Lehigh Valley Christian High School just completed spiritual life week, ending with the annual schoolwide retreat at Camp Men-O-Lan Oct. 12.

At the retreat, the special speaker was Josh Edwards, youth pastor from Bethel Bible Fellowship Church in Emmaus. The theme was "Have No Other Gods Before Me," and we were challenged to examine our lives to see if we have allowed other people or things to become more important to us than following Jesus.

Also at the retreat we found competing in games helped tremendously with class bonding.

We had a special treat this year: musical worship led by The Finding, a band from Epic Church containing an LVCHS alumnus, Andrew Salib of the Class of 2004.

It's safe to say that we were all impacted by the messages throughout spiritual life week.

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Fall sports seasons for cross country, girls soccer and girls volleyball have drawn to a close.

This was our first year to have a cross country team, and it was a great learning experience.

The girls volleyball team ended the season 5-12, losing in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic Coast Christian Athletic Conference playoffs. The highlight of the season was a home victory over Pius X.

The girls soccer team played a nonconference schedule and ended up with a 6-7-1 record, barely missing the PIAA playoffs.

The boys soccer team is currently 14-7, taking third place in the ACCAC with a win over cross-town rival Salem Christian School. The Cougars also qualified for the PIAA class A District XI playoffs as the fourth seed. We played against fifth-seeded Nativity Oct. 25 at home, and defeated them 1-0. This is our first PIAA soccer playoff victory in over six years.

The Cougars were scheduled to play No. 1 seed Williams Valley on Monday in the semifinals, however, the game was postponed until today, Thursday, Nov. 1, because of the hurricane. We are very proud of all of our athletes.

Winter sports are now gearing up, including winter track and field conditioning and boys and girls basketball. We're all getting pumped for winter sports.

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LVCHS' schoolwide Outreach Day was Thursday, Oct. 25. We went out into the community to volunteer at 17 different sites, including CareNet, the Salvation Army, the Catasauqua Police Department and several church ministries. It was a very profitable day for our student body as we learned to give back to our community some of the blessings that God has poured out on us.