Homeschool Writing Program

ABOUT US

Written by Forrest Mora

Forrest and Beth Mora
Forrest and Beth Mora

My wife, Beth Mora and I have eight children and have been married for 26 years. After blending two households together and adopting two teen boys, we affectionately call our family of eight children, “Yours, Mine, Ours, and Somebody Else’s”. We have been homeschooling for 25+ years and have loved the joys of homeschooling. Most of our children are grown and have “flown from the nest,” but we are honored to homeschool our oldest grandchild. Here to Help Learning began back in 2007.


We still can make our kids cringe!

It was a sunny day of homeschooling when our unit study on Native Americans went sour. Since the beginning, Beth’s style of teaching has always been hands-on. And with our large family, we always had plenty of eager children to make any activity fun and memorable. Well that fateful day, Mom and daughter began the Native American “Bear Dance” around our outdoor fire pit, dressed to the hilt in Native American construction-papered costumes. Mom began with her usual enthusiasm. However, our daughter blankly stared at her mother. “I don’t think this is going to work Mom,” she said shaking her head. Beth never could figure out how to homeschool one child.

So we decided to start a business providing supplemental homeschooling classes to local homeschooled children. Our goal was to have just five students for a couple of days a week for a small cost and provide our youngest with a co-op setting. This was the beginning of Here to Help Learning. Five years later, Beth was serving about 60 families with eight different classes; including two literature classes, two writing classes, art, history, drama, and science. Here to Help Learning co-op earned the reputation of doing the “messy projects and cool experiments” and Beth earned the nickname, “The teacher with the “Right” Brain.” She also hosted workshops to introduce families to homeschooling, creatively manage household budgets, and teach young children to write. She enjoyed co-leading the Home to Home support group in our area and still loves to encourage homeschool moms through her writing and blogging. All these experiences led her to the next chapter of Here to Help Learning.

One day, one of the moms asked Beth for some information on a historical subject, and Beth went to her computer, found a worksheet that she created years ago, and printed it for the mom. When asked, “Where did you get this from?” Beth just said, “I don’t know, I’ve had it for years.”  What this mom said next, led us to the next phase of Here to Help Learning. “You have to put this on the internet and make this available to homeschool families everywhere,” the mom replied. And so began the most adventurous project of our lives, HereToHelpLearning.com.

God had already spent time preparing us for this next chapter. As a team, Beth and I served in a volunteer capacity teaching and leading Bible studies for children’s ministry, single’s ministry, men’s ministry, and women’s ministry. We also served for years in the drama department. Following a leading from the Lord, we created and led the marriage ministry at our church. We have a passion to see marriages thrive through applying God’s Word and principles. Our ultimate goal is to one day spearhead an effort to see marriage ministries flourish in every church. We want to see the divorce rate in Christian churches be the lowest in the nation.

The years of creating material for our own children and co-ops together with Beth’s animated style of teaching set the stage for Here to Help Learning‘s filmed adventures. My talents provide the leadership for Here to Help Learning‘s business development. We also figured out that we were not capable of putting together a website and producing high-quality films with our own technical skills, so early on two very talented young men joined the HTHL team. We work hard to develop great educational experiences for your family.

The team filming at Channel Island’s National Park for HTHL’s literature unit, Island of the Blue Dolphins

Beth and I love our date nights, motorcycle rides, and kayak trips. Beth likes to “deck farm” and read books at her grade level. I love to spend time fishing and planning the next family vacation. We both love it when all of our grown children, their wives, and grandchildren come home to visit! Across a very bustling dining room table, we look around at the faces of our children and feel incredibly blessed. We catch each other’s eyes and smile again.

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about us, and we look forward to getting to know you through your homeschooling adventure with Here To Help Learning. We invite you to join the journey!

In Him,
Forrest Mora

What We Believe

THE BIBLE

We believe that the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is God breathed, so that it is without error in the original manuscripts and preserved by God and is the final authority and our standard for every age and every life. (Matthew 5:18; 1 Corinthians 2:13; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:21)

GOD 

We believe in one God that eternally exists and reveals Himself in three persons – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – having each the same nature, attributes and perfections, worthy of the same worship and confidence. (Matthew 3:16-17, 28:19; John 1:1-2, 14, 10:30, 14:15-17; 1 Corinthians 8:6; 2 Corinthians 13:14) 

We believe in God as absolute and sole Creator and Sustainer of the universe, and that creation was by divine command, from nothing and not through an evolutionary process. (John 1:3, … 10; Acts 17:24-25; Genesis 1:1)

We believe that God, by His sovereign choice and out of love for men, sent Christ into the world to save sinners. (John 3:16; 1 Timothy 1:15; 1 John 4:14)

GOD THE SON

We believe that Jesus Christ is fully God in the flesh and fully man, that He was born of a virgin and that He lived a sinless life, in which He taught and demonstrated signs and wonders exactly as written in the four gospels. We believe that He was crucified, shed His blood, died to pay the penalty for our sins and was raised bodily from the dead on the third day. Forty days later He ascended to the Father’s right hand where He is Head of the Church and intercedes for believers. From there He is coming again personally, bodily and visibly to this earth to set up His millennial kingdom. (Isaiah 7:14, 9:6; Hebrews 1:1-2, 7:25; Luke 1:30-35; Ephesians 4:8; John 1:1-5, 10-14, 14:3; Colossians 2:9; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4; Acts 1:3,11; Revelation 20:4)

GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT

We believe that the Holy Spirit is a person and is God, possessing all the divine attributes. He convicts of sin, regenerates, indwells, baptizes and seals all believers at the moment of their salvation, filling them in response to a person’s willingness with the goal of conforming them to the image of Christ. (John 3:5, 16:7-11; Acts 5:3-4; Ephesians 1:13, 4:30, 5:18; 1 Corinthians 6:19, 12:13)

MANKIND

We believe that mankind was created in the image and likeness of God, but that in Adam’s sin the race fell and inherited a sinful nature which separated us from God. We believe that all men are morally bankrupt, and of themselves utterly unable to do anything that would earn a right standing with God (Genesis 1:26-27; Romans 1:18, 3:23, 5:12; Ephesians 2:1-3, 12)

SALVATION

We believe that salvation is a free gift of God and is received by man through personal faith in Jesus Christ and by recognizing that he has paid the price for our sin. We believe that man is justified by grace through faith apart from works and that all true believers, once saved, are kept secure in Christ forever. (Acts 13:38-39; Romans 4:5, 6:23, 8:1, 38-39; John 10:27-29; Ephesians 2:8-9)

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

We believe that a Christian should walk in holiness and not after the flesh, with the goal of being conformed to the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As a new creation, walking in the Spirit, the Christian learns to grow in faith, in obedience to Scripture, in prayer, in fellowship with the saints and in a life of service. We believe that the Christian will stand before the judgment seat of Christ to have his life evaluated according to his deeds. (Galatians 5:16-26; Hebrews 10:25; Ephesians 4:20-24; Hebrews 11:6, 12:1-2; John 17:17; Ephesians 6:18; Romans 8:29; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 1 Corinthians 3:10-15)

THE CHURCH

We believe that the true Church is made up of all persons who are born by the Holy Spirit through saving faith in Jesus Christ; that they are united together in the body of Christ of which He is Lord and Head; and are commissioned for the God-given tasks of worshiping, fellowshipping, teaching, evangelizing and exercising our spiritual gifts. (Acts 2:42,47; Romans 12:5; Ephesians 1:22-23, 5:23-24; 1 Corinthians 12:12-14; 2 Corinthians 11:2)

We believe that the establishment and continuance of the local church is clearly taught in the New Testament Scriptures. (Acts 14:27, 20:17, 28-32; 1 Timothy 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-11)

We believe that the local church is autonomous and free of any external authority or control and placed by God to serve local believers and reach out to the community. (Acts 13:1-4, 20:28; Romans 16:1, 4; 1 Corinthians 3:9, 16, 5:4-7, 13; 1 Peter 5:1-4)

We believe water baptism by immersion as a demonstration of personal devotion to Christ. We believe the Lord’s Supper (communion) is to be shared by believers to remember Jesus’ great sacrifice for us. Both baptism and the Lord’s Supper, however, are not to be regarded as a means of salvation. But both of which are an evidence of obedience and fellowship with the Lord. (Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 2:38, 41, 8:12, 35-38; Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-29)

THE SECOND COMING

We believe in the personal, coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We believe in the bodily resurrection of the dead, of the believer to everlasting glory and the unbeliever to judgment and everlasting punishment. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:51-52; Titus 2:11-13; John 14:1-6; Matthew 25:46; Revelation 20:11-15; 2 Peter 3:10)

THE FAMILY

We believe in Family Life’s “Family Manifesto”. We invite you to read it in its entirety and evaluate the scriptures that are cited. The link is: http://www.familylife.com/about-us/what-we-believe/the-family-manifesto

These are just some of the excerpts:

We believe God, not man, created marriage. We believe marriage was the first institution designed by God. We believe the Bible teaches that the covenant of marriage is sacred and lifelong. The Bible makes it clear that marriage is a legally binding public declaration of commitment and a private consummation between one man and one woman, never between the same sex.

We believe God created marriage for the purpose of couples glorifying God as one flesh, parenting godly children, and enjoying sexual pleasure. As iron sharpens iron, we believe God uses marriage to sharpen a man and woman into the image of Jesus Christ. Just as the Trinity reflects equal worth with differing roles, we believe God created a man and a woman with equal worth but with differing roles and responsibilities in marriage.

We also believe that God allows for divorce in certain situations, not because He wills it, but because of the hardness of people’s hearts. We believe the Bible teaches that God allows for divorce in the case of adultery and in the case where an unbelieving spouse has chosen to abandon the commitment of marriage.

We believe God has allowed men and women, either by circumstance or by choice, to endure difficult and painful consequences in their marriages and family relationships. We also believe God gives abundant grace to the broken, blended, and single-parent families.

We believe children are the gifts of God and should be received and treated as such. We believe a child’s life begins at conception. We believe children have a special responsibility to God in obeying and honoring their parents. We believe a child’s identity and spiritual growth is either helped or hindered by his parents’ devotion to God, to one another, and to him. Parents should see themselves as God’s ambassadors, working to build strong character in the lives of their children through consistent godly living, nurturing, discipline, and teaching them right from wrong. We are committed to God’s plan for passing His love down through the ages by encouraging parents to love their children “so the generations to come might know” the love and forgiveness of Christ.

We rejoice in God’s wonderful plan for mankind. We invite all who are seeking God to investigate our beliefs as stated. We have seen his marvelous works in our family and His faithfulness in our lives. And for us, even through the valleys of life, the struggles of allowing God to shape and mold us, we have discovered no other belief that demonstrates God’s love and care for ALL mankind! HIS plan is amazing!

If you would like to know more about God’s love, grace and truth, please contact us. We would love to speak with you!