Student #5

What Lighthouse Ministries has done for me...

Hi, I am a student at Lighthouse Christian Academy and January will be my second full year of being at Lighthouse. I want to share with you what the Lord has brought me out of and what the wonderful staff here has done for me. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, in a beautiful home in Bel-Air. My father was never home because he was an Anesthesiologist and always being called to the hospitals. My mother was the one who quit her jobs to stay home and raise my older brother [name redacted] and me. My father ended up divorcing my mom, and moved out. From then on, the responsibility of not only playing a mother's role, but also that of a father, which no mother should have to go through. From pre­kindergarten on, there was never a year that went by, my mom didn't have to come to school and bail me out of trouble. She took on the responsibility of being a "room mom" for every year of elementary school, and eventually being president of the P.T.A. Throughout elementary school, the kids I would hang around with were always anxious to know about what the older kids were always doing. Because I was raised in a decent home, I would outwardly deny wanting to know about things like smoking, drugs, and drinking ... but inwardly I wanted to know.

Around 6th grade arguments with my mom became more and more common in our house, and I would