Last week we talked about The Powerful Idea, how one idea can layer on positive benefits, year after year, impacting your family’s life and the trajectory of your children. Today we provide testimony to one such powerful idea for the Byars family. The Byars’ powerful idea was to choose to commit to their family by taking OneFamily courses, seminars, and mentoring over the last 13 years.

March 2022 – “Rich and Shelly-Hope this finds you well. Just wanted to tell you that if someone asks you if your OneFamily programs really work, please tell them to talk to our son… or actually, to our son’s high school teachers, coaches, or friends’ parents. 

Within the last month, we’ve gotten emails from 2 of his teachers to tell us what a wonderful, thoughtful kid he is. When we saw the first one, we thought she must be sending a note to each family with some nice tidbit about their kid…NOPE…it was only for him. And then got a separate one from another teacher telling us how thoughtful our son is and that it’s kids like him that make her job worth doing. 

The promise you gave us back then – “put in the hard work now and it will pay off incredible dividends in the years to come” is 100% true! We hear horror stories from friends about their kids – refusing to get up on time to catch the bus, getting suspended for talking back to teachers, etc. And we think “we NEVER have to deal with stuff like that”…don’t get me wrong, we have other stuff, but nothing anywhere close to that. And we also think “leave your kid with us for a few months and we’ll have this all sorted out” – but we don’t really want to do that:)

Anyway – just wanted to thank you guys and OneFamily again for your love and support through the years and how much impact you have had on our family!”

June 2023 – “Hi Rich and Shelly – hope you are doing well. It is really funny that when I go to find your email addresses to send you a note, I find that I am building on the same theme😊 And it’s that time again!

This last week, our son went to the HOBY (Hugh O’Brian Youth) Leadership Congress at Denver University. He was nominated by one (or more) of his teachers. The program is for 10th graders. Out of the 650+ 10th graders in his high school, he was one of 4 that were nominated and went to the camp. That in and of itself was more than enough to make us proud. But as we drove to pick him up yesterday, we got a call from him a few minutes before we arrived. We thought “oh – he’s wondering where we are and why we haven’t arrived yet” … but instead it was “When you get here, you need to come in and talk to some people”… our first thought “Oh Lord, what did he do?” He then followed up with “I just found out that I was awarded a scholarship to the World HOBY Leadership Congress.” He didn’t know the full details at the time and was still a bit in shock, so that’s all we knew. When we arrived, we were met immediately by his camp counselor (they have different terms for everything…I won’t bore you with that) …who told us how incredible he is, a true leader and a cheerleader for everyone in his group. As we were taken to meet the family that hosts the scholarships, we passed other staff members – everything was a whirlwind as they were trying to finish up everything, but each of them had kind words about our boy, but the theme was summed up by one person in particular after we thanked him for his part in the program, he said “Thank you for raising such an amazing young man.”

Anyway – we sat listening to our son tell us over Father’s Day lunch about how shocked he was to get the award (they only give 2 to the over 350 kids that participate) …then he would tell us stories about each day he was there – and from those stories, it was very evident why he got the award…even though it wasn’t clear to him.

And as we sat there smiling from ear to ear (and occasionally with a tear or two), as his parents, we had time there to reflect on all the wonderful things we heard, and we immediately knew it was because of the effort we put in applying the things you taught us through OneFamily that led to this incredible time and place. We cannot thank you enough for your leadership and sacrifice of time to ensure parents are equipped to raise (pretty darn amazing) kids!”

 

We have had the pleasure of observing dozens of young men and women, like young Mr. Byars, grow up to become productive adults, married with children of their own, having benefited from the OneFamily material.  Decades of watching them navigate the teen years, get to and through college, enter the workforce, find a mate and start a family – our bias is validated – the OneFamily material can be a powerful idea. However, it can become powerful only when the commitment exists to incorporate the specific tools and general concepts into your family life. Ideas aren’t powerful in themselves, only when digested and energized into life. It takes the commitment to invest the time to capture enough of the material to derive the most benefit. One class doesn’t stick with you.

So we encourage you – join the Family. Reengage yourselves if you’ve already taken a class. Gather your friends to form another class pertinent to this phase of your life. Rededicate yourself to making the Byars’ story your story.

They will know you by your fruit,

Lis and Dave

A Special Opportunity To Help Families

As a self-funded nonprofit, we rely upon the generous financial support from individual donors like yourself to impact families, in a meaningful way, just like the Byars!  We can’t do that without your help!

Through July 30th, we are blessed to have a special donor who is matching all donations, Dollar-for-Dollar, during this special summer donation drive! This is a wonderful opportunity to double the impact of your summer gift and help us to help families become stronger and make a positive impact in their communities!

Donate Here on the OneFamily Website
or
VENMO “2023 Summer Donation” to: @onefamilyhwl
or
Via Check Payable to:
OneFamily/HeadwatersLife
6530 S Yosemite Street, Suite 310
Greenwood Village, CO 80111