A Message from the Administrator's Heart

Hope Christian Academy
Home is the Opportunity for Pursuing Excellence

Danny and I began our adventure of home educating our children in 1984 when our two sons were in 2nd and 5th grade. Throughout the years we have marveled at God’s grace as four toddlers became teens, three teens turned twenty, our sons married and both became fathers. We have experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows that only come through parenting. Since beginning to home school we adopted our two daughters, birthed HOPE Christian Academy, two of our children revisited traditional school settings and came back home. We graduated our three eldest from HOPE Christian Academy. We are blessed with five grand-children, lost several loved ones to death, began to fellowship at a new church, watched God cause growth in us as His children and in the seeds we planted- both in the ground and in our children. We changed curriculum umpteen times, had children hospitalized, joined the Advanced Training Institute International, and gleaned lessons about God’s care from our mother hens and their chicks.

Danny and I have learned new ways to structure our day, celebrated thirty-three years of marriage by God’s grace, and developed treasured friendships. We moved the HOPE office out of our garage into a “real” office and quickly returned it to our home, added a pot-bellied pig named “Millie B. Bacon” to our menagerie, and daily experienced God’s mercy. We home schooled our nephew, a niece, guided our four teens through encounters with junior college courses, trusted God to protect two of our children as we sent them to Indianapolis and Dallas for further training and obeyed God as He inspired effort and provided time to write two books. We have watched HOPE grow from fourteen young and apprehensive families to over 100 families who are committed to follow God’s best for their families and work together as a team for the protection and perseverance to fulfill our privilege to home educate.

In the summer of 2003 we moved the school office and library from our home into a commercial location. To expand our services we opened a home educator book and country gift store in the same location. Other services include tutorial help, academic classes and choir/readers’ theater opportunities for our students. We now “store school” our youngest daughter and oldest grandson.

If we are Christian families who desire to make a difference by raising up a foundation for future Godly generations, we must make plans and invest ourselves for eternity, taking the daily steps necessary to obtain our goal. We can not afford to focus solely on each day, each semester, or even each year, as though getting through that moment in time is our goal. We must look ten years down the road. Where, or better yet whom, do you want your family, your children, or yourself to be in the year 2015? HOPE operates as a team of committed parents working toward common goals.

The vision at HOPE is to offer support, guidance, and accountability to parents who desire to train their children to 1) live by Biblical principles; 2) practice responsible life skills and stewardship; 3) pursue excellence in academics; 4) be conformed to the image of Christ, and 5) be team players and good examples to others. We are training our children, especially teens, to reach beyond the desire to look for what they can get from others and HOPE activities. Our children are being taught to be submissive to their parents and all authorities, and good examples to other children. We have confidence that God will develop character in our children as we follow His principles in training them to look outside of themselves for purpose in life. Let’s look to God to give us unity as conservative Christian private home educating families pursuing excellence in education.

~ Debe Haller