We spent the week living with host families from New City Fellowship who are living intentionally on Etzel Avenue. My host family was an African American family of 6ish. Mr. Chuck and Ms. Leia Jackson were awesome hosts for three of my fellow interns and me. They have two daughters, Neia and Sydney, ages six and eight. Cherish, one of Mr. Chuck’s older daughters (13), was staying with us for most of the week, as well as his sixteen-year-old son, Marcus who is in St. Louis for the summer. Mr. Chuck works for Harambee, a ministry of carpentry, employment, and discipleship for youth in the community. He’s lived in the neighborhood for a few years. His wife, Leia, works for one of the church’s ministries as well. We had a great time eating with them, having a girls’ night out with Ms. Leia for Fro-Yo, and some girl talk with Cherish about guys, and hung out and did nails with Neia and Sydney. Mr. Chuck is such a father figure, and he really took us under his wing, even the first night he met us. He spoke a lot of truth into our lives and really encouraged us in a lot of ways.
One of the highlights of the week for me was living with Kim, Maggie, and Dionna for the week. I didn’t know any of them very well going in, but we had late night talk times and got to share our testimonies. These girls all seem a lot different than me on the outside, but we’ve actually all struggled with similar things. Kim and Dionna are African American, from Houston and Iowa respectively, and Maggie looks pretty similar to me, from St. Louis. We had a great time bonding, and I really learned a lot from the diversity of our group. Kim even taught me some new slang so I could understand what she was saying.
The week was definitely an awesome growing experience for me in that I knew that I was the least comfortable with African American people, having had very little interaction with them, and basically no real relationships or friendships. And God knew that of course so he blessed me by surrounding me with many African American people, even brothers and sisters in Christ, who I could learn a lot from, especially Kim, Dionna, and my host family, as well as a lot of the kids I interacted with and their families. And other people on the street. And in the grocery store. Etcetera. And oh how I love and appreciate them now that I've gotten to know them. What a blessing! And I love all of the gospel songs we sing, both at church, and randomly with our team.
On Friday night, Mr. Chuck invited one of his friends to come over and chat with the four of us that were staying with them. Travis lived many years of his life on and near Etzel Avenue. He moved there when he was two, and life was pretty good. First I should explain what Etzel was like 20 years ago. Almost every single house was either a crack/drug house, collapsed and abandoned, or some other kind of trouble. There were strong gang rivalries by neighborhoods in the area, and you couldn’t leave a four block area without fearing for your life. Even in the elementary schools, people would ask you where you lived and you would be profiled and associated based on that. There were usually 30-40 dudes hanging out and hustling drugs on the corner. There were gunshots frequently, and Gerry said that the police didn’t even want to respond to Etzel and sometimes wouldn’t.
Travis’ mom became a crack addict, and life got hard for him and his family. They lived in an apartment building with his mom’s whole extended family in different apartments. His mom’s boyfriend was a crack dealer, which gave Travis a look into the industry. In his neighborhood, there was really no choice for kids. You either joined them, or never left your house. Travis started dealing at age 11, and eventually started stealing crack from his mom’s boyfriend. He got involved in the local gang as well. As he put it, he was discipled growing up, but not in the way we normally use the word now. He was discipled in the street – how to kill, how to sell and use drugs. One of his close friends in the gang with them killed his cousin who was Travis’ best friend one day over a petty argument. From there he started asking a lot of questions to God about why this happened. It really walked his world. A few days later, a church came down the street and was hanging out evangelizing and he was already questioning and looking and so he met the pastor. He mentioned that one of his hobbies was rapping, so the pastor took him to meet some Christian rappers (a completely foreign concept to Travis). From there, those rappers brought him to meet Flame, a famous Christian rapper from St. Louis. When Flame dropped a rhyme for Travis, the fire in his eyes convinced Travis that God had to be real, because he could tell how convinced Flame was. Travis soon got arrested for homicide, which he didn’t commit. God really worked in that situation to bring a lot of crazy circumstances together. He had gone to court and gotten a court date for 30 days later. He talked with God, and he said, “If you get me out of this, I won’t tell you what I’m not going to do, but what I will do. I’ll go to chuch.” He woke up the next morning to the jailers telling him to grab his stuff. He did, thinking he was moving cells, but they released him. He didn’t really know why, but he got out. He started going to church weekly, having given over his life to God, and God began the sanctification process. He stopped doing crack, stopped dealing, stopped going to the clubs. After about two years, God told him to get back into rapping, and so now he’s a Christian rapper, traveling around the world, performing under the name Thi’sl.
He also shared how he’s seen Etzel transformed. He really appreciates the people from New City who moved into the neighborhood and didn’t leave, even after people were shot on the sidewalks out side their house. When he comes back to visit, he’s always shocked at the people walking the sidewalks and hanging out and jogging, walking their dogs. When he lived on Etzel probably only 10 years ago, you would NEVER be out doing things like that. One thing he said that has stuck with me is, “The size of your impact depends on how much you surrender to God.” I want to learn to surrender more. I’m asking for God to show me the things I’m still holding on to which are preventing me from making the full impact that He’s asking me to make. Mr. Chuck also talked with us about the importance of building relationships with people and relating to them on their terms. That’s something I’ve been thinking about this week as well.
We got to lead Backyard Bible Club Monday through Wednesday on Etzel Avenue. It was a great experience, challenging in many ways, but great fun as well. It was cool to see these kids getting into the songs and then memorizing the verse for the night. We had them partake in skits to act out the Bible story for the night and keep them engaged. We did Moses, then Gideon, and then the stories of the prodigal son and the Good Samaritan. There were only a few students from the neighborhood that weren’t children of the church families, but what a blessing they were! To see how hungry they were for attention, and even a few misconceptions about God and Jesus came up in our interactive discussions with them. We were walking the street one day, looking for kids to hang out with and we met 3 beautiful girls who were playing in the backyard of the apartment building that I was staying in. These girls were some of the greatest teachers of my week.
I saw them Monday through Wednesday, and they came to Bible club Tuesday and Wednesday. They fell asleep before Bible club on Monday, so we prayed they would be awake and their parents would be ok with them coming for Tuesday, and they were able to and were very excited! They really didn’t want much to do with skits or Bible lessons, but they loved attention and people to play with them. Oh those beautiful girls, made in the image of God and growing up in a less than ideal home situation. Of the four children, they have three different fathers, the latest of which lives with them and their mom. They had a lot of misconceptions about God and Jesus and who he is.
And while I was angry at the situation of these beautiful girls, one of the things that God most surprised me with this week was the ability to see God’s beauty in their mother and to lover her, despite the lack of stability and security in their home and the fact that she has a bottle of whiskey always at her side.
I’ve been learning to stop assuming. To stop judging. To stop assessing blame.
Or at least I’ve been trying. Or rather it’s been God’s work in me. In and of myself I am wicked, broken, selfish. By the grace of God, He’s *beginning* to give me his eyes, his heart. Pray He’d download more.
Also pray that:
Relationships with the 11 students in our class would continue to go deeper so that God can use us to impact them beyond just learning some math drills and geography.
I would be able to co-lead well with my co-teacher.
That the slightly slower schedule we have coming up would allow me to press into processing with Jesus more.
Thanks again for reading! An update on my first week of teaching coming soon. :)
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