Ikondo is Redefining Mission Trips

Anitra Parmele
8 Aug 2017
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Your Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat are flooded with pictures of you and your family. There’s that moment when you conquered a stand-up paddle board, your triumphant grin just a little brighter than the sunlight reflected off the crystal clear ocean waves. The expression of exhilaration as you explored a mountain bike trail that wound up the side of a real mountain, a foreign concept when your only previous point of reference was Mount Trashmore. Pictures that capture a trip full of laughter, adventure, hanging with your family and late-night conversations about life. Pictures from your recent trip to . . […]

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Eat Lunch Alone? Not In My School!

Anitra Parmele
1 Jun 2017
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What problem can you identify at your school and what can you do about it? It was a simple question but it was the match that lit a national solution to a problem every blog post, book or movie on teenagers addresses: high school lunch. Not the actual food but the social miasma associated with it. Who can I eat with? For students at Boca High, the answer is — With us! When the founders of We Dine Together — Denis Estimon, Jean Max Meradieu, Kinsley Florestal and Ally Sealy — were challenged at a Propel (People Reaching Out to […]

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The Smallest Kindness

Anitra Parmele
1 Feb 2017
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Etched In Sand

  In her book, Etched In Sand, Regina Calcaterra writes how as children, she and her siblings would write their names in the sand of the beaches of Long Island. Cherie     Camille     Regina     Norman     Rosie Then they encircled each name with a heart and watched as the relentless waves wiped their work away before they raced down to the water to write them again. Then Regina shares the details of growing up with an unstable mother seemingly incapable of caring for her children and the harsh reality of what it took not only for Regina to survive but to ensure […]

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Churches Unite to Love South Florida

Anitra Parmele
3 Nov 2016
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Your church is planning their annual Thanksgiving outreach. Down the street, another congregation is collecting Christmas gifts for the under-resourced. Across town, they are meeting to talk about how to support single moms within the congregation during the holidays. This is the season when many churches turn their attention to outreach. But what if the impact wasn’t defined by needs or even resources within each individual church? What if churches set aside denominational lines and the structure of “this is what we’ve always done” to come together to transform our city? What would happen in our city if thousands of […]

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Living a Legacy

Anitra Parmele
1 Nov 2016
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Living a legacy

Past the privates planes and the slots for rental cars, left of the aquarium before the sparkling carafe of lemon water and just across from the fully equipped business center is a simple office. Physically it is squarely rooted in Fort Lauderdale but once you have spent more than a couple minutes with Don Campion, owner of Banyan Air Services, you would be forgiven for thinking outside his office door is the bush of Egbe, Nigeria. As the story of Egbe unfolds through Don’s words and pictures, the low hum of a foreign tongue seems almost audible as you reflexively […]

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Without Rival Hammers Home the Dangers of Comparison

Anitra Parmele
18 Oct 2016
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  According to the advance press, Lisa Bevere’s latest book, Without Rival, is designed for “each of us to discover who and why we are a daughter without rival, loved by a God without rival, entrusted with a promise without rival, to complete an assignment without rival, that is destined for an eternity without rival.” And Without Rival fulfills on its promises. The first thing you will notice when you grab your copy is that there are discussion questions after each of the chapters. Designed to be experienced in a small group along with a video, it seems only fitting […]

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without rivals

On the Edge of a Revolution

Anitra Parmele
22 Sep 2016
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  Peek into a classroom and you may see students learning their letters while in the next room they’re learning how to multiply. Welcome to Pompano Beach Elementary (PBE) where, whether they know it or not, these students are on the front lines of a revolution and the battlefield is their future. And they’ve got lots of support. Much of what you see on your tour can be traced back to the first meeting of what became the Neighborhood United Project where community leaders were challenged to become levers for student achievement. It was in the conference room at PBE […]

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When Walls Talk: Inside 4KIDS

Anitra Parmele
2 Aug 2016
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Scattered. Living out of boxes. Always on the move. It’s poignant to realize that the same words that can be used to describe the condition of the temporary orphans in our community, our children in foster care, can also be used to describe those committed to finding them a permanent home. For the past twenty years, 4KIDS of South Florida has been making it work in borrowed office space, often carrying their files in their cars and scheduling meetings at area restaurants because there just wasn’t a permanent place for them. Katy Mills, 4KIDS director of public relations, explains, “People […]

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God As A Kid in The Young Messiah

Anitra Parmele
1 Mar 2016
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So what was it like to raise the Son of God? When He was learning to walk, did He know He had made the flowers his feet crushed? Was He popular? Did He make childhood friends? Is it at all telling that no one ever steps forward claiming to be His best friend after His public ministry is launched? What did being fully man and fully God look like in the body and life of a seven-year-old Jesus? “The Young Messiah” in theaters around the country on March 11, begins with these words: Inspired by Scripture and rooted in history, […]

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When You Need to Go Fast

Anitra Parmele
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There are so many reasons to fast: To silence the clamor, To re-establish Christ as pre-eminent in your daily life, To glimpse the heart of God, To experience massive transformation in a situation or relationship, To unite as believers to experience personal and community revival, And the list goes on. The reasons why we fast are as varied as the details on how we fast and how we gauge a fast’s “success.” Then there are the reasons we don’t fast. At least in my life they are much fewer and by nature, almost pedestrian. I don’t feel like it. I’m […]

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