There's Hope in There...Somewhere

I've written before about our ministry of walking through the darkness with our youth, or as we sometimes refer to it "place-sharing".This is, in my mind, what makes The Door Youth Centre an exciting and a slightly terrifying place all at the same time. This weekend was another one of "those" weekends, where it seemed like everyone who came through our doors had something weighing heavy on their minds and hearts.

There's one guy that we've been working with for at least three years now. He's a pretty cool guy, loves taking photos, and enjoys subjecting others to the "stupid test" on his ipod. Our relationship with him started when he was just entering high school, and we've walked with him through most of his life since then. The past year hasn't been easy on our friend. Things at home aren't always going well, and he holds a lot of resentment towards his single mom and sister. He's got an on again off again relationship with a girl (it's off again) that has been going on for a lot longer than most relationships but has moments of deep love and concern as well as those of conflict. In the past six months, we've seen this easy going kid begin to deal with addiction in his life, withdrawl from his peers, growing distance in our once close relationship, and a growing darkness in his whole being. This once bright light is now dimmed by anger, and hopelessness.

This weekend, his disposition and an incident that he had with another of our youth made me angry. I was angry at this young man for about thirty seconds, thinking "How the heck could he treat someone that he cares about this way? Why is he doing this?", and feeling confused and lost about how we could reach out to him. But very quickly my anger towards him changed, and I became angry at the people or circumstances that have caused him to react this way.

This is a young man with great potential. He didn't have great potential and lose it, he still has it. In our work with him from this point, we will be relying on God's leading to help draw some of those strengths out of him so that he can cope without substances, without cutting himself, without pushing those who care about him away - or whatever his deal may be. We know that God is able to redeem all of the dark areas in his life, even when we feel confused about why a young person has walked away. This is why we need people to come alongside youth at The Door, because working this stuff out alone is difficult alone. We all need somebody, and while we may be on a journey with this young guy for a good long while, we will always be here when he needs us. It's there...somewhere.

Taking a Breath

We finally feel like we have some time to breathe, and that things at The Door Youth Centre are soon returning to some sense of "normal" (I say that because things are seldom ever normal for us). This weekend we are taking off with some of our staff to camp, reconnect, and enjoy some leisure time together before we begin another year of ministry. After all, a youth workers calendar always starts in September.

I was thinking about the past two months this morning. We got a lot done this summer. We joined our Canada-wide staff in Montreal for our national conference, led two camps, one for elementary aged youth, and one with a number of other Door Youth Centres. We were part of a team that led a group of youth to Mississippi, which we blogged earlier this week. In the middle of that, we joined our youth on a number of weekly day trips, and continued our year-round drop-in ministry.

We also ran a fairly successful "Breakfast Club" before our Wednesday events. This program was highly experimental, since we didn't know whether we would be able to rouse adolescents at 9am in the summer, or whether they would be interested in reading and discussing the Bible during that time. The first week, we were shocked when 6 youth showed up, and even more surprised when they participated in our discussion of 1 John! This number stayed fairly consistent through much of the summer, only dropping off a few times. We will definitely keep this program next summer.

Our camps were a lot of work, but very worthwhile. We partner with a couple of churches in town to run a Jr. High day camp. We see many of the youth that Aaron works with at one of the local elementary schools. We had over 30 campers this year, and we explored the theme of "Who Are You" in our daily sessions and small group. I have to admit, I have a soft spot in my heart for the 11-13 age group - they are so free, and I have some of the funniest camp memories (in over 10 years of being involved in this particular program) from this year.

We did take a small break to go on a much needed vacation to New Brunswick and to share in celebrating a family wedding. This time was really important to us.

Our YFC camp, Campfire, was a success as well. We were a little lower in numbers, and with our executive director being on sabbatical this summer, many of us took on roles that we hadn't in the past. While camp had a much different feel this summer, God was really working in the lives of our youth, and we were blessed to have opportunities to minister to our youth in ways that we hadn't in the past. One night, Aaron, one of our co-workers and I had a chance to pray for a young man in our Collingwood ministry, and it was an incredible experience! Being able to bless him and let him know that he was not alone in his struggles was such an honour. We took 4 youth from Collingwood.

So with all of this, Project Serve and summer coming to a close (dislike), we are now looking ahead to the fall. Our regular programming will resume soon, with Soul Food coming back on the radar. We have our eyes on some new media projects to engage our youth, time geared specifically for elementary aged youth and for our girls. We are open to God's vision for our centre, and anticipate new ministry opportunities to both our larger community of youth and individuals. I'm excited for when I get to share those stories with you!

Stories From The Road - Project Serve Mississippi Part II

As promised, here is the second installment of Aaron's blogs from our week in Mississippi.

Tuesday August 24 - Day 4

Jeremy, one of our more outgoing leaders who os sitting beside me is really bugging me for some kind of shoutout. So here you go jer- You are amazing!

This update will be quite short as today was a Work day similar to yesterday.
Today we painted and painted and painted with our group. Other groups were Building decks, gardening, and tiling.

Today it was hot! So hot that Alex and I (Aaron) got heat stroke...In an air conditioned home. We ended working together in the house and just after lunch we both realized that we had no energy, we both had headaches, which I still have tonight. So we sat and under a fan for a about 20mins then came to realize that we needed to cool down. So we filled our water bottles with ice cold water and poured it over oursleves. We soon felt 100% better being drenched in water. We got ourselves some gatoraide and rehydrated. Our group got to head back to the compound at 3 to shower up. Tonight we have mostly recovered. Everyone is feeling the heat tonight as there is only a handful of is awake at 9:30pm. Everyone has gone to bed...except I just looked over to see an eruption of laughter - Alex and Megan are playing a game.

On a side note. I mentoned yesterday that we took a tour of the town to look at the left over destruction. The foundations that were left behind had numbers on the proporty, on trees, and what not. We thought that they were house numbers but couldn't figure out how random they were. We were told today that those numbers were how many people were in that house when it was destroyed. The numbers are how many people had died. Weird how those numbers remain five years later.
Tomorrow we'll head back to jim's house for another day of painting.
LESM, the organization we are with will be closing ts doors for good this week. We are the last team to ever serve with them. We are trying our best to help finish all projects in three days. Let's hope we can!!!!

More tomorrow. Off to bed.


Wednesday August 25 - Day 5

Okay so my updates I think for the next two days will be reperative. Our days seem to be getting shorter and shorter with little time for any real exciting updates.
Our work site is coming along Nicely. We have graduated from painting to scraping floors to get ready for the tiles. Last night we attempted to go to the beach to swim but as we got there the water was infected with jellyfish, which most people did not feel comfortable swimming in. So we sat at the beach and just relaxed.
We seem to be going to bed earlier each night, I guess we are putting in a good hard days work. We head to New Orleans on Friday, I think everyone is looking forward to sleeping in a good comfy bed and swimming.
I'll try and make my last work update exciting- but no promises....

More tomorrow!


Thursday August 26 - Day 6

So today was great! Our work team graduated from painting to laying cement board in the kitchen of jim's house. After we leave some of the the staff will be sticking around to lay tile. Tomorrow is our las day so we are hoping to have all the cement board done. After work today we headed over the University is southen Mississippi to see a 500 year old oak tree called 'the friendship tree', it survived the hurricane. After that we came bak for dinner. Between being back and dinner one of our team members lost a toe nail in a basketball game. We are trying to avoid the US medical system to we have taped it down hoping we can make it back to Canada to get looked at.
After dinner we headed to walmart. Possibly a mistake... I am currently looking at hoards of pop and candy. Yikes!
Alex and I did buy some boiled peanuts and shared a southern treat. Not sure how we feel about them yet. They taste like a mixture of chick peas and kidney beans.
Well, bed time hopfully the sugar high won't keep people up for long.
Heading to new Orleans tomorrow to fly out on saturday.

More tomorrow!

The Friendship Oak

A campus building, abandoned after the storm

Left virtually untouched after Katrina

Saturday August 28 - Day 8

So our last was pretty good! We finished up our worksite and got some pictures of our team with Jim and his family. We we're the first team to finish early because we ran out of mortor, so after lunch we did a massive clean up of the house and said goodbye. The after was very relaxing at the compound.
Right before dinner he headed to Pass Christian (small coastal town) to find Mississippi's oldest tree. We found the 1000 year old oak tree that rivaled the friendship tree we saw the day before.
We left Bay St Louis in another storm. Although when we left it was just raining.
We're back in New Orleans now and will spend the morning by the pool. Perhaps some will head to the mall.
It's been a good although lots of people are tired and cranky, maybe a good night's sleep will help.

Our team at the 1,000 year old oak - enormous tree!

Danielle's work team with finished product at the house in Pass Christian

So there you have our updates throughout the week! Wrapping up the trip and coming home was an interesting experience - as we left, the Gulf was preparing to recognize the fifth anniversary of the storm. Seeing images on TV of incredible devastation in many of the areas that we worked in was a tough thing. We also closed out the ministry and incredible work of Mission on the Bay, who have been working on rebuilding homes and restoring hope since Katrina first devastated the coast. Our crew was featured on a couple of local news casts that you can see here and here. It was a bittersweet farewell; we were excited to return to our homes and towns, but left with a sense of helplessness, knowing that we had done all that we could, but that there was still an immense amount of work that needed to be done. We will be meeting with the Collingwood team later this week to debrief our experience, and preparing to share stories amongst our team and to their families, an exciting chance to see the impact that this trip has had on their lives. If we are able, I will hopefully post some stories and reaction from our youth team. An incredible experience, and one that blew me away in ways I wasn't expecting.