Today I celebrated another full year with the first mentee that I was matched with in Homewood. We have had so many good memories together. I was with him early on when he was suspended from school a lot and struggled with his grades, and I have been with him as he has become a very good student and young man. I have learned a lot from him in the five plus years we've had a friendship, and he tells me that he's learned a lot from me about how to be a man. I praise God for the time that he has given me with my mentees, and I look forward to seeing the kind of men they will all become one day.
One of the most important components of mentoring is longevity. Unfortunately, many mentoring matches end prematurely. That almost always harms kids, and the kids who have bad mentoring experiences would have been better off if the well-intentioned but uncommitted mentors had never entered their lives. Sometimes it doesn't matter what we say or how we think we can control the outcomes of the mentoring relationship. What matters is that we simply show up and spend time with our mentees consistently over a period of years. A good mentor can forever alter the course of a young person's life.
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