Hitting My Stride

   Week 2 of Summer JAM started today.  I couldn't be more excited for the rest of this summer.  Only one thing bothers me: it's already week 2.  That means there's only four more weeks after this one.  I already don't want to leave.

   Week 1 was incredible.  Sure, there were some bumps getting things started, but now we're hitting our stride.  Our daily schedule is locked down, and we're familiar with all our kids now.  Payton and I have firmly established ourselves as games masters, and we're having a blast giving the kids a short break from math and reading.  All the interns are getting along great, and we're comfortable interacting with our youth group volunteers who come in each week to help with the program.  Basically, life is good at Fortress.

   I love my junior high kids.  I really do.  I've spent five days with them and they're already the coolest thing that has happened to me this summer.  These are the kids that set the example for Fortress.  The kids look up to these guys because they're the oldest ones there; Fortress runs through high school and then directs the kids to a different ministry.  So junior high are the 'big kids' at Fortress.  They get to go on some special field trips this summer (Six Flags and Hurricane Harbor, yeah I'm pumped), but they have to work to earn these trips because they're more expensive.  So the junior high does some work around the building on Thursdays to earn their spot on the field trip.  Last week we split up into groups and rotated through three stations: working with the little kids in Building Blocks, leveling a pretty big pile of dirt behind the building around the basketball area, and free time.  30 minutes each, pretty easy stuff.  I think it's a really cool lesson about the 'real world', though. 

   They are junior high, so they are a handful.  They can sometimes get into it with each other or have a bad attitude about following directions, but I love them anyway.  It's so much more satisfying to see them step up and act like responsible, Christian adults when you know that they act up sometimes and have trouble following the rules.

   First, a story about one of the leaders in the junior high group.  Most of the guys back him up if he gets into it with somebody, and when he talks, they'll listen.  He can also show a lot of attitude to me and the other staff members.  Sometimes, I'll ask him to stop talking or go sit in his seat like he's supposed to, and he'll just look at me like I told him to dig ditches all day.  Ironically, there was no problem when we actually moved dirt last Thursday, but at lunch this kid gave me some serious attitude for asking him to behave like a civilized human (as my mother would say).  He calmed down when I explained to him that his behavior directly affects his spot on field trips, but it was still a little discouraging.  That same day, though, he did something that completely made my day. 

   On our way back in from working outside, we walked through the Building Blocks area.  My junior high kid hung back a little, and I, a little annoyed, told him to hurry up.  Then I realized why he was hesitating to leave: one of the little kids had gotten in trouble for throwing part of his lunch and was sitting in the corner.  My kid pulled up a chair next to him, asked what he had done, and calmly told him that he should have followed the rules and respected the teacher.  I told my guy to join the group when he was done, and I left high as a kite. 

   There are two sisters in the junior high.  I'm a little embarrassed to say that I pretty much wrote them off in the first couple of days.  It seemed like they did not want to be at Fortress. At all.  They didnt want to participate at all during games, which is where I had them the most. Games! I figured that if they didn't like games, there was nothing I could do to help them.  When Thursday rolled around, I had a bad feeling that they either wouldn't show up, or they wouldn't do any work to earn their field trip.  I'm happy to say that they proved me wrong.  With a little coaxing (they weren't the only ones who needed it), they both did their share of the work without any attitude.  And today at the Money Factory (one of the junior high's smaller field trips) they both genuinely had a good time, and it showed.

   Now for another leader in the group.  He's tall, he's cocky (according to him, he's the best basketball player at Fortress, and will wear 10 NBA rings someday), and he's a really likeable guy.  He also has trouble getting along with some of the other junior high kids.  He constantly bothers one of the girls in particular, and he's also had little spats with some of the guys.  Today, though, he stepped up as a real servant leader in the group.  He had no real problems with anyone on the trip to the Money Factory.  No one did, really.  So Terri (one of our terrific staff members) took the group by McDonald's for drinks on the way home.  The kids were pretty tired, so they just kinda sat and had their drinks.  Close to when we left, though, this kid quietly gathered the trash of everyone who was done (including the girl who he normally cannot get along with), and he took it to the trash for them without a word and sat back down.  Pretty Christ-like move, I think.

   Hopefully I've conveyed a small fragment of what makes me love Fortress and hate the idea of leaving it.  Allow me to be cliche: It's the kids. It's the people. It's the little things.  Ask me about it sometime, I'd love to share some stories.

Why I'm Here? Because Kids Are People, Too

   No, I'm not in hiding, Nashville. I'm in Fort Worth, Texas, for the summer.  I'm interning at Fortress Youth Development Center, an organization that is dedicated to showing at-risk youth in inner city Fort Worth that God is more powerful than any of their circumstances, and that poverty and misfortune are not life sentences.  Fortress operates a number of programs, including an after-school literacy program and a program for pre-kindergarten kids. 

   The program that brought me to Fortress is Summer JAM (Jesus and Me), a six-week summer program that runs during June and July.  Summer JAM serves about 70 kids who are entering the 2nd through the 8th grades.  I'm working with the Junior High age group (their group is called Air Force), and I'm also co-games master with Payton, one of my fellow interns.  I'm kinda like a camp counselor crossed with a P.E. teacher. Kinda.  My real job is to be the kind of role model that these kids might not have had in their lives without Fortress.

   So why Fortress? Why Texas? Why the inner city? Why kids?
Good question.

   Going into my spring semester, I knew that I needed to find either a solid job or an internship for the summer.  I waited most of the semester before I made any effort to nail down my summer plans.  When April came around, I started to get a little more motivated. I decided that I wanted some sort of internship instead of a job doing random work like I had last summer. I briefly looked into some opportunities that I found through Vandy's Office of Active Citizenship and service (OACS in Vandy's language of acronyms).  I found a lot of listings for internships in the administrative offices of various nonprofits around Nashville. They looked really boring. Boring enough that I never sent in any applications.

   During this time, I saw on Facebook (this has been the year of social networks actually being useful) that my the organization where my cousin Daniel works was still looking for interns for their summer program. They had my attention.  I knew that Daniel worked with kids at some kind of nonprofit; that was all I knew.  I went to the website and did a little research.  The job wasn't back in an office filing and faxing and filling out paperwork.  For the summer, these interns would play a big, direct role in an awesome mission.  Fortress had me, hook, line, and sinker.  I called Daniel, and a few days later I sent in my application.

   An internship should have something to do with a person's intended career.  At least, I thought it should.  My problem is that, at 19, I don't know what my intended carreer is.  And I don't think I should have to know.  Not to dog on Religious Studies, but I sometimes tell people (jokingly, mostly) that when I realized I didn't want to work in government, I changed my major to something that doesn't lead to a job.  When people ask what I want to do after college, my answer is usually 1) I don't know (truer than they think), or 2) Move to a village in Africa and be happy about it (not as much of a joke as they think).  So, summer camp in the Metroplex doesn't exactly seem to fit in perfectly with the master plan (I do have one, even though its vague and a little ridiculous), but I can make it make sense, to me at least.  I'll say here what I said to my fellow interns when I was introducing myself to them: 
  I don't necessarily feel called to work with kids.  I do feel called to work with people, and kids are people, too.

  
   (Keep up with Fortress on Facebook, on Twitter @FortressYDC, and at http://www.fortressydc.blogspot.com/. Seriously, do it).