“Clawfoot” – Ministering to Youth

Greetings!   …Well as usual so much has happened since we’ve last written to you that we hardly know where to start… The following account is actually from a while ago, but we thought it was good enough to go ahead and share with you anyway… Hope you enjoy it…  🙂

Well, brave readers, without any further adieu, let’s begin: Our story opens at a point in time about six months ago, when our Tierra Blanca pastor, Fili, had the idea of starting a youth group in the church neighborhood… Now that sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? And in fact you might even be asking yourself why, after seven years of working with the church in Tierra Blanca, hadn’t we started a youth group before…?

And of course that’s a very good question. We don’t actually have a good answer, except that one of the main reasons was probably, um… fear, since the closest contact we’d ever had with the youth in Tierra Blanca was to cower inside the church building as we watched the fighting gangs throw rocks at each other outside…  There were also other reasons, though, like the fact that most of the young people in Tierra Blanca have at least one child by the time they are 17, or the slightly daunting reality that the majority of them spend their evenings ‘high’ under the influence of some drug or another… Yes, and in fact we should probably also say that the Tierra Blanca area has even become somewhat notorious in the area for its gang members… To put it bluntly, many of our friends from other neighborhoods just ‘don’t go there.’  Even the local taxi drivers tend to hesitate when you ask them to take you in… And of course we’ve lost track of the countless comments we’ve heard from people such as “Tierra Blanca!!? Oh my GOSH just watch your BACK…!!”

Now to be sure, we should tell you that there are already at least two other evangelical churches in the neighborhood, both of which have been there longer than we have. We’ve noticed that these churches are not lacking in members, but that not surprisingly nobody has attempted to do anything with the young people involved in gangs.

So… What could we possibly do to get the attention of the youth in this neighborhood…?

After thinking rather intensely, we decided that instead of doing some sort of cheesy pizza-party debut sort of thing (PARDON THE PUN) that it would work much better to actually venture outside the church and start “hanging out” with these kids in the neighborhood plaza… So, we all took a very deep breath one Sunday evening… and wandered out…

The response we received was surprising.  Most people were ‘high,’ but other than that, incredibly friendly, so we spent the next few Sunday nights just sort of chatting with folks, or praying for them, buying them hamburgers, and not least importantly, helping them to stumble repeatedly on and off of the park benches.

One of the guys present in some of our interactions in the plaza was named Mario, also known as “Clawfoot,” a notorious neighborhood fighter and gang leader.  We ourselves had actually heard of him and had seen people go to the emergency room after fighting with him on more than one occasion, but after getting to know this young man we developed a real affection for him.  So one night when he showed up with several large cuts on head from his latest adventures, we were moved and decided we were going to try and dress his wounds.

At first we couldn’t figure out why no one was willing to help us clean and bandage Mario’s sores…  After a lot of cajoling somebody finally went and got iodine, but when we asked who would like to help us put it onto the cuts, we were surprised to be met only with comments like “Hey, go ahead. No, really. We’ll just WATCH…” But even so, there was no talking us out of doing it.  So, thinking happily about the actions of the Good Samaritan, we didn’t notice as most of the neighborhood stepped back in fear as we innocently prepared to pour iodine on Clawfoot’s gaping wounds.

Now the events that followed were actually quite surprising, to everyone but us, that is, since Clawfoot did not actually beat anyone up or even so much as leave anybody with a black eye!  We do have to confess that he thrashed a little, but that was quickly put to a stop, since Kim wasted no time in catching him in her arms and crying “Poor baby!!”

When we had finished all our doctoring, we finally glanced up from a now-whimpering Clawfoot. At that point we noticed many of the other gang members, who had long since been just sort of staring at us in shock…  It was then that we appreciated the magnitude of what we had done, since the only comment they made to us was that nobody from that neighborhood had ever tried to cure Clawfoot’s wounds and had it go so, um… well for them… J

So, to make a long story short our reaching out to the youth in Tierra Blanca has had a number of implications.

One is that we can almost no longer drive through the neighborhood without our car being stopped as we are surrounded by gang members…  This may sound rather frightening, and for most people it would be, but in our case it is only because they are asking for peanuts…, in little packages which we keep in the trunk and have started giving away for free in order to establish a better rapport with the youth. J  (And in fact it seems to be working…  So far we’ve only had 200 pesos and a camera stolen from us…!  That’s pretty good!!!)

Another implication was that in a sudden burst of inspiration we decided to offer “Movie Night” out of the church building once a week, which actually proved to be rather interesting, since we didn’t have enough chairs to seat all of the gang members at once, and found ourselves to be quite unprepared for the fighting which broke out over the popcorn and potato chips…  J

Another defining moment came during a medical missions visit from our ‘old’ college friend, Dr. Minh Han, who, in the midst of conducting free clinics in poor neighborhoods to treat over 400 patients also had time to talk with some of our youth about the effects of drug abuse…  Most of our guys were very disappointed to find out that smoking cigarettes could affect their sexual virility!

Indeed, some of our church members have even tried playing soccer with the gang members on occasion, which is the closest we’ve ever come to being in any real physical danger (except for witnessing a few hold-ups), since some of our church brethren are a bit out of shape and we’ve wondered whether any of them might go into cardiac arrest.

Ah, yes… but probably the most important implication of all this is that, slowly but surely, these guys are actually starting to darken the door of our church during some of our service times.

…And “Clawfoot” (now Mario) has been one of the most regular attenders so far.

We should clarify here that sometimes Mario comes ‘high’ to the services, but at other times he seems to be O.K…  Either way, though, we’ve noticed that he’s always eager to participate, and even to turn to the right verses in his Bible.

In closing, we’d like to say that our efforts to reach these youth so far have been just overflowing with fruit, but the truth is that the results have been very inconsistent and disheartening at times. The saddest thing of all was when Mario showed up at the Sunday service a couple months ago with his entire wrist and palm split open through several layers of skin, apparently as a result of a knife-wound from the Zetas… Yes, and in fact it’s been rumored that they’re looking for him, probably to force him into selling drugs for their network.

Unquestionably, the fight for these kids is real.  We know for a fact that over eleven people have been killed in the Tierra Blanca area during the past month or so in the different battles of the drug lords…

So the reality is that if we want to win today’s youth over to our side we’re going to have to fight, and fight hard… harder than the Enemy.  This is a huge challenge, and as of yet we’re not sure how of to go about doing it…  Certainly, though, what we know is that we will have to stop cowering inside our church building.

Indeed, we will have to stop hiding from them and be bold enough to seek and find them…

Bold enough to reach them, that is. …

And to dare to cure their wounds.