One of the hardest things about this ministry is sending the kids home.
This feeling is a bit convoluted, of course. Because I am normally quite tired at the end of a camping trip, for instance, and am relieved and grateful it has all gone well and is now over, and rest is looking like something that might actually happen for my family and me.
But there is the other.... the element that is so hard to settle into my heart. It is the issue of the home life of so many of our kids.
While some of our kids return to loving homes where parents await their arrival, many others do not. Most of our kids drag their heavy bags across the hot asphalt on Dakota Avenue, no one to welcome them, nobody at home who will be present or sober enough to ask them how their trip went.
Several of them will walk through doorways and enter filthy apartments with strangers asleep on the couch; where refrigerators are empty; violent, hate-filled 'music' is blaring; and adults are intoxicated, fighting, or absent entirely.
One of the beautiful things about taking the kids camping for three days is that they are free of all these things that make their hearts hard and their souls ache. For just a few days they can be children.... playing in the creek and toasting marshmallows over a fire. I see their faces change. They look happy and free. I love it.
Yet, these days of freedom make the contrast all too clear.
One young girl, on the way up in a staff member's car, wrapped her seat belt around her arm and tapped at her wrist, emulating the drug use she has seen so many times at home. She said, "Look! Just like Mama does," and then asked her driver "Are you gonna do this?" When she was told no her sister chimed in, "That's because she's a good girl."
Another boy asked me several times, "Are we really gonna eat three times today?" This is the same boy who calls Dakota House impersonating his mother so he can get groceries from our food pantry to feed his little sisters and himself.
It breaks our hearts. It seems impossible to us. But it is the life some of these kids live.
So we pray. And we keep on. And we love them and tell them about Jesus and His plans for their lives, and we pray for their parents. We ask God for miracles. We have seen them. We have witnessed Him change lives and save families.
We believe His love is the only thing that can change the world.
This feeling is a bit convoluted, of course. Because I am normally quite tired at the end of a camping trip, for instance, and am relieved and grateful it has all gone well and is now over, and rest is looking like something that might actually happen for my family and me.
But there is the other.... the element that is so hard to settle into my heart. It is the issue of the home life of so many of our kids.
While some of our kids return to loving homes where parents await their arrival, many others do not. Most of our kids drag their heavy bags across the hot asphalt on Dakota Avenue, no one to welcome them, nobody at home who will be present or sober enough to ask them how their trip went.
Several of them will walk through doorways and enter filthy apartments with strangers asleep on the couch; where refrigerators are empty; violent, hate-filled 'music' is blaring; and adults are intoxicated, fighting, or absent entirely.
One of the beautiful things about taking the kids camping for three days is that they are free of all these things that make their hearts hard and their souls ache. For just a few days they can be children.... playing in the creek and toasting marshmallows over a fire. I see their faces change. They look happy and free. I love it.
Yet, these days of freedom make the contrast all too clear.
One young girl, on the way up in a staff member's car, wrapped her seat belt around her arm and tapped at her wrist, emulating the drug use she has seen so many times at home. She said, "Look! Just like Mama does," and then asked her driver "Are you gonna do this?" When she was told no her sister chimed in, "That's because she's a good girl."
Another boy asked me several times, "Are we really gonna eat three times today?" This is the same boy who calls Dakota House impersonating his mother so he can get groceries from our food pantry to feed his little sisters and himself.
It breaks our hearts. It seems impossible to us. But it is the life some of these kids live.
So we pray. And we keep on. And we love them and tell them about Jesus and His plans for their lives, and we pray for their parents. We ask God for miracles. We have seen them. We have witnessed Him change lives and save families.
We believe His love is the only thing that can change the world.
posted by Dakota House @ 1:49 PM
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