Beauty For Ashes

Early last Sunday morning, around 1 am, The Branches United Methodist Church sanctuary and brand new playground was burnt down. As you can probably imagine, life around here is now chaos. As it was, we did not have enough space to house all the activities we had going on at the church and community center. We utilized our outside space to the max, so when it rained we had a hard time housing all the children and youth that we serve. Now, as you can imagine, it has turned into a daily scramble trying to find places to continue our programming and serve all the people in the community that we can.

Sunday morning, we had an incredible church service outside. We all slathered on sunscreen and sang and praised God and did a lot of crying. However, the overall tone of the service was positive. The words of our pastor, Audrey Warren, "God is bigger!" rang through the

neighborhood as news crews, neighbors, and church members sat on blankets and folding

chairs. The church has received a lot of publicity for all that is going on. Since the investigation has ruled out everything but arson, news stations have been eating our story up, twisting it from every angle: from the issue of gangs, to a sorrowful story of hatred, to a positive story of hope. Because of this, programming at work this week has been difficult. So many people in the community have dropped by to bring money, food, clothes, even furniture. We don't have room for the items being donated, but they all just keep coming! News stations are swarming the area trying to interview children and youth and people are always walking around taking pictures, or trying to find out more information. If nothing else, it shows us as an organization, the true impact that we have on the community. People keep driving by saying, "My sister-in-law's uncle's cousin went to Branches six years ago and we just had to come see the sad news for ourselves!" This organization truly has a community full of supporters, despite the bad that we have seen this week, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

The support that Branches has received has been incredible to witness. To add insult to injury, all of our laptop computers were stolen during the chaos of trying to have church outside on

Sunday and make a plan to rebuild the buildings. Of course, a news crew jumped all over the story immediate

ly, sewing a story of deep sorrow and how "our faith is being tested." However, this news story reached all over the greater Miami area and because of this, seven new laptops have been donated to Branches. People that don't have any connection to Branches at all have been calling from all over the state saying, "I heard about the story on the news, what can I do?"

Our community has shown us what it means to be supported in a time of need. A young woman who doesn't even have enough money to feed her family stopped by and handed Audrey an

envelope of cash, telling her that when she earned more, she would give it to the church. One of our student's friends gave him a dollar and told him to give it to the church to help it be rebuilt. In the past three days alone, there have been countless more stories of generosity and charity. We have been wrapped in the love and support of community members as well as the greater church. Wealthier churches in north Miami have donated things like temporary playgrounds, laptops, tents, sunshades, fans, and lots of snacks and food for our kids. There are no words to describe the work of God that we are witnessing unfold right before our eyes. God is making the words of our pastor ring true each and every day, "God is bigger than all of this."

One Step Forward, Three Steps Back

It seems to me that life goes in cycles. You have the cycles of the seasons, the cycles of the school year, and the cycles of life and death which are occurring world wide daily. My faith, for sure, goes in cycles - cycles of getting close to God and feeling as though there is nothing that can separate me from His love to cycles of feeling further and further away because I am so grounded in this world and in worldly matters. My youth at work seem to go through cycles as well. They are currently in one of two different cycles. Half of my youth have passed their FCAT (Florida's standardized test), they have been keeping up with their school work all year long and are sitting back and enjoying the fact that the teachers are easing off of them towards the end of the school year. The other half of my youth are freaking out. They have been relaxing most of the year, their grades have dropped drastically, and they are trying to frantically get their work done, do their makeup work, and redo some of their work because of their failing grades - all while the idea of 'repeating this grade' is breathing heavily down their necks.

We have eased off some of our kids during this time - letting them do Sudoku puzzles to work on logic instead of drilling them on their multiplication and division tables. However, we have really done this so that we can focus our whole attention on these kids who are frantically trying not repeat their grade level. I have one girl, a middle school girl, who is actually in the 5th grade. Her younger sister is in a grade higher than her because she failed and her sister didn't. A woman I work with fully sponsored this young girl to go to a Christian school down the street from Branches because there, 5th grade is considered "middle school." Therefore, because of my coworker, she can come to all youth events for Branches and not be considered in a lower grade than her younger sister. The problem is, the scholarship money never came through for this young girl to go to school, so the payments that my coworker was making was not fully footing the bill of her education. The school tried and tried to contact this girl's parents, however, they never called the school back. Rather than kicking her out of school, they let her continue, except the teacher stopped grading her work (which are individualized books that they have to complete a certain number of in order to pass that grade level.) The teacher never told this girl what was going on, so she spent the majority of the school year not doing any work because the teacher would not issue her new books or let her continue with her work. Finally, my coworker called the school and heard the entire problem. (She was obviously pretty upset.) She is now covering the entire bill of my youth's schooling so that she can finish out the year. We placed this young girl in that school because it was going to allow her to catch up in her school work and hopefully fill the gaps in her education and allow her to move on into middle school. However, now she is about a semester's worth of work behind and if she even wants to pass the 5th grade (again) she has to basically work night and day on her school work.

This is unfortunately an issue for a lot of our youth. In the case of this young girl, it wasn't entirely her fault. However, some of our youth are just too lazy to take responsibility for their actions and do their own work. In Florida, public school do not get out until the middle of June. These kids literally have a little less than three weeks to finish a semester's worth of work. It's so hard to see this issue and wonder if there was something you could have done to change this outcome. I cannot physically make the students do their homework or study. But, at the same time, it's so tough to see these kids fail when you have been helping them all year long.

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.