Katrina Relief - Part V

Evening Celebration
To celebrate our successful service project we took the whole group to a local favorite restaurant called Cajun Connection. In many ways inner city students remind me of small town kids. They are used to a manageable little world, so they sometimes fear or avoid new and different things. They resist leaving familiar surroundings. And they don’t think of themselves as citizens of the whole city or state, let alone the whole nation or world. So part of our goal in taking them on a relief trip is to break the bondage of provincialism. And that includes food. The gulf coast has a unique diet that Nashville kids haven’t tried. That’s why we wanted to introduce them to real Cajun food. They tried crayfish and soft-shell crab, a few of them enjoyed the hush puppies and a spoonful of my gumbo. Many of them liked the fish. And all of them loved our fun-loving waitress.

Dinner was a celebration of work well done. We were so proud of the attitudes of our students. They had risen to every challenge with maturity and grace. And they had drawn together with us and even with Abdi, making a family of our nine-member team. Sometime during the trip they had started calling Melony and I “Mom and Dad.” What a pleasure to love and be loved by these funny, interesting, talented, hard-working students.

After dinner we had a final debriefing session. I asked the students what memories they would be taking home from the trip. They all had something to share. Cecile topped the list. Her perseverance in suffering was inspiring. Several students said they were grateful for what they have, and they were aware that material things could be swept away at any moment. We talked a little about the things that outlast hurricanes. And we revisited our earlier theme: God visits us in surprising ways. Finally, Melony and I emphasized again and again how proud we are of them.

A Long Night
With twenty-two years of youth-work experience, you would think that Melony and I would have anticipated that our students needed some wild and crazy fun. They had worked hard. We had eaten well. And we had talked. But they’re kids. They still need to play. Oops! We forgot. As a result, our heretofore responsible and obedient students sought fun of their own. In the wee hours of the morning Melony awoke me to say that two of my boys were out of the cabin. I went looking for them and eventually found them back in their bunks, feigning sleep. An hour later Melony woke me again. Same thing. This time they were knocking on the side of the girls’ cabin, waking up students and adults alike.

Had our group been the only one in the camp, I might not have been too concerned. But I was afraid my boys would wake people who needed their sleep for the next day’s relief work. And with a ten hour drive ahead of us I began to worry that no adult would be rested well enough to get us all home safely. I presented my concerns to Melony and Carol, our other adult, and we agreed that the best thing to do was to pack up and go right now. We had no guarantee that anyone would get any more sleep that night. So, if the drivers were going to be awake, they might as well be driving.

When we told the students to pack up and get on the bus, they were mad. We had planned a drive through the flooded part of New Orleans on our way back. But now that we were leaving early, that was off. It was a real disappointment for everyone. We left a note for the camp staff and pulled out at 3:30 in the morning.

One More Divine Appointment
For about five hours most of us slept while Carol drove. But when it was time to stop for gas and breakfast we discovered that an air conditioning problem was getting worse. All AC units cool by removing water from the air, and when they do, the water has to escape somewhere. In our bus the AC unit was in the ceiling above the last four seats, and for some reason, the water wasn’t draining out as it was supposed to. It was building up. When we turned a corner at the top of the exit ramp, water poured out on someone’s head. When it filled up too much it poured down the back wall, splashing on the students sitting in those back seats. Ever handy with duct tape, we stopped at a gas station to “fix” the leak and take a bathroom break.

When I returned to the bus after my bathroom stop a lady was standing in the doorway talking to Melony and the students. Like many Mississippians, She was thanking them for coming down to help with the rebuilding. But as we talked we learned that this lady had a story of her own. She had been a medical technician in New Orleans. But last summer she was hit with two personal hurricanes. Her husband was killed in a car accident, and she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She started chemotherapy, but when Katrina threatened, she was urged to move north to a hospital where she could continue her treatment in safety. One of the side effects of the chemo was sudden, unexpected bleeding from the nose. As a result, she was a danger to patients in the hospital. So she lost her job. Now she and her five children were living in a small trailer, about the size of our bus. She couldn’t work, so they had no income. They had water, but their electricity had been turned off for the last month.

Maybe I’m jaded, but when I hear a story like this, I listen for the pitch. But it didn’t come. This woman, whose name was Kitty, wasn’t asking for anything. She was just telling us her story. This is one of the greatest needs for any trauma victim, to just tell someone who cares. Kitty was telling us. But I think God had something more in mind. Once I realized that Kitty wasn’t telling us a story in order to get something, I felt sure I could believe her. And once I believed her, I realized that we could help her.

We had several hundred dollars more expense cash with us than we would need today. So, trying not to make a show of it, I reached into my cash envelope, separated out the amount I thought we would need for gas and lunch on the way home, and folded the rest into my hand. When Kitty was finished with her story, I quietly asked, if she would be offended if I offered to give some money. She looked stunned. It had apparently not occurred to her that she might receive any help from us. She had just stopped to thank us. She stammered, “Well…no…I guess I wouldn’t be offended.” Then it dawned on her that there was enough money there to get her electricity turned back on. Her eyes filled up and overflowed as she exclaimed, “I can get my lights turned on! Wait ‘til I tell my daughter (who is thirteen) I can get my lights turned on!”

Melony turned to the students in the bus who had been listening and watching. She said, “Do you all realize that if we hadn’t left early, we wouldn’t have been here when Kitty was here? But because we left early, we were here at just the right time to meet her. She meant to bless us by thanking us for helping Katrina survivors. God meant to bless her by using us to get her lights turned back on. Nothing happens by accident!”

Coming Home
The rest of the trip home was about resolution. We slept some. And we talked a lot. The anger had mostly dissolved into wonder and gratitude. We stopped at a rest area just inside Tennessee to talk about and resolve any dangling feelings from the previous night. We didn’t all agree about what should have been done. But we worked through it. That’s what you do in a family. You work through your disagreements, so love can keep going. And when we arrived home we were able to drop students off with the words, “I love you.” And they could answer, “I love you too, Mom and Dad.”

Good News
Before we left for our trip, Melony had made a few calls to WSMV, our local NBC affiliate. So the day after we arrived home, we all gathered again to tell Nashville where we had been and what we had done. That night we were on the six and ten o’clock news. All too often East Nashville and Stratford High School get the negative stories on the news. This time we got to tell a positive story. And we got to relive our trip. Everyone agreed it was a great trip. And we would all love to do it again. I hope we will.

Katrina Relief - Part IV

Second Work Day
On the second day we were assigned to salvage the timbers from about fifty very long beams. Originally constructed from 2x12’s, sometimes nailed two or three thick, they were so heavy that it several of us just to stand them upright, while others pried them apart with crowbars. Once they were pried apart, we hammered out the nails and stacked them for re-use. It was hard, hot, sweaty work in that humid, mid-ninety-degree weather. And our tough, athletic boys and girls were dragging by noon.

Cecile’s Story
Because this was a Saturday, we had been told that Cecile would be at her house. So we took our lunch over there, hoping to meet her. As we drove up she came out to greet us, and she told us her story. During the storm she, her husband, one of her sons, and her son’s child all stayed at her house. When the storm surge began to come in, they prepared to climb to the attic. The surge rose so rapidly that it was well on its way up the wall by the time they had all climbed to safety. When the water got as high as the attic floor, her son began to chop an escape hole through the roof.

As it turned out, the water did not enter the attic, so Cecile and her family were able to wait out the storm inside. Once the wind and water had abated, they climbed out to find their world had changed forever. There was a deep layer of black, stinking muck deposited everywhere. Cecile’s house was in shambles. She showed us photos taken in the early days after the storm. Everything was wet and dirty. It looked as if the whole household had been put in a blender. Chunks of their former lives were everywhere. Much of her furniture had floated away, and in her yard, she found pieces of furniture from other people’s houses. Cecile’s prized red truck was totaled. And her house would have been, but the walls and roof were still standing.

Cecile could have abandoned her house, as many of her neighbors did. But to Cecile, this was home, and she wants to build it back, just the way it was before the storm. Unfortunately, Cecile’s husband didn’t agree. He was not rooted to this property like she was. In many ways the storm had solidified her attachment to this building, but it had dissolved his. This fundamental disagreement proved to be a second hurricane that ripped their marriage apart. Cecil’s husband left her sometime in the fall. And her divorce was finalized just days before we arrived.

As we talked with Cecile we learned two disturbing facts of post-Katrina life. First, the insurance companies were all claiming that the storm surge, which destroyed so many houses, was a flood, not a hurricane. As a result, they claimed those thousands of people who were covered for hurricane damage, but not flood damage, would not be reimbursed for their losses. Cecile was one of those people. Whatever it costs to rebuild her house, she will be paying it out of her own pocket.

That leads to the second disturbing fact. After her husband left her, Cecile had to find a job. So she went to work at Lowe’s in Wiggins, MS where she was staying. Lowe’s gives employees a discount on building materials, so Cecile was buying all her materials there. Sometime during the last few weeks Cecile was talking to her building inspector about what she had yet to do to before he would approve her framing. He asked where she was buying her materials. When she told him she was getting them from Lowes, he replied that she would never get her framing approved, if she didn’t buy materials at 84 Lumber, the local lumber yard. So, it appears that Cecile has not only been victimized by a hurricane and abandoned by her husband, she is being shaken down by a corrupt codes inspector.

Cecile told us she wondered who had left her all the sweet signs. She knew a crew was coming, but hadn’t met us yet. So our signs were a curiosity to her. One read, “SHS Loves Cecile,” and the other “SHS 6 Katrina 0.” After we owned up to our graffiti, we all signed the first sign. Cecile wanted to keep it as a memento. We took photos with her in front of her house, and we held up our signs. As we were preparing to go back to our work salvaging beams, we asked if she had any other work we could help her do. She told us new building codes required that hurricane ties be nailed everyplace that a rafter joined a load-bearing wall. So, our ladies stayed with Cecile to install hurricane ties, while the men went back to finish the hot, brawny demolition job.

After we finished our work salvaging the beams, our boys told me they had felt like quitting more than once. But when they did, they remembered Cecile. They decided that, if she could come back to work on her gutted house day after day for as long as it took, they could work through their fatigue for one day. When I heard this I was so proud of my boys. In fact, I told them that they were no longer talking or working like boys. They were acting like men.

In just a few short hours we had become close to Cecile. And she was already making an impact on us for good. We had invested time, and we cared about her and her difficult story. As a result, we were different, better. So we left her with hugs and promises to pray and keep in touch. The work portion of our relief trip ended when we pulled out of her driveway. It had been a great success for us and for our students. But there was much more to come before we got home.

Katrina Relief - Part III

Nicki
When I returned from my exploration of the wrecked pier, Melony was talking to a woman on the beach. Later Melony said the woman had walked up and asked, “Are you relief workers? Can I tell you my story?” It turns out Nicki was a hematology technician in the blood bank of a New Orleans hospital. Just before the hurricane hit, she and her coworkers came to work prepared for a three-day storm. Instead, they lived in the hospital for three weeks. During that time there was only one hallway where everyone’s cell phone seemed to work. They called that hallway the phone booth. The power was out and the hospital ran on three diesel generators. At one point there was only enough fuel left in the last generator for sixteen hours of hospital operation. Then a barge broke down in the canal near the hospital. The captain had to offload his cargo – which just happened to be diesel fuel. So he gave the fuel to the hospital – just in time

The most critical patients were air-lifted to other hospitals, sometimes in other cities. But there was so much need for airlift space that families were not allowed to accompany their sick loved ones. Many became irate and violent, threatening hospital staffers when they weren’t allowed onto the helicopters. Some hospital employees discovered that people were looting local pharmacies, and the hospital drug supply was getting low. So they went to the pharmacies themselves to commandeer needed drugs on behalf of their patients.

After three weeks of living in the hospital the staff had undergone a change. Typically, MD’s are lords of the kingdom, and the techs and custodians are surfs. But after weeks of Katrina aftermath, everyone in the complex was doing whatever needed doing. If the trash needed emptying, whoever could do it did it. And those who weren’t normally allowed to touch a patient were asked to help as much as they were able. A sense of family took over the staff hierarchy. And eight months later, it still remains.

Nicki was able to see her two children after three weeks at work in the hospital. She saw them for four hours. She said, “I guess I could have stayed with my kids and never gone back. But I had to go back.” On her way, a highway patrolman who let her back into the flooded city said to her, “Beyond this point, you’re on your own.” It was frightening to drive those last miles to the hospital, knowing that amid the chaos, she could not count on help or protection from law enforcement. But she drove on.

I asked Nicki if she still has symptoms of trauma stress. She said she has nightmares. In her dream, she is in the hospital. It’s flooding, and people are crying for help, but she can’t get to them. She said it helps to tell her story. As she was talking, I had that feeling that God had set up our meeting on this ravaged beach. Here we were, two trained counselors, “accidentally” meeting and talking to this woman who still needs someone to hear her story. I also asked how she felt about the coming hurricane season. She said everyone here is holding their breath. The Gulf Coast can’t take another Katrina. Melony and I assured her that at the first report of a hurricane in the Gulf, we would be praying for her by name. And we would ask as many others to do the same. Please remember Nicki in the coming months.

Sharing Stories
During our debriefing session after dinner Melony and I talked about Nicki and her story. Then Melony told a little of her own story about growing up in an alcoholic family. She described being abused by her boyfriend during high school. And she talked about recovering from those traumatic relationships and experiences. Hers is a story of trouble and hope. And she often uses it to let others know that their stories can end well too.

Melony invited the students to tell their own stories, and they did. One student’s father died when he was young. Another student’s Dad left the family for another woman. He only comes back when he wants something from his children. One girl’s father disowned her at a funeral, hoping to hide the fact that he had fathered more than one family. All the stories were sad. And by far, The most common theme was missing fathers. But the students themselves provided a message of hope. They combined Melony’s story with the perseverance they had witnessed in this hurricane-ravaged community. They concluded that their sorrows weren’t permanent. They could persevere. They could work through their disappointments. They could have good lives. And because we had already witnessed God’s intervention on our trip, they understood that he was involved, especially when there was great need.

At one point one of our students said, “I’d like to tell my story now.” Culturally Abdi is not at all like the other students. He is first generation African, an immigrant to America. He’s only been in the states for two years, so his English is slow and difficult to understand. During our trip down, Abdi sat quietly by himself. He answered politely when anyone asked him a question, but he didn’t take part in any of the conversation, songs, or games of the other students. Melony engaged him in some talk about where we were going, but as far as I could tell, Abdi was a loner. So when he spoke up, everyone wanted to hear what he had to say.

Abdi told us how he was born in Somalia, the son of a policeman. During the civil war that has gone on for years after the overthrow of a tyrannical dictator, Abdi’s homeland became an extremely dangerous place to live. His parents decided to leave. So, while Abdi was a babe-in-arms, his mother took him and his six-year-old brother to Kenya. It was a ten-day walk, fraught with dangers for an unprotected woman with two children. But they made it to a refugee camp. Sometime later, his father and four-year-old brother joined them. Their family lived for seven years in Nairobi, Kenya. And while Nairobi is a modern city, it was a difficult place for refugees. At the bottom of the social ladder, Abdi and his family were subject to the persecutions and bribe-demands of dishonest police and government officials, as well as the prejudices and criminal practices of common Kenyans.

Abdi and his family live in one of the worst low-income housing projects in Nashville. There is a reeking dumpster just outside their window. Still, Abdi loves America. He says he is much safer here (living in the projects) than he was in Kenya or Somalia. And here he finds freedom and justice. Police and government don’t victimize his family here. They help them.

After hearing Abdi’s story, our students wanted to know if he felt lonely because of the language barrier. He said that he did. He wanted to take part in things too. We all marveled at his courage to come on a trip with other students he didn’t know, even though there was a language barrier and a cultural barrier between him and all of us (Abdi is Muslim). We asked what made him want to join us with such odds against him. Abdi said he wanted to see America, and he wanted to help. We all concluded that Abdi was by far the bravest of us all. And we made sure he knew we admired him for that.

Katrina Relief - Part II

Cecile’s House
It’s difficult to find a particular house in a city where most of the street signs have been blown away. Many have been replace with plastic signs, but not all. So it took us over an hour to find our project site, the house of a woman named Cecile. Cecile works during the week, so she couldn’t be there on Friday morning as we turned into her driveway. But we had our assignment already. So we looked around a little and got to work. Cecile’s house still had yellow bricks on the outside. And on the inside it just had studs, pipes, and wires. All the debris, carpet, and sheet rock had been removed by previous groups. And the studs and floors had been disinfected several times to kill all the dangerous mildew. Our job was to remove some siding and some nails.

Though it was a hot day, our students worked fast. The boys ripped siding off as if they had something to prove. And the girls pulled nails in record time. Because they finished so quickly, we decided to get creative. Melony went to a store and bought two cans of spray paint, orange and black, the Stratford High School colors. Then Thomas, our student most proficient in “tagging” or grafitti art, painted names and messages of love from our group to Cecile on the siding we had torn off the building. We placed the artwork in strategic places for her to see when she came the next day.

The Beach
After we finished our assignment at Cecile’s house we went to the beach for a swim. There were signs along the ravaged beach-front that read, “Storm debris in water. Do not swim.” Yet there were people in the water, so we joined them. The surf was extremely calm and warm. It was like wading into a lake. One of our boys had never seen the ocean before. So he was delighted. All along the shoreline were piers and parks that had been destroyed by the hurricane. I walked along one pier. The asphalt drive up to it was buckled and pitted as if the wild storm surf had frozen in blacktop. Beyond that the steel girders and telephone pole sized pilings were naked. There was not a board left to fish from. Still, people were there, fishing from the rocks, the pilings, the girders. Life goes on. And people have to fish.

CiViL Groups Katrina Relief Trip - Part I

Thank You
I would like to thank all of you who gave money, prayers, and encouragement to us for our 2006 CiViL Groups Hurricane Relief Trip. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, we planned to take a dozen students from Stratford High School to the Gulf Coast to help rebuild homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina. In mid May we sent out an email request for prayer and funds, and we received an abundance of both. In fact, we received more than we needed to cover the costs of the trip. Thank you for your generosity! I would also like to thank Bill Scott of Christ Presbyterian Church and the Nashville Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) for co-ordinating this trip. We couldn't have done it without them.


The 2006 CiViL Groups Katrina Relief Trip
On Wednesday, May 25, when most high school students were making their last bus ride home to celebrate the beginning of their summer vacation, our group boarded a bus borrowed from Nashville Youth For Christ and rode south for ten hours. As is sometimes the case with inner city youth work, we had no idea how many of our twelve original registrants would come on the trip. As we guessed, the departing group was about half the number that signed up. That made us a small group. And CiViL Groups is all about small groups, so it worked out just fine.


We arrived in Kiln (pronounced “Kill” by the locals), Mississippi at about ten pm and checked into our bunk-houses at Camp Coastal, a makeshift camp for relief workers. Our bunk-house had a small air conditioner. Once it was turned on it began to cool down the baking room. So by two or three am we were comfortable, even a little chilly.


The next morning breakfast was served outdoors. Those who came in time could sit at tables under a dining canopy. Those who didn’t sat out in the open. I had a nice conversation about running with a worker from North Carolina sporting a triathalon T-shirt. And after our students finished their breakfast we all gathered for a pre-work day briefing.


First Briefing
Because this is a school group, not a church group, we planned to make our meeting times less directly religious than we might on a church retreat. But we did tell the students several important things. First, be flexible. On this trip our plans might change at a moments’ notice. Often unexpected left turn take us to a better places than we originally intended to go. So let’s be like Gumby, flexible. Second, if things aren’t to your liking, don’t complain. Ask. Asking is positive communication. Complaining makes everything harder for everyone. Third, look for God. It is our experience that he makes himself known in surprising ways. If we are looking for him, we will see him.

After explaining what our plan was for the day, we were getting ready to wind up when Kay walked up. Kay is from Baton Rouge. She had overheard our conversation and wanted to put in her two cents worth. Under some circumstances this might be irritating, but Kay said just the right things. She was there with her church youth group, and she had just the right mixture of stories and wisdom for our group. After she went her way, we looked at our group and said, “See what we mean? God makes himself known in surprising ways. Let’s keep looking for more of that.”


Devastation
Our trip coordinator, Bill Scott, had recommended that we drive along the coast to get to our work site. What we saw there was stunning. After eight months there is lots of rebuilding, but very little has been rebuilt. We passed the closed down K-Mart where people told us the flood tide had left bodies of people and sharks on the roof. We saw the house with its spray-painted sign that read, “Warning, Looters will be shot dead!” We saw boats in the woods, crushed cars in the creek, concrete steps that led to nothing, slab foundations with nothing on them.Stilts that once carried beach houses now leaned under the weight of air. Though the ten blocks closest to the beach had been cleared by bulldozers, the clutter of destruction was everywhere: plastic chairs half buried in the sand, mail boxes sitting on tree stumps, a ragged, faded American flat wrapped around a broken tree. Bricks were more common at the beach than shells. Torn shingles, splintered wood, twisted siding, broken glass – all parts of homes, now litter every inch of ground. We saw a mattress stuck forty feet high in a tree. Where houses were standing they were most often stripped to their bare bones, concrete, brick and studs. But occasionally, we saw something that looked completely out of place in that ravaged landscape, a standing house that had not been torn by wind and wave.

Inner city teens are used to a kind of devastation. They know the relational storms of broken families, the violent life of the street, and the worthy-of-being-torn-down housing that many of them must come home to every night. But they had never seen this. On the worst block in East Nashville, the bricks still stick together. In Waveland, most of the bricks have been scattered. So have the people. Whatever you may say about the danger of the streets, there is a sense of neighborhood in the inner city. But Hurricane Katrina not only destroyed houses, it demolished neighborhoods. Those who road out the storm don’t know what happened to most of their neighbors. Did they leave? Did they drown? Did they come back just long enough to see their wrecked home and drive away in unshared tears? Nobody knows. Those who rebuild their houses will have to rebuild their friendships too.

PART CHARACTER, PART BLESSING

Written on May 5, 2004

Thank you so much for your prayers on the morning of April 24 while I was running the Country Music Marathon! Let me share with you a thought I had while I was running. I felt so strongly about it that I pulled out my cell phone, called our office and left this message on the voice mail:

"Puff-puff…This is Jim. I’m at the 10th mile of the marathon. And…puff-puff…I had an idea…puff-puff…Achievement is part character. And it’s also part blessing…puff-puff…because people who achieve a lot are people who were provided with a lot of resources in the first place…puff-puff…They generally don’t provide their own…puff-puff…And so it’s as much a cause for gratitude…puff-puff…as it is for pride,…puff-puff…perhaps more so…puff-puff."

Maybe you know what it’s like running in a race like the Country Music Marathon, but having never done it before, I was surprised at how invigorating it was. The streets were lined with people shouting encouragement. Many of them thanked the runners for running, as if we were inspiring them and not the other way around. They held up encouraging signs and put out their hands to be "high-fived." And of course it was even more of a boost to see family and friends along the way. Without that boost, I’m not sure how I would have fared. Not as well, I’m sure. That’s what I was thinking when I left that voice mail message.

In fact, without a lot of blessing, I couldn’t have trained for or run in that race. Most people in the world couldn’t have afforded the cost of the shoes, the entry fee, or the time spent training instead of making their living. I was blessed to be able to afford those. Many people my age haven’t had the emotional and spiritual support that I have enjoyed over the last few years. It has enabled me to grow strong inside, and that strength has worked its way out to my very toes. I didn’t heal or grow myself. I was blessed. And of course not everyone is surrounded with such a community of faithful friends who would remember to pray on a Saturday morning. It took some humility to get me to the point of asking for your help. But the rewards for asking have been fantastic. You helped make it possible for me to "run and not grow weary." You have blessed me.

So let me tell you what we achieved together. I ran the race with a sign on my chest that read,

CiViL (Character Values Leadership) Groups
A character education program at Stratford High School
Touchstoneministries.org

And on my back was a sign that read,
I’m running for:

Ashley Pun
Carlos Phylicia
Chunita Rock
Cordell Shanetta
Corey Shay
Jamaal Star
Keon Takesha
Markesha Thomas
Marquez Tuoyo

By the end of the race, those signs were soaked with sweat and a little bit of blood. But I had the chance to tell people along the way what we’re trying to achieve in the lives of students. Everyone I spoke to loved the idea. And, thanks to your prayers and the surprising delight of running in a crowd, I finished thirty-five minutes sooner than I planned. Was it hard? You bet it was. The last two miles felt like having the flu. But by the grace of God I made it to the finish line.

As you know, our work with the students of Stratford has just begun. The same can be said about our work with counseling clients and small group members. It’s true about our music and speaking ministries. It will be a long race, and one that is much more important than the one-day affair I ran last month. But there is a prize.

At Stratford, we’re already seeing small changes in students. Some of the boys are asking themselves, "Do I really want to treat women the way I used to?" And some of the girls are asking, "Can we work out a relationship conflict instead of fighting or hating one another?" They’re making little choices that can influence life far down the road. And they’re starting to make better ones. In our end of the year evaluations they’re saying things like, "Yeah, it’s made a difference to me this year because I know I’ve got some place to come every week where I can talk about the real things I’m thinking and feeling. That helps me."
We’ve seen some results with our students outside of school too. Melony and I both took groups to see "The Passion of the Christ." After the movie, my group went to McDonald’s to talk about it. While we were there, all but one of them wanted to rededicate their lives to Christ. The other one became a Christian for the first time.

Next year we want to involve more students in more groups at Stratford. We want to include more adult leaders too. And we want to continue the counseling, small group, teaching and music ministries we have been doing all along. How can we achieve all this? Not by ourselves. Not out of our own resources. We will be enabled and empowered, blessing by blessing, as people like you remember us in prayer, in encouragement, in support. It’s a long race. But we can do it, especially if you join us!

I wrote this a few days after my first marathon. In a few days I will run in my third. There will be many more names on my shirt this year. But my hopes are the same for those students, that we can help them toward a well-run race. Please pray for me and for them.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

My wife Melony asked me, "Why ‘Dagger In Disguise?’" So I thought I’d say a little about the title. It’s taken from the title of a song I have never recorded, but that I love. I could explain the song to you as a way of explaining the title, but it would be better, I think, to post the lyric and let you draw your own conclusions. Here it is:

DAGGER IN DISGUISE

Sharpened to the point of letting blood,
Honed down to the bone of truth,
Dangerous business in an artists hand,
The best of games for taming youth.

CHORUS:
We used to stand in line.
Couldn't wait to watch you shine,
A gleaming dagger in disguise,
Catching the light behind a child's eyes.

Dull and lifeless in a changing world,
Abandoned to the silver-blue,
Much too expensive for a child to hold,
Or much too cheap for to learn to use.

Chorus

Bridge:
Well I will wage my private war,
Believing truth worth fighting for,
And in a hundred years
My weapons may be found,
Artifacts of shame or glory handed down.

Tools mightier than any sward,
Ground down like a surgeon's blade,
You drove into my heart and left me
Healed or bleeding on the page.

Chorus

Written by Jim Weber
© Copyright 1992 Desperate Heart Music. All Rights Reserved.

RAIN IN APRIL

Wow, it was a hard Fall, but it’s a great Spring! I was reading through last year’s journal, and when I got to mid-Autumn, I realized how tough the end of the year was for me. There are lots of reasons, but let me give you just one example. As you know we have been investing a lot of time and energy in Civil Groups, our character education program at Stratford High School. And it has grown steadily in numbers-served, since it began in January 2004. We started the 2005/2006 school year with twelve full groups, six girl groups for Melony and six boy groups for me. By the end of 2005 Melony was up to nine groups. So you’d think that I would be tagging along pretty close, right? Nope. I had dropped down to three groups. And not all of them were coming regularly. It was disheartening.

I spent Winter break thinking, brooding, praying, and getting past my sense of personal failure. By the time January came around I had realized that it was time for me to get to work. To make a success of my work with Stratford boys, I was going to have to stop waiting for them to come to me. I was going to have to go out and find them. I tried several things. First, I went to the school cafeteria with a big display sign and stood around to talk to anyone who was interested in CiViL Groups. That generated some nice conversations, but not much more.

Then I remembered that the year before a teacher had asked if I would like to come speak to his class. So I looked him up and asked if the offer was still open. He said yes, and we set a date. When that date came I got to talk to two ELL (English Language Learner) classes. These students barely speak English. Any conversation in English is an education for them. So when I closed my talk to their class by asking if anyone was interested in joining a CiViL Group, ten of them signed up. And here’s the cool thing: all of those ELL students turned out to be Islamic émigrés from Somalia.

Now it’s April. I just finished leading my co-ed group of Somalian students. And I am just delighted. They are so much fun. One of the first things I like to do with a group is talk about our stories. It helps us get to know each other, and it breaks down barriers. Once those barriers are down, it becomes easier to talk about the struggles that form around current character issues. I brought a map today, so we could talk about where they came from. I had been told that émigrés often don’t like talking about their past, so I wasn’t sure they would co-operate, but they did. Listening to them was like a walk through a foreign land. I could hear what they had heard. I could see what they had seen. We are already finding that, beyond the differences in culture, language, and religion, we are very much alike. We are really connecting, and I love it!

Just before the bell rang one girl stopped the conversation and asked in her broken English, "What about you? Where do you come from?" I got to tell my geography. Next week I’ll bring a map and maybe some photos, so I can tell more. We’re on our way. They are opening up. For me, these students are like a meal of fine foreign food. I am so grateful to have a chance to get to know them and learn about them. Their stories are fascinating, and they are precious people. To think that I might not have had that chance, if I hadn’t been forced to venture out of my comfort zone.

God has blessed our work at Stratford. But last Fall he started blessing me in a new way. I didn’t recognize it at the time. To me it looked like failure, but it was really opportunity. This is more than just optimism. It’s real. The difficulty I experienced months ago is directly related to the enjoyment I had today. Blessing sometimes comes in a box that looks like suffering. But we serve a good God. The suffering is never meaningless. I don’t claim to know what yours will lead to, but so far, its my experience that struggle is a fuse leading to an explosion of good.

I don’t just see that happening in my life. I see it in the lives of my Somalian students. They were born into a country that was, and still is, torn by civil war. Their families all fled the violence, stealing across the boarder into Kenya. In Kenya, as refugees, they were at the bottom of the social ladder. They were powerless against the corruption of police and government officials, and they fell victim to predatory criminals. But then they came to America. They have only been here an average of two and a half years, but they love it. They can barely say the word, "freedom," but they know what it means. They know what they have been freed from.

Now here they are in my class with a teacher who is beside himself to have them, if only for one hour a week. I am blessed by their presence. And I know by experience that they will be blessed too. God has good waiting for them, and I get to deliver part of it. We have all been in the desert. And now we are enjoying the oasis. It may have been a harsh Winter. But it is already a wonderful spring!

As you know, our work at Stratford comes with no paycheck. And our average counseling client pays less than one third of the going rate for counseling. Please consider supporting our ministry financially, as a volunteer, and in prayer. Our experience is that sooner or later, the blessings fall down like rain in April.

Welcome

To some degree this blog is still under construction. When it's ready, it will be linked to www.JimWeber.com and to www.touchstoneministries.org. You can go there now, if you like.

If you've come from one of the web sites, you may notice that I’ve replaced the web site guest book with a blog. The guest book was getting a lot of attention from spammers and not much attention from fans. With the blog, the spammers will be excluded. And maybe we’ll see some interesting discussion. I’m working on a book now, so I may include some excerpts. And I will probably include some of my monthly support team articles. Maybe I’ll post some poetry and song lyrics too. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the change. I hope you enjoy it too.