Logos Online student Ezra Youngren and family have the opportunity to run a family business due, in large part, to the flexibility Logos Online School provides. Mr. Youngren started a church website business, Great Commission Design, which enables him to work from home. Son, Ezra, at a young age, developed a love for all things computers and took an interest in his father’s work. Mrs. Youngren says Ezra’s interest in programming began as a love for gaming, and over time developed into a desire to learn how to program real things that would help people. With this motivation, Ezra quickly learned the skills necessary to aid his father in the church website business and is now, at age 15, a co-owner of the company. On top of that, Ezra also works part-time doing fronted development at RedBalloon.work, a local company whose mission is “uniting the community of good businesses and reliable, motivated job seekers who value freedom, hard work, merit-based recognition, and productive workplace culture free from divisive woke nonsense.” Ezra says, “To put it plainly, I wouldn't have been able to do any of this if I were in an in-person school. Getting done with school early lets me go and work at RedBalloon after school, and then do homework afterward.”
In his 4th year taking classes with Logos Online, Ezra has learned to schedule and prioritize his time in order to balance his work responsibilities with school responsibilities. He prioritizes working ahead, and although he doesn’t have much time for anything else, he enjoys the time working with his dad, connecting over the work and mission. Ezra values the education at Logos Online, and is taking every advantage of the flexibility with his schedule to learn the back-end of programming with the goal to be a full-stack developer. Mrs. Youngren says with this goal in mind, Ezra takes every opportunity for more responsibility at work to learn as much as he can.
Daughter Alaska, who graduated from LOS last year (2023), also had this mindset in her final year of LOS. She took the opportunity to learn Graphic Design in her spare time, spending 30-40 hours a week learning all that she could. Aside from helping out with the family business, her efforts have rewarded her success as she is now the Graphic Designer for RedBalloon. God’s kindness, hard-work, determination, and the flexibility that LOS afforded, has rewarded both these siblings with success. Alaska is now a student at New Saint Andrews College and continues to learn and develop her knowledge and skills.
Along with his sister Alaska, Ezra plans to further his education at NSA and continue working and developing his skills. Ezra says, “LOS is a great prep for the deep theological and philosophical questions asked at NSA.” A great benefit of LOS is the live-classes and interaction with different perspectives. Mrs. Youngren says “having the ability to have interactions with representatives of other families, people with other convictions than ourselves, is a huge benefit. There are diverse perspectives within LOS that help our family discuss different perspectives and interact with them with our kids.” Mrs. Youngren also values the vast selection of reading material, including reading and discussing documents that they disagree with. Discussing and analyzing the material together as a family has been very beneficial in helping their kids think about where they differ and how to think about the material through a biblical worldview. This skill is priceless, especially in our day and age, and one thing Ezra looks forward to in his future studies at NSA is learning to “effectively combat our current cultural situation today”.
No matter what the cultural situation at this point in history is, from his education at LOS, working through the middle ages to our present day, Ezra knows that “the Bible is always the answer. We have no hope in anything else as our standard, and with it, we can solve all issues we may encounter. LOS's vast book selection has led me to this conclusion, and I am very grateful.” Way to go, Youngren family! You are a blessing, encouragement, and inspiration to us all. May God bless and prosper all the work that you endeavor in His Name. Amen!
- Kaitlyn Wright, LOS Social Media Intern