The Depths

Last night we had a service for our youth that was a "Peace and Healing" service. We have been talking about attitude and how the way you react to situations is truly your choice. You may have been dealt the worst cards in the stack and your circumstances and the things that happen to you on a daily basis may not be good at all. But it doesn't mean that you have to be rude and angry towards everyone else and it doesn't mean that you have to be unhappy all the time. Our youth have broken lives. It's a daily reoccurring theme down here that I find out something else about one of our youth's lives that is appalling. But, the staff realized, that if our youth were ever going to be ok with their lives and therefore change their attitudes, that we needed to let them know how to heal and more importantly, we needed to show them how to ask God to come into their lives to help them heal.

As one might imagine, last night was one of the most emotionally draining nights of Branches history. I also think it was a very important night for a lot of our youth.

Tony asked me yesterday afternoon if I would be willing to lead a prayer station. Since I am not comfortable praying in front of people I obviously shouted "NO!" in my head. And then I told him I would do it. Before I was even able to take my spot at a prayer station (where our kids would come up and together you would ask God to enter their lives and help them heal) one of my youth came up to me and said, "I need to talk to you outside."

This youth happened to be one of my high school girls. Her story is an interesting one, and one that will probably never be fully told because I'm not sure anyone could fully understand her pain. She is approximately 6'2" and solid. Our girls at Branches would call her "thick" because that's their word for everyone who isn't stick skinny like them. (Yes, I am daily called "thick.") But by solid I mean she can take any of our boys at basketball and she could probably bench press most of them as well. To say the least, this girl used to scare me. She's a tough girl. And she has the front of a tough girl. I have never seen her be emotional once in the months that I have worked here. But, as she got nick named at Oasis as 'The Gentle Giant,' she is always smiling and laughing when she comes to Branches and she truly loves Branches and the people here. I think that has to do with the fact that Branches is the complete opposite of her home life. Her mother had her when she was about 13 years old. Her grandmother had to step in and help raise her and her siblings. As one can imagine in this situation, she's had a hard life.

Last night when she asked me to step outside I wasn't sure what she was going to say to me. She started off by saying she's never really opened up to people about this, but she's feeling a pull to do so now. Then she just burst into tears and said, "My mom tells me everyday that she doesn't want me. I don't know why, but she doesn't want me. My grandmother tells me everyday that I have ruined her life by being born. Most days I wish I had never been born." And then she continues to sob and repeat some of the same stuff like, "she just doesn't want me." I asked her if I could pray for her and we stood there for a while praying. All the while, she was shaking and sobbing, knowing and learning that God loves her always and that when she feels useless that God is there. I can only hope that something has stirred within her to start the healing process of her life and to hopefully make her realize that, more than ever, she needs to graduate high school and get out of that toxic life that has plagued her for so long.

It's stories like this that make me feel mixed emotions. On the one hand, it's what keeps me coming to work day after day just to show these kids that there's someone out there who cares about them. On the other hand, it's the one thing that makes me want to give up day after day because their situations just seem so dismal. So impossible to overcome. But I guess that's the challenge of this job and this community. You just have to throw out the seeds and hope that a few of them hit fertile ground and miss the rocks.

One Year.

What can you do in one year?

You can read the whole Bible.

You can learn another language.

You can have a baby.

You can lose a lot of weight.

You can learn a new skill.

You can change the world.

Or so they tell you. One year mission programs like mine advertise things like "A year of service for a lifetime of change" or "Blessed to be a blessing." We sign up for these service years to be just that: a 'blessing' to the people we are ministering. We make grandiose plans and lofty goals for what we want our year to look like and for the mission that we will be administering to these people in need. But what happens when these goals cannot be met? We throw ourselves into our jobs and into "frenzied action" as Parker Palmer would say, without truly thinking about ourselves and our needs and even our own actual capabilities because we only have ONE YEAR to change the whole world.

Somewhere along the way, we start to realize the reality of the situation. "Changing the world" might not look like what we originally thought. I would not say that we have 'failed' at our original goal, nor would I say that we are 'jaded' having been thrown into the darkest of situations. Instead, I would say we are educated. We have been handed a vital dose of reality and we have come out on top. We more fully understand that 'changing the world' doesn't necessarily mean making it like your own. Rather, it's the smaller things, like letting someone know they are loved, that truly changes the world. It's telling someone that you believe in them and then proving it by helping them get into college or helping them figure out a way to learn English. Changing the world in one year will not happen. I do not care how much energy or excitement you bring to the job. However, changing your way of thinking and allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to fail and then start over daily will change the world. Unfortunately, our tiny day to day actions might not make the impact that we had originally thought it would. However, a lifetime of these daily actions might bring forth a wave of change.

One Day

I have been teaching a photography class at Branches for quite a while now. Last week when we were supposed to take a field trip around town photographing, it started raining. I figured I had two options, take them inside and show them slide after slide of other people's work that they mostly just find "weird" or bring about plan b, which was leaving still photography behind and teaching them about video. Of course, after I scrambled to put together a video lesson, it stopped raining and the sun came out. Thank you Florida. Regardless, the girls enjoyed their video lesson and made an awesome video about their Branches community.

OASIS - TIGHT'N UP!

During the week of Florida's spring break, my co workers and I took 150 urban youth to a camp in Lake Wales, Florida. The conference we put on is known as Camp Oasis. The term “oasis,” coming from the image of a watering hole in the desert. Or, a more figurative definition being the idea of a peaceful, pleasant area in the midst of a difficult, troubled, or hectic place or situation. All 150 youth are not ours. Other urban groups, like ours, from the greater Miami area are involved in this camp as well. My supervisor Kim started Camp Oasis over fifteen years ago; since then it has only grown infinitely. She saw a need to get these kids out of their homes, out of the city, and into a space where, at the very least, for four days they will know they are loved.

Camp Oasis has probably been the most powerful experience I have witnessed since my move to South Florida. My youth changed the second they got out of Florida City. Every single one of my youth had a life changing moment at Oasis. I'm not going to lie, I was skeptical about Camp Oasis. The first question every youth asked me when I moved to Miami was, “Are you going to Oasis?” Oasis is seriously the only thing my youth have been talking about since August. Throughout my life, I have been involved with a lot of camps and conferences. I live for camps and conferences. It's where my true passion lies. So, in the back of my head, the only thing I kept thinking was, “Ok, I'm sure it's great for these kids, but it must just be like every other conference I have attended and they just don't have any experience with this kind of thing.” Turns out, like with most of my initial reactions, I was wrong. Dead wrong. Oasis, first and foremost, was the most organized and well put together camp I have ever been privileged to be a part of. Kim, and the supervisor of another program very similar to ours in Homestead, worked pretty close to 24/7 leading up to the camp, and all of their hard work paid off and truly showed from the second we got there.

In the fifteen + year history of Oasis it has never rained harder than a short drizzle. However, this year, the skies opened up. We're talking 'torrential downpour, fear for your life' kind of rain. And it wasn't short lived. It rained from Sunday afternoon all the way through Monday morning. A big part of taking these kids out of the city is to introduce them to outdoor activities that they would never otherwise get to witness or be a part of. Do you know how hard it is to play soccer or go boating in a tornado? So, to say the least, this year's camp could have been terrible. We could have let the rain ruin all of our plans and we could have pouted. Those were all my suggestions. I don't really understand why they were not taken seriously. Instead what happened is we made the best of it. The kids were forced to take a breath and just sit. Just relax. God knew what He was doing. These kids don't ever get the chance to sit in their daily lives. They go from school where they are subjected to pressures that I never had to think about or endure in my middle school or high school straight into their homes where their parents tell them that they are useless and are never going to amount to anything. Every minute of their lives is spent trying to resist all they are subject to and everything they are told. They use all their energy trying not to be just another statistic. Because of this, their lives are tiring. And this weekend gave them a chance not only to rest and be themselves, but it also gave them a chance to see that there is a different way of life out there.

I spent most of the four days trying to figure out what made Camp Oasis so different from the other camps and conferences I have spent my time at. Sure it was well organized and amazingly staffed with 50 adults trained in youth leadership. However, there was still something more. The only answer I have been able to come up with during my days of reflection is this: the youth. When you take 150 youth who have barely even been out of the city and put them in the woods with crazy things like snakes and bugs, as well as exposed them to unheard of things like a lake, boats, and new games like nine-square (a super hyped-up version of the classic four-square game), it's no wonder radical results occurred. These kids were curious about everything. And more than curious, these kids wanted to participate in everything. While most middle school and high school youth would yawn at a paddle boat ride or a small slide into a lake, these kids thought it was the best thing that had ever happened in their lives. I was in charge of swimming and even though on Sunday the temperature dropped and the clouds rolled in, every single youth that signed up for that activity block was swimming and had to literally be dragged out when we told them it had to end early because of the lightening. Even during the hard rain, many youth came up asking me if they could go swimming and they just did not understand why I said “no.” They did not take a single experience for granted and truly wanted to cherish and soak up every second of being outdoors and away from Florida City.

While the outdoor experiences played a large role in making this conference so different, the one thing that truly made the difference was showing these youth that there are people in their lives that love them. As I had mentioned before, a lot of our youth are told repeatedly in their homes that they are worthless, that they were an accident, and that they will never amount to anything in life. I do not understand it, but there is a large cultural difference surrounding families in South Florida. Instead of wanting the best for their children, most parents do not want their children to be more successful than themselves. They see it as a threat and they want their children to always be around to take care of them instead of having their children focus on a career or a family. It happened to the parents when they were children and it will continue to happen until the cycle can be broken. It seems very backwards to me, but it occurs. And it occurs in almost every home of our children and youth. So, when you take these middle school and high school students who have been told their entire lives that they should not be alive and you tell them the radical message that God loves them, their entire life changes. The message is so overwhelming for most of them that even the toughest high school boys will weep in your arms for hours. It's a powerful experience. To say the very least.Camp Oasis is truly one of the best programs that Branches has to offer. It was life changing just to be able to be a part of the staff and witness the changes that our youth went through. God is truly raining blessings on South Florida and moving powerfully through each of our youth as well.