As students prepare to transition into college, Angie Austin sits down with Catherine Pesor, the author of Stay the Course, to discuss the importance of maintaining faith through these formative years. They explore the reasons many young adults drift away from their beliefs and emphasize the significance of seeking Christian communities in college. This episode provides a thoughtful look at how parents can support their children as they navigate new environments, balancing newfound independence with the need for self-discipline and a moral compass.
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SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome to the Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with the Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin and Grace Fox with the Good News. We are talking about her book, Fresh Hope for Today, Devotions for Joy on the Journey. And the devotion for today is always available. Hello there, friend.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hi. Good to talk to you again.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, so, you know, I’ve been out of town and we were traveling with bigger groups of people, you know, bigger groups like volleyball teams and parents. And then we met up with different groups of friends and we stayed with some friends. And so anyway, I was around lots of different personalities on this vacation. And I just thought I’d throw it in there. I finally found one of I finally found a gift. that I have, you know, like you’re always looking to see like, what gift do I really have besides the gift of gab, right? Okay, so you want to know what it is? I do. All right. Well, I know forgiveness is one of them, right? But I realized that I have the ability to let things go. So there were a couple of instances where there was like a little glitch in our vacation, right? Like, for instance, one of them was, the pool wasn’t heating up to the heat that it should, right? And that was one of the main reasons we’d rented this particular house because it had a volleyball court, a basketball court, a swimming pool, a sauna, a cold plunge, a gym. And why are all those important? Because we have kids that play volleyball, basketball, and swim, like club sports, right? So we’re like, oh, this is great. They can all do their workouts. They can work out in the gym, blah, blah, blah. Well, one of the kids is a swimmer, so he couldn’t get in and do like his normal swimming, right? So then he had to go to like a swim team that was further away that we had to get permission for him to swim with them. And then, you know, the mom, of course, had to drive him there and drive him back into Vegas because we were outside of Vegas. Anyway, so to make a long story short. just other little things too like maybe the place we planned to go to eat was too far to walk or we couldn’t get the you know um to a reservation to a particular place and i noticed that some people would get really like hung up on the glitch right and i’d be like i always teach my kids the sign of a leader is to be able to like move on and make the best of a situation and even As you know, having several children, like I have several children, being around that many kids, seeing how some kids would get angry and want to like ruin the whole experience for maybe 10 other people because they were upset or they didn’t get their way. And so it was interesting to see the differences in our parenting compared to other parents we were traveling with. And then also, the big difference for me was like… Me realizing I could let things go and not focus on a negative or a problem. And I always tell my kids, like, there’s always another way. Like, you can always figure out something, you know, to make things better or make the day brighter. Or, you know, the sign of a leader is to turn things around when you’re disappointed, but to, you know, get a, you know, to find your better attitude, etc. And it really makes a difference, Grace, in the quality of your experience, not just on a vacation, but in life.
SPEAKER 06 :
Totally. That’s one thing that we train short-term missionary teams in, is flexibility. And we just say, beat the wet noodle. Beat the wet noodle. You know, if stuff happens, it’s beyond your control. You can’t control what happens. You can’t control what time the shuttle driver arrives to pick you up. You can’t control the traffic that may have held that shuttle driver up. All of those things you can’t control. But you can control… How you respond. And so that’s the key. And be flexible. Be that wet noodle so that you don’t break. You can break your own days.
SPEAKER 07 :
I love that because I always learn something from you. Like now I know I’ll keep that. Like that be the wet noodle. Like that will stick and I’ll mention that to my kids because I can visualize that. And it’s such a great way of bending to the situation in order to make it better fit. And like you said, with the shuttle driver or whatever, I remember once we broke down in the middle of nowhere, barely had cell service. It was getting dark. We were on the side of a freeway in a canyon where we couldn’t get very far off the road and it was starting to rain and they said they didn’t have room in the tow truck for my kids but I couldn’t leave them an hour from the closest town with barely any cell service and you know and then there was no rental car company in the town and then I rented a U-Haul and then drove my kids to the closest airport a few hours away where we could rent a different car and then I left the U-Haul and got the car but then I had to come back and get the U-Haul like Somehow we figured out how to get to Las Vegas for this giant shoe, you know, con or whatever that my son was. I mean, we also had a car loaded full of shoes that he was going to sell, like high end Nikes, you know, that you like resell. So I had to, you know, the U-Haul also worked for that. Right. So anyway. I was just trying to teach my kids on that trip, instead of losing my marbles and erupting in rage over the weird circumstances, and we kept hitting barriers at every turn, that there’s a way to figure things out, even if it’s a very complicated way. And I think our kids really watch us navigate these issues.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, they do. They watch us in all things, but that especially. How we respond. There’s two words, too, right? Respond or react. Because we can react negatively, we can react just on a whim. Something happens and boom, you know, we react. But we need to choose our response. And so much of that is determined by where our heart is in the first place.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 06 :
If we think that we are entitled to convenience, then we are going to react negatively when things don’t go our way. But if we… believe that we’re here to serve, and God rules over every detail of our lives, and nothing that happens takes Him by surprise, then we’re better able to respond in a way that is mature. helps those around us to not panic or get scared or frustrated either.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, I don’t know if this relates completely, but I was with this Uber driver recently on one of my trips and he was explaining to me because he’s from the South and he was in the military that he says, sir and ma’am, and he had the best manners. And he said to me something to the effect of, yeah, last night, well, not everyone appreciates it, he said, Miss Angie. He said, I took an elderly couple home last night, and I said, ma’am, here’s your suitcase, and sir, here’s your suitcase. And the guy yelled at me, and he said, what’s with this sir stuff? You know, what are you, what’s up with all that? And he got angry with him. And he said, after this long 45-minute drive all the way up into the mountains, he didn’t tip him. So then I… gave him a huge tip that was equal to like, let’s say my drive was $30. I tipped him equal to that $30. And then I got a thank you note form from him. And I’ve never had a thank you note from an Uber driver, I guess they can say like, thanks for the tip. And so then it was Lyft, actually Lyft driver. But anyway, then I wrote him then I tipped him again, because I was like, wow, I mean, talk, I wanted to reward his good manners, you know, so I just was like, here he he was such a kind person and wasn’t rewarded for it, and then he got over-rewarded for it.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know what I mean? Yeah, but people are hurting, and it’s better to just bless. Whatever we can bless, let’s do that.
SPEAKER 07 :
I love it. Whatever we can bless, let’s do that. All right, so I took a different path there for a moment, but I want to get back to Grace’s book, Fresh Hope, for today. Always available. Let’s talk about this devotion.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, so my husband and I travel internationally a lot. In fact, as we speak now, Angie, tomorrow I’ll be on a plane to Poland. And so when we travel internationally, we often try to touch base with our family. And so, for instance, on this trip, in a few days, we’re going to be trying to touch base with our oldest grandson because he’s going to have his 16th birthday and we want to wish him a happy birthday. So there’s different ways to do that with technology, right? There’s cell phones, there’s FaceTime, there’s Zoom calls and WhatsApp and all the rest of these different things. So still, there are challenges because we might be in a place where our internet gets dropped and the call is cut short or whatever. Or it’s just hard sometimes to make a connection because we’ll be eight or nine hours ahead of our grandson and And we might be getting ready to go to bed, and he’s in a class, or Sunday is his birthday. He might be in church or something when we’re trying. Our schedule is 23, and we’re able to talk to him, but he might not be available. So all of that to say, as much as we try to stay in communication with our family when we’re overseas, it’s tough. But there’s never, never a situation where, we cannot communicate with God. Isn’t that great? Like there’s time differences. There’s all that stuff involved, but we can always have 24 seven engagement and conversation with the Lord. And that’s, that’s just, he’s always available. So I will call to you whenever I’m in trouble and you will answer me.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know, I think about one of my, I guess, radio friends, I would call it just like you, like we’ve never met in person, but we’ve been talking once a week on the phone for a couple of years now. And her name is Kenza Haddock. And she was she grew up in a family. They’re all Muslims. And she didn’t know anything about Christianity, Christ. But she was so depressed and she just called out for help. And guess who was available? the lord like she didn’t even know anything about jesus she didn’t know anything about christianity she didn’t know that that was even an option for her but she felt in her soul this peace and she knew who it was and she became a devout christian and she’s written several christian books now and she had to leave her family they still to this day many years later still try to kidnap her to bring her back even though she’s married with children and she has her own business. She’s a therapist and a Christian author. I mean, imagine always being available, but not even knowing who you’re reaching out to when he’s available.
SPEAKER 06 :
That happened to one of our co-workers. He too came from a Muslim family. He was in Syria several years ago and he ISIS took him off a bus.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh, my goodness.
SPEAKER 06 :
And kidnapped him. They tortured him because he was a university student. And they wanted him to step out of his classes because he was studying social justice. That didn’t sit well with them. And so they tortured him. And he was being moved from place to place. And at one point he cried out and he said, God, whoever you are, if you’re real, get me out of this. And a fighter jet went overhead and bombed the prison this is within a day or something of his praying that and the walls were broken down he and the other uh people that had been kidnapped were able to escape and he said that it was about that time as well that he had a vision and somebody appeared to him and talked to him about you know i love you i’ve got a plan for you he didn’t know who it was Until after he escaped, he got into Lebanon, and that’s where he met up with somebody who was a believer who invited him to a church. And when he went into that church and he started listening to the Word of God preached, he understood that who he saw was Jesus. So he cried out, too, to God. He didn’t even know he was crying out. He was like, God, wherever you are, you know, help me get out of this mess, if you’re real. And God answered him. It is just the most amazing testimony for this young man.
SPEAKER 07 :
I agree. It’s amazing. I mean, did not even know you were calling. We talk about always available. All right, we have about a minute left. What are you going to do in Poland? What are you doing there?
SPEAKER 06 :
I’m going to meet up with some of our co-workers. There’s one Polish pastor and his wife. He is a church planter. And so they’ve set up about six speaking events for me where I’m going to go into a high school. I’m going to go into a public library, speak on the names of God, whoever wants to come. I’ll be speaking at a couple of different churches and to a women’s group, a group of homeless women, actually just sharing with them about overcoming fear. And then we’re going to do two days of staff care training. And after that, we will do our annual staff conference. There’s about 220 missionaries coming. And my goal then will just be to pour into their lives and encourage them, fill their cup so that they can stay on the field and be in a healthy situation mentally and emotionally, because a lot of them are dealing with the war in the Ukraine and, you know, all their lives have been flipped upside down because of war. So we just want to bless them and keep them strong.
SPEAKER 07 :
I don’t even know if you know how amazing some of these experiences are that you have in these opportunities that the Lord presents to you. If you want to find Grace, GraceFox.com. Thank you, friend, and good luck in Poland.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you. We’ll talk to you again when I get back.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
Holyoke is tuned to the Mighty 670 KLT.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin here with the good news. Excited to talk about the book Stay the Course with Catherine Pesor. And she is joining us to give us the lowdown, you know, help us get a little scripture into our lives today. Welcome, Catherine. Thank you, Angie. It’s so good to be here. All right. Let’s just start with an overview of the book, would you?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes. Stay the Course is a devotional handbook to survive and thrive in your first year of college and beyond. And it’s written for high school graduates to help them transition in the summer to get ready for college and then some advice and motivation and encouragement that they need to survive that first year because it’s a critical time for them. So many of our students in their freshman year are just not prepared for the independence and the choices that they have to make and the study habits that they need they’re just not quite ready for it sometimes and so this book is designed to help them through that first year to be successful you know i think about these kids because i’ve got three in high school right now and
SPEAKER 07 :
Pardon me. When you say, you know, they’re not ready, I mean, they still are kids in so many aspects. I mean, even my son, who’s 18, he’s going to University of Colorado. He’s leaving this summer, actually, to go to school for summer school. And he’s so mature. He’s been running his own business since he was 12. Pardon me. But with his sisters, he is like a 12-year-old. And his interactions sometimes with other kids his age leave a lot to be desired in terms of maturity. But he’s so mature, comparatively speaking, to a lot of his contemporaries. So I can’t imagine the skills some of these kids are going to school with or without, for that matter.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s a great example. I used to tell my college students that you are 12-year-olds or kindergartners trapped in an almost adult body because some of that adolescent behavior just pops out sometimes.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, and I ask him why. I ask him why. I’m like, why do you do that? Like, you know, he’s like poking a bear in a cage with his little sisters. I’m like, why? And then he gets this devilish grin and he says, because it’s fun. oh no i know and some of them never outgrow that that’s true his dad’s like they’re very similar maturity level those two oh my gosh it must have been 11 o’clock last night and my husband’s wrestling with i have five pets wrestling with them in the bed while i’m like trying to sleep right and so he’s throwing them around and they’re jumping and they’re barking and i’m like are you kidding me like it’s 11 o’clock at night Let me go to bed so they come by naturally. All right. According to some studies I was reading in some of your material, between 70 and 80 percent of high school kids who enter college as Christians leave with little or no faith. That is scary. So talk to me about that.
SPEAKER 05 :
That is scary. And actually, I was not aware of that particular statistic until a friend pointed it out to me. And I believe it’s because they are just bombarded with so many changes all at once. They’re confronted with other peers, other students, and even with some adults, some of the professors that don’t necessarily believe the way that they do. And they’re exposed to a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, and I do believe that that it’s important for our students to learn how other cultures lived and even other religions because the more knowledge we have and the more information that we have when we are suddenly bombarded with these beliefs that others are trying to persuade us towards. So I think it’s important that we learn about other religions and other philosophies and the way people believe only though to build a knowledge base so that we can successfully defend our own faith, you know, be a not from the standpoint of apologizing, but from the standpoint of defending our faith and being confident in how we profess our faith openly. So when they’re confronted by all these changing ideas and different ideas, they become vulnerable to new information because we go to college to learn new things. And then all of a sudden we’re presented with these things. But our children, students, they’re young adults by this time, they need such a strong foundation. And then they need us to be their parents and other adults that care about them to be praying for them and to be a listening ear when they call and say, hey, mom, dad, I heard this stuff today and it’s confusing to me. You encourage them to go ahead and talk about it and let them know that we’re praying for them because it’s such a sudden change. All of a sudden they’re leaving the security of their home and home church if they were are able to have a church family that supports them, they’re leaving that and they’re thrust into this new environment that everything’s just so different.
SPEAKER 07 :
We need our prayer. I think about the University of Colorado where I went, and I’m not in the Bible belt like you are. And I didn’t have groups of Christian friends then. And I think about my kids now and how many groups they’re in that involve Christians, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Young Life, and then their own church youth group. And then Young Life, the kids have now kind of volunteered to do their own Bible study one day a week before school. So they get up at like 5.30 or 6 o’clock in the morning to do that on their own. Like my daughter did Fellowship of Christian Athletes this morning. So up at 530 and then she doesn’t get home from practice until, I don’t know, maybe 830. So it’s a really long day for them to volunteer to get up early to do these things. So I was thinking about what I could have done differently at the University of Colorado. And so I just sent a text to my son while you were talking and said, stay in your Christian groups in college, birds of a feather flock together, because if they don’t seek it out, it’s not going to find them. They have to go to these groups where there are Christian kids and make friends with these kids. My son does that now. He’s friends with kids at other high schools, and they go to these Christian groups together. And so he doesn’t really have that many friends at his own high school, but he has friends in these other high schools that have these groups that he goes to. So if you can seek out those groups in college and start meeting other Christians, it’s easier than trying to find the Christians in your classroom. Because there are going to be a lot more kids who aren’t involved in going to church, etc. Then you will find kids doing it. So finding their groups is the easiest way to find them, I think.
SPEAKER 05 :
You are absolutely right. And thanks so much for pointing that out. And you’re right in that they have to seek those groups out. And they are there. They might not be easily found, but there will be a list of all the organizations. The school will have a list of all of the organizations that are approved. And even in the community, they might find a church. in the community that has a college group that meets there once a week in the evenings or something that supports all of the college students too. So, yes, thank you for pointing that out.
SPEAKER 07 :
And I wonder too, you know, we just got back this weekend from seeing, I guess it was, three, but we kind of saw four Christian schools. My daughter’s a volleyball player, and that league is called the NAIA League for the Christian Schools. And they’re small, and a lot of them are in the middle of cornfields, et cetera. But what I like is that the Bible and Bible study and worship, that it is included in the school curriculum, and that the majority of the kids, they asked my daughter for her testimony as she was applying for the school. And so with the in fact, the coach at this last school she went to was a pastor for 14 years before he became a volleyball coach. And now he’s been I think it’s about the same that he’s been coaching volleyball the same amount of time. So he asked Hope what they were studying, which scriptures or what book of the Bible they were studying in her Bible study. She goes, well, we don’t have a leader anymore. So it’s just us kids. So we’ll just take a scripture and then we’ll discuss it. So it was like, she couldn’t really answer his white Bible. My husband’s like, girl, you aren’t very organized. She’s like, well, we’re just kids. We’re just picking out scripture and we talk about it. We don’t study the whole book of the Bible. They’re just doing the best they can, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, good for them for taking the initiative to go out. And they can be so much of a good influence on other students who’ve not had that opportunity to grow up in a Christian home or have a support group like that. So it’s wonderful that they’re doing that, and I hope that they will witness to others.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I think for her, you know, if she does choose one of these Christian schools, it’ll be easier than for my son, who’s in a more secular environment. But what do you see as some of the reasons that these kids, these young people are dropping their faith in college?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, they’re at such a vulnerable age anyway, 18. Between being a child and being an adult, and they’re struggling with with their freedom, all of a sudden that they have all these choices and temptations and no one to tell them, well, I don’t think you should really be doing that. No one to get them up in the morning. And they’re just suddenly exposed to so many other opportunities and not all of them are good.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
So their, their views that they’ve grown up with are suddenly challenged. And unless they have that really, really strong foundation, that sounds like that your children do. And that’s wonderful. But so many of our students don’t have that strong background. And so they become confused by all these conflicting information that they’re getting. And they don’t know which way to turn. That’s why it’s so important, as you’ve encouraged your children, is to find those groups and have your own support group. Because once they become aware that there are other ways of believing, unless they have the strong foundation and the knowledge… to refute those new philosophies and beliefs that they’ve been exposed to, then they’re going to sink into it and be absorbed into that different viewpoint. And then they’ll discover that there’s all these other opportunities of things that are really not so good that they never would have been doing before, but then all of a sudden they’re recognizing, well, you know, there’s nobody here to tell me what to do. I can make my own choices. And at that age, Some of their own choices are not good.
SPEAKER 07 :
Right, right. And let’s talk a little about that because we’re trying to prepare our kids as they head off, you know, college and to have, you know, a moral compass and self-discipline and know that there’s a time for them to have fun, a time to study. What are some of the experiences that you’ve had with students who were unprepared for college and the environment?
SPEAKER 05 :
We like to believe that we’ve taught our students, our children, everything we need to know before we send them off, but we can’t prepare for every eventuality. And what I have found that students have the most difficulty coping with is their independence because then all of a sudden they can set their own schedule, they can decide whether they’re going to school or not, and if something else tempts them away from that, they may make the wrong choice and go into whatever that temptation is. But when I’ve worked, I’ve worked with students, college students over 25 years, and one of the things that they really struggled with is self-discipline and time management because no one’s telling them what to do. They make their own schedule. So I would just remind them, you know, go to class every time, every time, even if you’re not… haven’t done your homework, go to class and always be prepared and keep up with your assignments. Hang in there and do them. And if someone tries to tempt you away from doing what you need to do to be academically successful, then that person is really not being your friend because you have come to this university or this college to do set your path for your future career. And anything that comes between you and that goal is not going to be a positive thing for you. If someone’s trying to keep you from going to class, if somebody’s trying to invite you to go out to eat when you should be studying for your exam, or if someone’s inviting you to participate in activities that are unhealthy or immoral, then you are the one that has to make the choice as to whether or not you’re going to let the short-term decision affect your long-term goal or not. So I try to get them to look ahead to the future and not decide, well, I don’t need to go to this class and study for this test because I’ll have another opportunity later. It doesn’t work that way in college. Every single decision that they make academically will affect their final outcome.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I certainly appreciate your expertise. The book is called Stay the Course, Catherine Pesor. And I just really appreciate you. What a blessing to have you on the program. It’s obviously very timely for me and hopefully for some of you listening who have kids and or grandkids who are going to be heading off to college or you’re just preparing them right now. Thank you, Catherine. You are welcome.
SPEAKER 05 :
Thank you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
