Welcome to the official Girls to Pearls blog!

Hopefully, this blog will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship between you and me. I plan to use this blog as a tool to communicate with you, hear your thoughts, and inform you of any upcoming events, activities, or contests. You will also find exciting articles, easy recipes, fun crafts and inspiring messages. So to kick this blog entry off, I have posted below, an excerpt from Girls to Pearls: A Young Woman's Guide to Living Life Freely, Loving God Naturally, and Surviving Puberty Successfully. This excerpt is my letter of introduction to you, and will hopefully give you some insight about this book. Enjoy!



AN EXCERPT

To My Beautiful Young Sisters:


I am taking this time to let you know that I first dedicate this book to God. It is because of him that I am able to do any and all things. Girls to Pearls is also dedicated to you. The idea for Girls to Pearls came about when I sat in on the end of a “Girls to Pearls” meeting, which is a young women’s group at New Way of Life Church of God in Christ in North Chicago, Illinois. It was so encouraging to see young women participating in a positive environment where they could just be real with each other. I wish that I had a group like this when I was growing up.

I wrote Girls to Pearls to let all you pearls out there know that you are beautiful and were created in God’s image. You are the apple of God’s eye. He loves you, knows everything about you, and every solution to any problem that you might face will come from Him.

In Girls to Pearls we will talk about real life issues; everything ranging from dating, to puberty and even your self-image. In the Bible, Jesus shows us that although we live in this world, we are not of this world. “The world would love you if you belonged to it, but you don't. I chose you to come out of the world, and so it hates you.” (John 15:19) This shows us that in life, we will encounter tough situations just like everyone else here on earth. We don’t have a choice about that. What we do have a choice about is how we react in those situations. Will we simply do what the world expects us to do, or will we do the right thing when we are challenged to do otherwise?

I would like to encourage you to take your time when reading Girls to Pearls, to be able to fully digest the contents of each chapter. There are 10 chapters and they can easily be spread out over the course of 10 weeks, if you so choose. Just be sure to leave yourself enough time to adequately think about what you read.

All of the scriptures unless otherwise noted, come from the New Living Translation because of its easy-to-understand language. It may be helpful to go through the book with a group of your friends, a parent or guardian, or even a Bible Study group. After each chapter there are a few extra resources for you including a space to journal about your experiences while reading the book and to document any insight you gain.

It is my prayer that reading Girls to Pearls will affect your life in a positive way, and that God allows you to store the lessons that are learned in your heart for you to share with others and to use when the time arises in your life.



With Love,



Your big sister Jackie