A New Adventure!

So I'm off on yet another adventure! I'm sorry for not keeping this blog updated lately as I've had several adventures that I haven't written about. Hopefully soon I'll be able to tell about some of them here. I've had adventures in Arkansas, India, Tennessee, and Virginia the past few months. But my newest adventure is farther north... in Ohio, to be exact...

Over a hundred years ago, in a small farming community in north-central Ohio, a few families converted to Adventism. They planted a little church amongst the corn fields and tried to raise their children in their new faith. Pretty soon the question of education came up. The solution these farmers came up with was to have their own little church school. So Lottie Gibson got her teacher's certificate and opened up the Clarksfield Adventist School. Her pupils included her nieces and nephews, as well as several other children from the other families in the church. The tiny school tried to follow the pattern God gave Ellen White for education, and He blessed their efforts. The students had a missionary spirit. Lottie's nephew Dallas Gibson dreamed of going as a foreign missionary like another uncle had done. Other pupils entertained desires of other lines of denominational employment. But what was to be done for these youth after the 8th grade? Mount Vernon Academy was a boarding school and was far away, and therefore was too expensive to be an option for very many of them. Miss Lottie was determined that her pupils would get the best education they could for the Lord's work, so she went to the school board with a proposal. The board agreed to take a leap of faith and accept Miss Gibson's idea. Soon the school was teaching grades 1-12 (kindergarten didn't exist back then). The Lord poured out His blessings and enrollment leaped to over 100 students. By this time, Aunt Lottie was near the end of her teaching career, but her nephews, brothers Dallas and Lawrence Gibson, had just gotten their teaching certificates, too, and they helped her carry the load.

Years went by. Dallas Gibson contracted tuberculosis and went West, hoping to win a few souls among the Navajo before his illness conquered him. He died within a year of leaving Ohio. Lawrence married and had two children, Carl and Carol, both of whom attended the same school their father and uncle had attended. Aunt Lottie watched as many of her pupils went on to work for the Adventist church and to raise families in the work. She probably saw a new pair of teachers come to teach at Clarksfield school, Clyde and Lettie Ondrizek. Carl eventually married and settled down to help his father with the farm. Carl's three kids - Ben, Sharon, and Mark - all went to grade school there at the Clarksfield school where there father and grandfather had gone.

But somewhere along the way, somehow the school lost a bit of its vision. It dropped the high school grades. The enrollment fell to less than a dozen students. There was often talk of closing the little school. By this time Lottie and Lawrence had both died, but Carl Gibson had inherited his father and aunt's passion for this little school. He fought tooth and nail to keep the school open so other children could get an Adventist education. The Ohio conference put pressure on the little school to accept government financial aid like every other school in the conference had done. Carl made multiple trips to the conference office until finally the superintendent agreed to leave the Clarksfield school alone in this matter. But the superintendent told Carl there was little chance of the school staying open within government aid. Carl replied that God would keep their school open as long as He had a work for it to do and He didn't need the government's help.

When Carl died in 2010, the school only had about 6-8 students. About a year later, the school got a new principal, Leona Bange. She rented Carl's house from his children and started pouring her heart into the school that had meant so much to Carl Gibson and his ancestors. Slowly enrollment grew to a dozen, then 15, until when the school year ended in the spring of 2015, the school had almost 24 students. Mount Vernon announced that it was closing its doors, meaning that there would be no Adventist high school in the Ohio conference. Mrs. Bange had been trying to convince the school board to let her add 9th and 10th grade, but the board wasn't in favor of it. One day Ben and his sister Sharon were looking through some of their father's things and found a little book that their grandfather, Lawrence Gibson, and his classmates had made, chronicling the history of their little school up until their time. Ben and Sharon made a copy of the booklet and gave the copy to Mrs. Bange. Mrs. Bange read it through and realized how God had kept His hand over the little school. At the next board meeting, she took the booklet and asked to address the board. She told the board members she was not going to ask them to add 9th and 10th grade to the school anymore. Then she held up the copied booklet and said that over a hundred years ago, Lottie Gibson and her school board had taken a leap of faith and made the school 1-12. "It's time for us to do the same thing," Mrs. Bange boldly informed her board, "I'm not asking to make this school K-10. I'm saying it's time to make it K-12. What God did back then He can do again if we have the faith that they had." There was dead silence for a minute, then the board started to discuss and vote. The result was that the school would grow to include the high school grades again.

The story continues, but that's for another time. Suffice it to say that the little school is now operating a K-12 curriculum and has around 40 students enrolled, with more being added just last week.

Why do I know so much about this school? Well, Carl Gibson was my grandfather, Lawrence Gibson was my great-grandfather, and Lottie Gibson was my great-great-great aunt. Clyde and Lettie Ondrizek are my great uncle and aunt. And this is the school where I have the privilege of doing my student teaching this semester. This is the site of my newest adventure.

I feel like I've come home. I can't wait for heaven so I can finally tell Papa and the others what God has continued to do with their little school in the cornfields.