JANET RYERSON

Hello! My name is Janet Ryerson. I was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania (really, it's a nice place), and I am the youngest of four children—but not spoiled. I have two older brothers and one older sister. My parents, John and Jeane Zielasko, were Grace Brethren missionaries to Brazil until I was 4 years old. We then moved to Winona Lake, which is a small town in northern Indiana. This was a fun place to grow up, with a lake nearby where we spent a lot of time swimming in the summer and ice-skating in the winter. After high school, I attended Grace College in Winona Lake where I met and married Thomas Ryerson between my sophomore and junior years in 1981. I graduated in 1984 with a B.S. degree in Art Education and taught Elementary Art in the Warsaw Community School system until 1987 when we started our family.

Tom had been working as a school psychologist in Indiana when, in August 1989, he accepted a position as a school psychologist with San Bernardino County Schools (he also teaches part-time in the Counseling and School Psychology programs at Azusa Pacific University, Alliant International University and California Baptist University). After packing up almost everything we owned, we traveled across the country with a 21-month old and a 2-month old in a small car. No, we did not know exactly what we were doing, but the Lord certainly directed our steps all the way. During those first few months in California, we stayed in Cerritos with family and moved to several apartments in Corona—the last of which saw our 3rd child delivered by Tom in the parking lot. In 1993 we finally settled into a house in the northern part of Corona. Two months after we moved to California my parents told us about an excellent Pastor in Riverside. I looked up the phone number in the Yellow Pages, found the church the next week, and we have been attending GCC every since.

Tom and I have 4 children; Evan, attending Cal State Fullerton, Elyssa and Elena at Centennial High School, and Elliot at Auburndale.

If I were to pick a favorite football team it would have to be the Chicago Bears. I truly love a good football game on Sunday afternoons—so I can doze off. I love shopping for antiques, going for walks (Yeah, right! Who has time?), and drinking a good cup of coffee. I also love hymns—one of my favorites is "Trust and Obey"— and even collect old hymn books.

I accepted the Lord when I was 7 years old in a Sunday School class. I am thankful that I grew up in a Christian home where my parents instilled in all of their children the importance of doing what God wanted them to do, always looking to Him for guidance. One of my favorite verses is II Timothy 1:12, "For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day."

As Children's Director, I believe it is my job to equip Sunday School teachers in order to help them take an active part in training our children here at GCC, to love God and to learn how to serve Him in every area of their lives. Children are important to God and it is important for us to love them and set good examples for them. Most of all I believe we need to pray for them. The children of this generation are faced with lots of temptations, all of which are constantly pulling at them in every direction of their lives. As the Children's' Director at Grace Community Church, my real desire is to help make sure that all of our children's programs lead them in a direction toward God!