Here is the latest newsletter from Rachel Faust
Hello friends, family, and faithful supporters!
Below is my update for the month of September. Thanks so much for all of your continued financial support and, especially, for your prayers! Both are greatly appreciated!
— Rachel Faust
October 4, 2025
It’s hard to believe we’re nearing the end of the first quarter of school already! This last month has been VERY busy and has flown by!
On September 8th, people came out from the Red Mesa Health Center to do vision screening on all the students. This was a good thing, as several of my students were really needing glasses. However, the day itself was a bit chaotic and very unproductive. Our whole class sat in the room where they were doing the screening for a couple hours, and then once several students were finished, I took the ones who were done back to the classroom, but I never had more than 5 of my 13 students in the classroom at any given time for the rest of the day, and students were constantly coming and going with being pulled out of class again for the second part of the examination. Most of the ones who were in class had dilated eyes and, therefore, couldn’t see well to do any schoolwork anyway. I managed to help each student individually get through their math lesson during the bits of time they were in class, but it was an otherwise completely unproductive day academically. On the bright side of not getting much schoolwork done, I finished grading for the day very quickly and got to go home for a couple hours before our monthly all-staff business meeting in the evening!
The weekends have been busy with birthday parties this month. Three of my five 5th graders have birthdays all within two weeks of each other, and birthdays are a BIG deal around here! I spent all day one Saturday making cupcakes with one of my 5th grade girls for her birthday party the next day, which was SUPER fun, although not very physically restful, and there was another Saturday that was an all-staff work day of spreading gravel (which was mentally restful, but physically exhausting). After all these crazy busy weekends, we were hosting a women’s conference last weekend, which we had been planning and preparing for as well. I hit my absolute breaking point (socially as an introvert and in regard to physical exhaustion) that weekend though and ended up staying home and resting until dragging myself to church on Sunday.
My 5th graders have been filled with anticipation and excitement since day one of the school year for “getting their gems full”! (This is merely a commonplace part of life for the 6th graders after two years in my classroom.) Each day, each student starts with three gems on the corner of their desk. If they’re not following one of our classroom rules, a gem gets taken away. If they lose more than one gem, there are consequences, but any gems that are left at the end of the day go into a collective container, and when the container is full, we get to do something fun! The long awaited day finally came, and I declared the container of gems to be full. The vote was pretty much unanimous for the same thing we usually did last year. The boys went on a hike with another staff member, while the girls baked with me. They made cookies & cream oreo blondies, which were WAY too sickeningly sweet in my opinion, but the girls thought they were amazing… and had a ton of fun making them, and that’s what matters!
Some highlights of this month (besides the above mentioned baking days with students) have been history and Bible classes! I’m loving using more of a project-based learning approach in history class this year, even though it creates a TON of extra work in lesson planning and grading for me as a teacher. Many students moaned and groaned and complained, as I read the instructions to them for our history map assignment this past week, but once they all got started, silence reigned in the classroom, as everyone worked in a state of extreme focus for the remainder of the class period… and through history class the following day. Students raised their hands to inform me of exciting discoveries, as they realized where various countries were in relation to each other or how many Asian countries end in “…stan” (and the “stan…” countries weren’t even on the required portion of their maps!). It’s also been fun to compare when various events happened in relation to each other on our timelines!
Similarly, in Bible class, I love watching my students learn and think about things, as they work on their Bible projects. I love watching my autistic student, who struggles to communicate well verbally, retell everything he’s learning in Bible class through pictures; I love watching the students who are motivated by extra credit rereading the Bible passages over and over until they can rewrite the story thoroughly in their own words; I love watching each student think about how Scripture applies to their life personally, as they answer their weekly Bible journaling questions. I’m also really enjoying having a few students (children of mission staff members) in my class this year who already have a strong faith in Christ, are enthusiastic and knowledgeable, think deeply about things, and engage in and add to class discussions in a way that helps their peers to think about things that are good think about as well. Students are at least 10x more likely to listen when their peers say something than to listen when their teacher says the exact same thing*, so those students who are such a light for Christ in the classroom are a huge blessing! (*Disclaimer: this is not a scientifically researched statistic… just a personal observation.)
A few prayer requests…
Please pray for a student who has been absent more days than he’s been present at school so far this year. Even on the days he’s been at school, he usually comes an hour… or two… or three… late, or if he’s on time, he gets checked out an hour… or two… or three… early. He’s only been present for a full day of school a handful of times so far. He’s struggling academically due to missing so much by not being in class, but more importantly, he’s missing out on most of our Bible lessons and related class discussions. (He also very consistently gets checked out before chapel time, whenever he’s at school on a Thursday.) Please pray that he would come to school more consistently… and also for wisdom for me in making the most of every recess and study hall time on the days when he is present for part of the day. It can be so tempting to hand him a pile of math lessons or writing assignments to catch up on whenever he happens to be at school, and math and writing ARE important life skills, but as our principal said in a conversation regarding this student, “whether he knows Jesus or not is MORE important than whether he knows what 5 × 8 is.”
Please also pray for God to be working in the hearts and lives of students. We’ve been dealing with some bullying issues with some of the 5th-8th grade boys. Also, when I asked my students this past week, after learning about Jesus calling His disciples to follow Him, “Are you a follower of Jesus? Why, or why not?” (as a Bible journaling prompt), the reasons many of them gave for “why not” were overwhelmingly lame in light of eternity… things like “because idk” or “because I’m just not into religion” or “because my family’s not into that stuff”. Many of these sorts of answers came from students who have a definite head knowledge of the gospel and how salvation works. These situations serve as reminders to me that, regardless of how clearly the gospel is presented or anything I say to my students, only God can change hearts, so please be praying that He would be working in the hearts of my students to draw them to Himself.
In a couple weeks (on October 15th-18th), I’ll be flying to Washington briefly to get a dental emergency dealt with. Traveling and dentist appointments are two of my least favorite things, so I would appreciate prayers for peace and that everything would go smoothly with all of that. I’m very grateful that I was able to get a dentist appointment lined up with when a group from Cedarville University in Ohio will be here, so that someone can substitute for me for a day and a half. I’m also hoping and praying that my car will be fixed this week, so that I have a way to get to the airport. I’ve been very grateful for neighbors and friends who have let me borrow vehicles or ride to town with them to get groceries over the last couple months, but leaving mid-day on a school day to catch the last possible flight before my dentist appointment means that pretty much everyone will be tied up with teaching and unable to leave for a six-hour round trip to the airport. I would also appreciate prayers for no cancelled flights (if that’s God’s will), as the timing for this trip is VERY tight on both ends… with a dentist appointment just hours after getting to Washington… and then, once I get back down to Arizona, one day to grade everything from when I was gone and, hopefully, somehow get grade cards done before the start of the new quarter and the chaos of getting ready for our annual open house event on October 20/21.
As I finish writing this a couple days after starting, there is another urgent prayer request that came up today. A fourth grade girl was speaking of suicide during one of her meltdowns at school today. She is currently in town with a staff member receiving medical help. Her younger brother was also being threatened by a family member over the weekend, so he’s staying with another staff member overnight tonight. Please be praying for these precious children! (For a point of reference, their cousin brother was the student who was expelled from our school at the end of last year after being in my class for two years.) Please pray for safety and comfort for these children, wisdom for social workers involved, and that the adults in their home would make wise choices.
Thanks so much for all of your support and prayers!
Rachel Faust