Minneapolis Mission Trip – Day 2
Today we started hearing stories about the students that Urban Ventures serve. We started the day painting some more lumber for the skate park, when along came Melvin.
Melvin is a 16 year-old who lives in a foster home in Brooklyn Park, but how he got there is an amazing and heart-wrenching story.
The incredibly short version is that Melvin was born in The Ivory Coast (Africa) and kidnapped before he was a teenager. He was held with 6 other kids who had been kidnapped. Five of those six were killed by the kidnappers. Eventually he was sold as a slave and mistreated even more. Through all of this he ended up in the united states and a “ward of the state” which is a fancy way to say ‘orphan.’ His goal? To go to college so he can go back to his home country and become president.
Melvin was, to say the least, not what we were expecting when we arrived this morning. There were plenty of other stories, gang members and drug dealers, a student whose mother was murdered just months ago.
All of this just a few miles from where you are sitting right now.
Something in us changed today. We still don’t feel like we “belong” or even that we really know what we are doing. We are uncomfortable. But we’ve moved beyond the point of wanting it to be over so we can go back to ‘comfortable.’ Today we realized that there is something unsettling about doing what we’re doing this week, but instead of making us want to quit, we want to work through it. We want to understand. We want to learn. We want to help.
And as we painted over fresh graffiti that gang members had painted the night before, and laughed, and sang, and talked about the cultural differences… something changed. At least I know it did for me (Luke) and I hope for Jess and Brian too. We developed a heart for this community we barely know and culture we don’t understand. That’s a good thing… and a God thing.
*Some pictures of graffiti clean-up
