you started that, and what did the dads need?
Todd: That was great. I mean, well, first, I still remember the first meeting advertising the MPE newsletter.
I said, since God said it’s not good for man to be alone, but so he took a rib from him and created Eve. I said, so we’re going to go ahead and have a men’s mentoring meeting. We’re going to start with ribs.
And so we went to Zarda (BBQ) restaurant that had a meeting room, and it evolved to be into my living room.
We would go through books on marriage because the number one thing I think as a homeschool dad (is,) “How do I have a good marriage with my wife?”
And so that would be one. I mean, I think one of my favorite books during that time that we went through was “Your Spouse Isn’t the Person You Married.”
And it just talked about how change is going on and the importance of business dates and romantic dates. They’re different. We need to coach each other.
How do we relate to one another apart from just talking about the children? Which is what I call the business meetings.
I saw one of the guys at someone’s 50th anniversary here recently.
He said, “Do you remember this meeting?” I said, “I know what you’re talking about right now” because I had a chocolate dessert they were to take home to their wives.
I said, “I’m calling your wife to let them know it’s coming home so you don’t eat it.”
And one guy got home and he said, “My wife said, ‘Where’s the dessert?’”
And he goes, “I didn’t believe you actually would do that.”
I said, “You get the results you inspect, not expect.” (laughs)
But yeah, but we had a great time, and it ended up being that many of the men from that group ended up being MPE board members, conference committee members. It was sort of a natural way of encouraging one that led to different leaders within MPE.
Shanxi: So 40 years later, what part of MPE’s story are you proudest of?
Todd: I think that, first off, it still exists with a Christian emphasis. It was interesting. We had a big succession plan when I was leaving. We had a two or three-year plan in place of how to replace my position because I carried a number of different things, and how do we take those tasks and different people picked up what I was doing.
So, I’m glad to see things have been divided up in ways that everything’s getting done in that way and the teamwork that’s there. I’m glad it still exists today.
But what I did when I left, I left because like, for example, I’d spoken to Michael Farris at HSLDA, “Hey, what do you do when you transition out?”
He goes, “Really, if you can walk away. It’s hard. But really, it helps the other people to establish and go forward.”
I just think of, and the Bible talks about for this because, “A man shall leave his mother and father and cleave his wife and the two shall become one flesh.”
Well, it was like the marriage of the organization and letting an adult child go away without trying to be involved.
You know, every now and then I hear a little snippet, but I’ve been trying to honor that. And so seeing that they’re still going, and I mean, understanding they’re having a 40th year anniversary, I’m glad to hear about that.
A Bible verse comes to my mind in 3 John 3. John said, “It gives me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it.” I believe the history of MPE is grounded in our adherence to the truth as best we understood what God was calling us to.
Shanxi: What do you hope that today’s members and leaders will carry forward from your legacy?
Todd: I think, one, it’s almost impossible to understand the challenges that we faced at the beginning of the homeschool journey. There’s not the same urgency. We sit there and think, “Hey, it’s really pretty easy to homeschool nowadays. I mean, hey, I’ve got online things. I’ve got all...”
I mean, the first co-op was at my house. My wife put it together because they thought, “How are we going to teach science to our kids?”
And so it’s like eight or ten kids. We found a school science teacher that was like, at Maranatha that had gotten married and was pregnant and wanted to do it and all the families came and like, maybe $10 a session.
What she would do is give an assignment for everyone and the moms would work with the kids and then once a month they would meet with the teacher to see did you get your science project completed. It was a low-cost thing.
We just had to find something. If there was a need, how do you meet the need and help comfort people that felt, “I have a weakness in this area”?
The challenges at the beginning – when you’re pioneers, you don’t have everything that’s been developed over 40 years. Because of that, we really, I think, needed to learn how to pray. So there was a foundation of prayer of, you know, “Give us this day our daily bread. Lord, give us protection. Give us wisdom. Show us what curriculum to use.”
There weren’t necessarily as many choices then as there are now. Where do we find what we need? It was like, if any of you be lacking wisdom, ask of the Father. who gives generously without reproach.
So we were hungry, needy people asking for help.
I don’t know that there’s that urgency for prayer now.
Maybe at the conference, my favorite thing was we developed a prayer room. At the beginning of the day through all the sessions, every single session had people praying real time for their session.
We would have speakers that didn’t know this come up and say, man, this was like the most amazing spiritual atmosphere of anywhere we’ve been. And it was like, you know, the prayer emphasis that we had, I mean, and amazing stories coming out of there.
I mean, like one day, somebody called in and said, “I can’t make it to speak. I’ve got, I’m sick.”
And they said, it was first thing in the morning.
So we’re going to call our prayer room. And God healed that person. They showed up and were able to teach, do their session.
And I mean, just little things, but this whole spiritual climate was found in prayer. And so that was, I would say, “Hey, pray about homeschooling, pray for the organization, pray for the leaders. You know, we want to pray for our kids, right? Well, don’t forget to pray for the ones that are trying to help go through this.”
There don’t seem to be any threats to homeschool families today, but how many elections would there need to be and change to all of a sudden have something happen there? I mean, to see where we’ve come from, the National Education Association would like to outlaw homeschooling.
They are constantly lobbying to do that because it’s in their best interest.
So I’m saying, “Be vigilant. Be in prayer. Don’t take for granted the gifts God’s given.”
But we need to have favor, I believe, to raise up our children in the way we believe honors God and I think that’s what homeschoolers are trying to do – is honor God.
You know our intent is, I think, pure. Our impact has sometimes not been so great, because we all fall short of the glory of God. We’ve all sinned.
And so sometimes our children unintentionally feel like they missed something because of their homeschool experience. And for that, I’m so sorry.
But one of the things is that the goal isn’t to raise future homeschoolers. It wasn’t our goal. Our goal was to raise followers of Jesus. And so, it seems by and large, that’s there.
So I’d say, what are your goals? And pray for God to have mercy and grace, that your children would agree. “I have no greater joy than this,” John also said, “but to see my children walking in the truth.”
My hope is, for this era, is you too – your goal would be to see your children walking in the truth, because Jesus said, “I’m the way, the truth, and the life.” So walking in and with Christ – that would be my hope for today’s members.
Shanxi: Wow. Well, Todd, thank you so much. This has been amazing. Is there any last thoughts or anything that we maybe missed that you’d like to revisit or just reiterate?
Todd: I just think that the joy that it was, just to see the organization grow.
It was just a sense of joy for me, but the other thing is, the hardship that people went through. I don’t want to understate that.
I feel like some are going to look at it and feel like they were in the last half of Hebrews 11, having died not receiving the promises. Because there is pain, especially (for) the homeschool moms. I mean, they carry their kids in their heart.
And so they would do whatever they could for the best for them.
But the pain they have when they say, oh, did I fail? And I would just like to say to the people that have been homeschooling and continue to homeschool, it is just so important.
Jesus, (the Bible) said, “Who for the joy set before him endured the cross.”
And I just want to say that the cross that you’re bearing today, the joy set before you. You may not be experiencing the joy today, but when you get on the other side of the cross, that was Jesus’ resurrection.
I pray that you’ll experience the resurrection of seeing all the joy, all the hopes, all the desires you had for your children come through after the years of sacrifice that you’ve made.
Shanxi: Thanks so much for listening. We hope you are encouraged in your homeschool journey. Please continue the conversation with us on our website, midwesthomeschoolers.org, or email us at podcast at midwestparenteducators.org. We’re also active on social media if you’d like to connect with us there. Thanks to Kevin McLeod of incompetech.com for providing this royalty-free song Wholesome, which is licensed under creativecommons.org.
