Football, Fun, Food, Rap CDs, and Break Ups

I spent most of Saturday with four mentees at my house in Homewood. We had a great time together, tossing the football around, playing Nerf dart tag, stuffing our faces with pizza, and chilling on my front porch for a while. We had some good conversations about life, the weather was amazing, and it felt so peaceful in Homewood at that time. It was one of the best days I've had with these mentees in a while.

Then, on the drive to take them home we decided to stop at a gas station to get some snacks. While I was waiting in a different part of the convenience store for my mentees to make their snack selections, someone walked into the store, saw the four of them standing there, and made his way over to them to try to sell them something. He kind of leaned down on one knee to avoid the attention of the store clerk, and he pulled out some illegal bootlegged rap CDs and who knows what else. He had the full attention of the boys, and I wondered what I should do. I decided to walk right up to him and confront him. With a huge look of shock on his face, he quickly tried to stuff his belongings back into his backpack. He looked at me suspiciously and asked who I was. I told him I was their mentor, and I didn't appreciate what he was trying to do. That conversation caught the eye of the store clerk, and he started yelling at him to leave the store. I was mad at the guy who was trying to sell my mentees illegal stuff, my mentees were mad at me for interrupting and causing a scene, the guy selling the stuff was mad and cursing at the clerk, and the clerk was mad and cursing at the guy selling the stuff. Just like that, my nice, peaceful time with the mentees turned into a tense fiasco. When we finally all got into my car, things were kind of settling down when one of my mentees' answered a phone call from his girlfriend. She broke up with him on the phone, and all of the sudden I had to figure out how to help him navigate through that. The situation caused a big strain in the car as he was pretty angry over what happened. To be honest, I couldn't wait to get them dropped off by that point! One great day of mentoring had turned into a miserable situation in a matter of 30 minutes. I didn't even know what hit me!

Mentoring can be so full of joy, and so challenging all at the same time. Relationships can be messy, and I know that the work I do with high risk youth in Homewood is going to be crazy sometimes. I never know what to expect from one day to the next. I guess that's why I enjoy the work so much, and, yet, my patience is tested often. Thankfully, I know that God has a plan for my mentees' lives. God has equipped me to be able to handle mentoring as long as I am open to the adventure. There is nothing more Christ-like than one person sharing a life with another person, and that is what mentoring is all about. I may not have all of the answers, but that's not the point. The point is to stay with it no matter if the mentoring time together is good or bad by my standards. God has called me to do this no matter the circumstances.