This year, on September 13th, our school had the opportunity to par-ticipate in the East Cobber Parade, which is a way for all the clubs and activities of East Cobb to show their spirit for their said club. It also helps to promote busi-nesses, services, and non-profit organizations. Over twenty of our JFCA stu-dents came to participate in the parade, showing their school pride, our school colors, as well as the fun activities that JFCA has to offer. Along the way, we were also able to sup-port out Nicaragua Water Project, raising money to

build a well in Nicaragua. Overall, we had a success-ful parade, and supported our school; however, we did have one minor hic-cup, when we accidently broke the truck’s win-dow, which was Gabrielle Glenn’s Grandfather’s. The students all did dif-ferent things; some held signs, others threw candy, while some of our boys even did cartwheels. We also had our School’s Spirit Squad present, throwing candy and doing cheers from the back of a truck. Sadly, our school turned out losing money, as sales were quite low. In

order to help support our Water Wells Project you can donate some money and time for volunteering, as well as overall support our school. If you wish to donate money, you could write out a check to JFCA, and make a note that it is for our Water Wells Project. The dona-tion will be tax deduct-ible and it can be given to Carmela Merced, Abigail

Quarles, Ivy Cannon, or James Sexton. Lastly, you could help to contrib-ute by purchasing water at our school’s football home games, as well as partici-pating in our JFCA Chick-Fil-A Spirit nights, where by telling them you are with JFCA they will donate 20 percent of the purchase to the mission project.

In This Issue:

Sports: Page 2

Saints ObserverTheOctober. Issue • Vol. 2 Issue 21

East Cobber Parade

Clubs:Pages 3

Tech Spot and Devotional:

Page 4

2014-2015

Madison Black

Senior Chapel: Page 5

New Radio StationOwen Hagood

This year, the newspa-per team is proud to unveil the Saints Observer Radio Podcast. We have put togeth-er a program you can lis-ten to at home and on the go so that you can stay up to date on events at JFCA and around the world. Over

the course of each program, we will be interviewing stu-dents and teachers, making important announcements, and doing a quick over-view of world news. You can find it on http://vimeo.com/user33868784/saintsobserverra-diooctober Give it a try today!

JFCA sends the ball fly-ing over the net, and it hits the ground on the other side, we win! The JFCA volleyball season is coming to an end. The last home games were Tuesday October 8. The var-sity and middle school teams played vs. Cherokee. Both teams won, the varsity team 3-1 and the middle school team 2-0. As of October 14, the middle school team’s record is 8-3, the JV team’s record is 9-4, and the var-sity team’s record is 11-3. The Awards Ceremony night for the volleyball program is November 4th. JFCA played teams like Unity, Mt Bethel, and Cornerstone Prep. This year, all three of the Johnson Ferry volleyball teams are ranked in the top three of

the GICAA Division 2 region. The teams are very well coached, especially with the coaching staff of Head Coach Erik Eklund, his wife Jennifer Eklund, and Kelly Perkinson. All three coaches are experi-enced in coaching and playing volleyball.

Overall, the JFCA volleyball teams are very strong. Our JV team played their final game on October 14, and they fin-ished runner-up in the GICAA Division 2 region. They won their 1st match Tuesday night against Covenant Christian to get to the finals and then lost in a tough battle against Cumberland to end up 2nd place in the region.

The Varsity team, joined by talented middle school-er, Missy Bieber, started Regionals on Thursday night with a victory against Unity in the quarterfinals, followed on Friday with a victory against Cumberland in the semi-finals and then lost to King’s Academy in a close battle. The margin of victory for King’s was only a total of 5 points or

less in each of the 3 sets. Our runner-up finish was good enough to earn a spot in the State championship on Saturday, October 25th.

Middle School won against Cornerstone Prep in the semi-finals Saturday to go on to face Covenant in the Finals. A team they had never beaten before in the past 2 seasons. This time was different, as the Saints won the final in straight sets 2-0 to end up 1st in the Region! To top it all off, the Middle School then dominated State, taking first place over all four regions in Georgia.

Kyle KrausWhy do I run? I run to

have fun and to glorify God through my gifts. When I was kid my parents made me try many sports; soccer, baseball, football and swimming, but I never really enjoyed them. When I started running, peo-ple just thought I was out for a “Sunday morning jog”. But in the second year of running, I started to understand and enjoy the sport. I started “try-ing” and everything clicked. Since then I have improved greatly and hope to continue to improve if it is God’s will.

My coaches make sure the workouts are challenging but because I am a part of a team I am motivated to achieve my goals. I thank the people who continue to support and believe in me. If you would like to be a part of a close knit group and develop a life long skill, why don’t you give run-ning a shot?

Jocelyn BrownI run because I love it; I

love the pain during the race, the nerves before, and the exhilaration afterwards. I feel rewarded knowing that I have accomplished something dif-

ficult or something seemingly impossible.

Anna TuckerI get pleasure from running

in several ways. While run-ning outside on trials or at parks, I’m in the fresh air, I feel joyful and content, and there is nothing that I would rather be doing even when the run is hard. Pushing myself physically to achieve a goal or conquer a hard course that’s before me is rewarding for me both physically and mentally. The satisfaction of accom-plishing what I never thought I could, and seeing how far I’ve

come, helps me to raise the bar of excellence and improve my performance next time I race or I am training. I strive to do well for the reward, the satisfaction, the physical achievement, as well as for the ones I love and my coach. But more than that, I strive to do my best for the glory of God. Running is something that I am passionate about and it is a talent that God has given me to use for Him. Doing my best for His glory is what I strive to do whether or not I’m running. When I run for the glory of God He gives me the strength I need to keep going, to press on toward the goal, and finish strong even when I feel defeated. I strive for this because I know that all things are possible with God. He can help me achieve what I think is impossible.

Will BrownI run because I see running

as a challenge. Part of that challenge is to always improve on the racing time. To achieve that, I must constantly prac-tice and persevere. That is the second part of the challenge. If I persevere, I will feel like

a winner after every practice, which helps me see things as half full. The third part is to think ‘’half way done’’ in a workout instead of ‘’of crud, I have to do another one of these things.’’

Luke DavisI like Cross Country running

because of all the beautiful places we get to be and the time spent outside. We get to run near the river, in the forest and on some really nice trails.

Jacob DavisI enjoy running and the way

it makes me feel and that it make me stronger. It is fun to be out with other people, run-ning and talking on the trails.

Saints Cross Country: Why I Run

Page 2

Lance Muller

SPORTS

Volleyball Season Ends with a BANG

Tennis Season Begins The Johnson Ferry Christian Academy Saints tennis team is comprised of some of the top tennis players in the south. Every spring, we compete with other private schools in our area. Most players have lettered while

playing on the team, and we hold a winning record. The team is led by Coach McKin-ney and Mr. Maiocco. We maintain a Christ centered at-titude by praying before every match, having good sports-man ship, and leaving it all on

the court. If you would like to sign up for the 2014-2014 JFCA tennis team there is a sign up sheet in the school of-fice. The dead line to sign up is on October 31st.

Lance Muller

Callie Sheffield

LATIN CLUBLatin Club is available to all students who have taken or are taking Latin. Mrs. Schunk runs Latin Club and the president and vice president have not yet been elected.

NATIONAL HONOR SOCIETYNational Honor Society is a program for students looking to achieve ser-vice hours for/from the school. Carmela Merced is the adult leading the meetings, Abby Quarles is the president, and Grace Chapin is the vice president. Throughout the year, there are various events and activities for members to earn service hours and serve the community.

MUSICAL THEATERMusical Threater is for any student interested in the performing arts. The musical theatre group is headed by Jennifer Ceccerelli will be perform-ing “Oklahoma.” The class is available to all grade levels and counts as an arts credit for high school students. Practices are on every Thursday, 9:30-10:45 AM for 5th-8th grade and 11:00 AM-12:15 PM for 9th-12th grade.

PRAISE & WORSHIPPraise and Worship, or band, meets on Mondays from 11:00 to 12:30. The band plays in each of the chapel services. This class counts as a fine arts credit, and currently has 8 members. Bobby Smith, the Contempo-rary Worship Pastor at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, leads the class and hopes that each member will use the opportunity to become better musicians for the worship of God.The 2014-2015 Worship Band:Bass: Will TuckerDrums/Perc: Justin ShetlerElectronic: Jaron GroundsAcoustic: Morgan GieslerSynth/Piano/Acoustic: Abigail ClarkePiano/Synth: Thomas GilbertPiano/Synth: Justin Keener

Academic TeamHit the buzzer, answer a question, and get points! What could be easier than that? Well actually it’s much more difficult than it sounds as the answer you give may not be the cor-rect answer. The Academic team here at JFCA is work-ing to get all the answers correct as they prepare to head off to compete in the TV show High Q and other scholastic competitions. The team meets weekly under the guidance of Mrs. Merced and includes Abigail Quarles, Carmelo

D’Urso, Erin Shetler, Ivy Cannon, Jocelyn Brown, and Gabi Merced. This team hopes to go all the way and win High Q. The first round is in January and the rounds continue through May. So here’s to memorizing facts from Presidents to Pop Culture!

Thank you so much!

Abigail QuarlesNHS president and Aca-demic Team member

Abigail Quarles

SURVEYFavorite Core Subject

50 Johnson Ferry students of all ages were asked which of the four core subjectes was theair favorite.

Callie Sheffield

MATH: 10

ENGLISH: 13

SCIENCE: 13

HISTORY: 14

Bible StudyLooking for a place to be in fellowship with the people in your grade? Come to bible study. Bible study groups are separated by grade and gender to create a more intimate atmosphere. Each group is run differ-ently, but main activities include a topic to discuss, passages of scripture to read, sharing prayer requests, worship, and sometimes, snacks. It is a great time to get to know some of your other friends at school in a set-ting outside of the class-room.Bible study occurs every other Tuesday from 2:30,

right after school, until around 3:30. The next meeting is on November 3. If you are interested in joining or to find out more information, ask your friends, teachers, or the office about which room to go to.Here at Johnson Ferry Christian Academy, we are blessed to attend a school where we can freely study and discuss God’s Word with our peers, so take advantage of that opportunity and come to the next bible study.

Caroline Davie

Advice Column

Technology: iPhone 6

Page 4

anonymous

Cooper Foster

FYI Question:I’m saving up for my first

car. Is it possible to work a job and do all the school in High School? I am still in Middle School. Thanks!

Dear Middle Schooler; Hi there! Thank

you for submitting your ques-tion! As a middle schooler, and highschooler, there are definitely ways for you to work a job. The key to bal-ancing both school and a job is good time management. This might involve you work-ing during times that you wouldn’t normally work, like on Saturdays! *GASP* This actually isn’t as bad as you would think, as this will also be quite beneficial to give you more time to study for upcoming tests/quizzes on Tuesdays and Fridays! To do this means spending less time on Netflix and more time focusing on school.

Here are a few tips to manage your time. One idea to help manage your time is to make a home-work sheet. To do this, go on PlusPortals once you get

home from school, and orga-nize all the homework you are going to have for the next few days. By organizing your homework for the week, you can have everything right infront of you, and know what you are going to have to do. If you do make a home-work sheet, it can help you to have your homework sepa-rated into different sections. These sections can be written in order of when you plan on completing them. Don’t look at your homework, and say, “I don’t have a lot. I’ll just do it later.” This is not always the case, and might take lon-ger then you expect. This is called procrastinating, which means to put something off. After that, you want to start right on your homework. By getting ahead, this will allow you more time for your job.

Thank you for your question, and I hope to hear from everyone very soon!

~Anonymous“Walk in wisdom toward

outsiders, making the best use of the time.” Colossians 4:5 ESV

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 2 Corinthians 5:17

Anyone Means Everyone“Jesus begins his call to follow him with these two words, If anyone… Anyone is a signifi-cant word because it makes it clear whom he is invit-ing. He is inviting anyone. Anyone is an all-inclusive word. Anyone means ev-eryone. Jesus doesn’t begin with a list of pre-quali-fications. His invitation to follow is addressed to anyone. Many people don’t realize they’ve been invited to follow. They think, “Not after what I’ve done. He wouldn’t want me to follow him. I would never make the cut.” They assume they aren’t qualified and as a result never take seriously what it means to follow Jesus. After all, what’s the point of auditioning for the part or trying out for the team if you know you don’t have a shot?

The invitation of Jesus to follow him begins, ‘If anyone…’ It turns out that anyone means anyone. Anyone means me. Anyone means you.” -From the book “Not a fan” by Kyle Idle-man

2 Corinthians 5:17 ties in with what Kyle Idle-man said because when you become a follower of Christ the things that you have done in the past aren’t im-portant. Mistakes that you have made in your past, God doesn’t care about. You have been reborn and now are a new person. The old you has been replaced by the new you. Anyone and everyone can become a Christian. God lets every-one become a Christian; there aren’t things that you have to qualify for. God won’t cut, you like in sports and say that you aren’t good enough. Anyone and Everyone can follow God; you just have to be willing.

DevotionalGrace Thomsen

It’s finally here! The new iPhone 6 is out! Another surprise, however, was their was a second iPhone released as well. Not only do we have the new iPhone 6, we have the iPhone 6 Plus. The iPhone 5’s screen size was just 4 inches across, while the iPhone 6 is now 4.7 inches. The largest of all, though, is the iPhone 6 Plus with a 5.5 inch screen! That’s huge for a phone! While the size of the screen is pretty incredible, the reso-lution of the screen is even more amazing. On most Apple screens, there is a thing called Retina dis-play. All iPhone 4s and 5s have Retina display. On an iPhone 5, the Retina

display is 1136 x 640 pixel display. That is pretty good, but the new iPhones have something called Retina HD display. It is incredibly high resolution! The iPhone 6 has a 1334 x 750, and the iPhone 6 Plus has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Pretty good, right?

While the screens in themselves our incred-ible new technology, they barely scratch the surface of all the new features in the iPhone 6. I’ll start with the complicated stuff first: The new phones feature brand-new A8 chip with

64-bit architecture first released in the iPhone 5S. They also have the new M8 motion coprocessor. Apple’s motion coproces-sors were introduced in the iPhone 5S, however the M8 is exclusively used in the iPhone 6s.

Like with every new iPhone, the camera was of course heavily improved. Both iPhone 6s have the same camera specs, and they are much better than the iPhone 5S. They have the same revolutionary True Tone flash, as well as an 8MP camera. They also share the Sapphire Crystal lens screen, to prevent the screen from breaking. Though several features on

the 6 are the same as the 5S, the iPhone 6 has it’s own new camera technol-ogy, too. The thing that was most inventive was something called Focus Pixels. In side the camera, there is a board behind the lens. This board has tiny receivers that detect light rays to help the camera focus. Its a very complicat-ed process, but it will make a huge difference in your pictures. Also new was an extension on the panorama camera. Now you can finally take a panorama of your entire beach that your spring-breaking at to post

to Instagram or Twitter.

Finally, Apple added small accessibility features to the new phone to make your experience that much better. The largest of all was putting the lock button to the side of the phone, not on top. You can also make calls over wi-fi now, but when you step out of the range of the wi-fi net-work, it transfers over to cellular data without dis-connecting the call.

If you wanted to buy these iPhones, it will set you back anywhere from $199 to $499. The iPhone 6 16 GB version costs $199, and the iPhone 6 Plus 16 GB version $299. Apple

made an interesting new change to the pric-ing of the phones. Usually a 32 GB version would be $100 dollars more than the 16 GB

version, however with the iPhone 6s they skipped the 32 GB version and went straight to the 64 GB ver-sion. On the iPhone 6, the 16 gig costs $199, like I said before, with the 64 gig only $100 dollars more. This is a very smart mar-keting strategy, but don’t let Apple get the best of you. If you just want a 16 GB, don’t let the new stor-age pricing fool you into getting more storage than you’ll really need. All said, this is an extremely inven-tive phone, and definitely worth every dollar.

Page 5

Maker Faire AtlantaCOMMUNITY

Senior Chapel 2014CHAPEL

Cooper Foster

Caroline Davie

If you’re into 3D Printers, Oculus Rifts, Robots, and several other kinds of cool tech, then you would really like the Maker Faire. Happening in down-town Decatur just a few weeks ago, the weekend could not have been better for this fun event. There was not a cloud in the sky, but it was chilly so the sun was not overwhelming. I attended with my friend, Ethan, and we had an awe-some time. While we were walking in, our first sights were huge crowds, several white tents housing cool tech and art, and a man wearing a viking helmet motoring around in a blue velvety cart. I definitely recall seeing some cool booths. There was one with old Macintoshes and other old PCs. It was fun because you could play really old games on them. While

there were a lot of old dinosaur computers there, Maker Faire Atlanta also featured a lot of new tech. Multiple Oculus Rift De-velopers had booths there, and I learned a lot about the inventive technology inside the Rift. Obviously, they also had 3D printers. They had big 3D print-ers, small 3D printers, and even 3D-printed 3D print-ers all hard at work print-ing random stuff. I saw a $13,000 3D Printer printing

a gear! At the Faire, it was hard not to notice the huge Quadcopter flying over ev-eryone’s head, or the artsy bikes that took up a whole parking lot. While tech was a huge part of Maker Faire Atlanta, there was a lot of art as well. I per-sonally think art is pretty boring, but this art was cool, modern, and interest-ing. Like I said earlier, the Maker Faire had an entire parking lot filled with old bikes that a local art group

transformed into fun-filled two-wheelers. Several kids were riding around, and my friend Ethan even hopped on! He only almost wiped out twice on his 30-second ride. Bikes barely goes far to describe the interesting art there, however. A big name also attending the faire was Noosh, a local artist. He was doing cool t-shirts involving wood at his booth, and selling them. I

can’t describe this intricate process well enough, but you can find it at nooshstu-dios.com. If you missed out on Maker Faire ATL 2014, I apologize, but do not wor-ry! It should be back next year. You can find all the information your brain can handle on the Maker Faire at makerfaireatl.com. I had such a great time, and I’m sure it will be even better next year!

The first Johnson Ferry Christian Academy chapel of the 2014-2015 school year was a huge success! After school at 2:30, for-mally dressed students of every grade level gathered together in Student Center South. Everything was run by the students – begin-ning with the worship. The worship band included Will Tucker on bass, Justin Shetler on the drums, Jaron Grounds on electric guitar, Morgan Giesler on acous-tic guitar, Abigail Clarke, Thomas Gilbert, and Justin Keener on the piano, and Anna Hardin, Mark Wilder, Melanie White, Cam-eryn Rogers, and Morgan Geisler as singers. After an amazing worship ses-sion with our musically talented students, JFCA gave a warm welcome the youth pastor from First Baptist Church Atlanta, Matthew Slemp. He gave a great message about unity in Christ. He described that even though we all have individual gifts and talents,

we can all work together and use those talents and be united under one purpose – to bring glory to God. Pas-tor Slemp mentioned that though he enjoys singing in harmony, a much greater, more powerful sound re-sults when everyone sings the melody. Similarly, we as Christians have power when we are all united. After the message, the band played a couple more songs and next was announce-ments – including the ‘Merica spirit day winners! Of the many pictures that were submitted, the high school winners were Gooie Glenn, Jenna White, and Bridget Walton in their matching overalls! After a few more announcements, everyone left the Student

Center South to socialize in the lobby. This chapel was the first of four, with the next ones on December 2, February 10, and March

24. Overall, chapel was a great time to get dressed

up and worship God as a student body.

‘MERICA DAY SPIRIT DAY WINNERS