I am sitting in a pile of papers and pictures that are supposed to represent eight years. Eight years of knowing kids and being a part of their lives at the Good News Ministries Youth Center.
2002: The first camp Good News. A bus that picked up 75 kids from the streets and took them to camp. I remember bed wetting, airing out sleeping bags, death threats, cold pool water with weave floating in it, and duckweed.
Jasmine(s), Shila, Neka, Bugg, Big Jenny, Crystle, Lamont, Eugene, Moose, Johnny, Mika, Charese, April, Joanne, Michelle,Tia, Danielle, Donald, Tyray, Eric, Dennavious, Chris, Antonio, Kierra, Rodney, Ramone and Demone…many of these names still have faces in my life today.
Both Jasmines graduated this year. Many of them are my friends on facebook, and come by the center to visit every once in awhile. Some have kids, two are in college, one is in jail. Even the youngest are 18, and are grown.
After camp, Carrie, the female staff, pulled me aside and told me “If you are just looking for a place to work for a bit, then this isn’t for you. These kids are used to everyone coming and going in their lives, and if you are just going to be one more, then don’t even try.”
That year, I broke up my first fight. I got hit in the jaw for it too (accidentally). Time passed quickly as the “girls director,” and I was happy to roll around the hood in my ‘wagon (a.k.a. pimp-mobile).
It took a year before I really felt I had formed a friendship—a relationship that would last. A year is a long time. It was a lot of waiting. Especially with the older girls. Younger kids will sell you their soul for a game of tag, and guys will joke around in a game of basketball, but those girls? Scared the heck outta me.
2003 was about building relationships. Earning the right to hear their stories. Discipleship, accountability, “So how are you and God?”
Danielle, Erika, Ebony, April, Neka, Michelle, Wrianna, Dabrittnay, Jasmine, Reggie, Jake, Bugg, Donald, Carlos, Lamont.
I watched as one of my closest girls walked away—she chose drugs over the center. She chose drugs over me. My first experiences counseling pregnant girls and boys who would be daddies. The first time I received a death threat—and many apologies afterwards. Visiting boys school. Bugg’s mom dying.
Then Brazil happened. But only for the summer. Or not. Kierra met me as I got off the plane…yes, I was back in Indiana. We started making a tradition of girl’s conferences. Limo rides, my mom’s macaroni and cheese, U of I gym, Golden Corral (But not in Greenwood).
The “little” kids, they were growing up so fast: the Pattersons, Erica, Eric, Devon, Andrew, Johnny, Joy, Ramone, Vladimir, Cedric. And I used to be able to beat all those guys at basketball. God gave me a new car to roll around in, and we wore it in good.
From 2005 on, the question became: “well, how long will you be here this time, Rachel?” But I felt something change. I call it the three year mark. After three years, something was different.
Not that I was “one of the gang,” but…I was welcome. When I dropped kids off, they said “Lock the doors, be safe Mz.Rachel!” They asked if I wanted to come in. Their parents knew me (and called me Mz.Rachel as well, to my surprise). They came to me with problems, instead of me prying it out. They even came back with “Well, how are you and God doing?”
New friends, coming and going: Tisha, Kenisha, Shawntell, Indashia, Kayla, Lutice, Savanna, Tierra. And I was coming and going. But I would always be visiting the center a couple days after I got into the country…no matter what. By 2007, It was just volunteering when I could. I worked retail for the couple months I was in the USA…I didn’t feel I had the time I needed/wanted to give to work at the center, I didn’t feel it was fair to a new set of kids to come and go out of their lives.
But I kept in contact with those I knew. 2008 I was only in the country long enough to be torn into two by a young girl’s decision to have an abortion.
2009 I volunteered once a week, always yanked down into a seat next to Curtis, who needed help with his homework. A huge blow on everyone when his brother Daniel, 15, was shot and killed. I watched the faces of my kids as they walked past his casket and realized it had happened—they were not kids anymore.
This year has given me a new chance with new kids. The good times have been better than ever before, and the bad times have been worse. I hold babies and go to baby showers. I find out some of our 12-year-old kids are running drugs. I bust my knee trying to break up five guys as they jump a kid—inside the youth center. I file a police report for a black eye and strangulation—with pictures (that I smiled for).
I earned the title “Educational director,” running the tutorial program. I got called a thug and a beast. I was told that I must be mixed, because I talk too black to be white. I was loved and hated, by the same kids, on the same days.
I have a new set of names: Nay-nay, Praise, Shanique, Honoria, Doodles, Various, Vontez, Deon, Miracle, Curtis, Key’aunna, Dominique, Airon, Mark, Corey, Booboo, Aaron, Robin…
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Eight years since I started working at the youth center. Sometimes it looks bleak. My kids are adults now. The new kids…things seem more violent than before. Gravity, my friends, goes down.
It is discouraging. It feels like I am watching kids who come, get saved, really try, laugh and play hard, to girls who get knocked up, boys who get drugged up, and all who fall out of dreams/goals that they had for themselves. You know what has happened? I have seen them become their parents.
The point? Sometimes I take the selfish route, and think only of myself. For me, I am a better person for my time at the youth center. These kids have taught me so much. I have learned tough love. I have learned how to say something and stand on it, though hell tries to blow me over. I have learned that there is always more to the story than I know, and that love wins more than rules. And I have some of the best memories and friends to take with me through the rest of my life.
Sometimes I think the point is just to be there. Those kids, and those who are now adults, know we are there. They know I still care. When they need someone, they know we will be there. Sometimes I get a phone call. Or someone walking through those purple doors. They know what we represent. And when they walk through those doors, it means they are open and looking: even if they are not aware of it themselves.
It is a picture of something bigger. Of Christ’s pierced hands always open, always reaching, always there. No matter what.
No, I haven’t seen all the successful lives and changes that I would have liked to have seen. I have seen people fall and fall again. I have seen things so ugly that I wanted to heave. I have heard words so hateful that I have crawled inside myself and not come out for a long time. And reality gets me down. Quite often. Statistics are bleak.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” –Winston Churchill
I asked my friend how he was going to change the world for Christ. He said he wasn’t. He was going to live life with God in his own little world—the one God had placed him in with people, places, situations—and when the time was right, when something happened and someone found that how they were doing things didn’t work…he would step inside that small doorway and share the answers he had found: God.
That’s what I have gotten to do at the youth center.
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