Archive for January, 2009

I just returned from a journey into another time zone…middle school Campus Life club at Woodbrook in Lakewood. Kevin McClain, TYFC Board President, and I stopped in to check it out this afternoon and I came away impressed at the patience of our staff and amazed at their love for these kids and creativity.  So, you may be wondering, “Happy Shakes and Jesus”?  What’s up with that? continue

Every three months I attend a meeting together with leaders of the Department of Social and Health Services and local private foster care agencies.  This meeting is used as a way to communicate policy and practice changes, improve collaboration between state and private partners, and share best practices among all the providers.  It’s easy to leave a meeting like this without a clear reminder why it is that we’re in this work.  Often budgets, policies, and ”issues” get the focus.  

Yesterday, however, was different.  It wasn’t that policies and budgets were not mentioned…………of course they were.  It was the plea from a top DSHS administrator for private agencies to comb their list of foster families to find anyone that might be willing to take a teenage foster child into their home.   I was struck by the urgency of the request.  “Even if it’s just ONE family!”

My mind quickly went to the story of the man walking along the beach only to find it littered with thousands of dying starfish.  He was walking along randomly picking up one starfish at a time and throwing it back into the ocean.  Another man came by and asked what he was doing.  “I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean so they don’t die here on the beach,” the man replied.  “But you can’t possibly save them all,” was his friend’s response.  As he reached down to pick up another starfish,  holding it in his hand he said, “I know, but I can save THIS ONE.” 

This work is about “saving the one”.  We currently have 85 foster children placed with Youth for Christ.  Over the course of this year we will have placed over 150 children that have needed a home…some needing ”just” a temporary home.  Does it really matter to each one?  Of course, and that is why our staff do this work.  To make a difference in the life of the “ONE”. 

Would you be willing to open your home to a teenager?  Even just one?  If so, please give us a call.  We’d love to help you find a way to make a difference.

Jeff

Orphans… We usually think of orphans as a thing of the past, but there are many young people with no parents, no family, and no place to call home.  Many teens in the system long to have a family of their own, to belong and be special to someone.  

Teens have a deep desire to be accepted and loved, and they will find “family” anywhere.  Oftentimes, the street becomes a place for these kids, a breeding ground for further destruction.  These kids are bright, vibrant, beautiful and bold.  They want to play basketball, do well in school, and eat dinner at a table with a family.  They long to go somewhere for Thanksgiving and Christmas where they feel welcome and enjoyed. 

At YFC, we work with many different foster families who are licensed to take in kids of various ages.   There are a few who have taken in these “forgotten jewels,” and have invested their time and life into them.   They will forever be changed because of the commitment they made to them and the new start that each family has given them.  There are many more teens out there, longing to be loved, longing to be accepted, and longing for someone to tell them they are worth fighting for.  I wonder…who will take them?

Katie Bass

This week we started chapel with five beautiful ladies in detention. I shared a story of another girl we know who had phoned before I went into chapel sharing she was going to leave her abusive relationship.  The ladies in chapel volunteered to pray for her.  Many of the girls did not know what to pray or say and it was there first prayer out loud. You could see how they identified with her circumstance and they simply asked God to help her out.  When I left chapel I had a message waiting for me that the girl we had prayed for had packed her bags and was safely home at her mom’s house. It was so fun to see the girls in chapel taste a small piece of what God will use them to do much more in the future.

One of the girls at Chapel that night, Sarah, has been in and out of Remann Hall the past two years. She is now fifteen. She lives with her boyfriend and has dropped out of school. Each time she has come in she has been very content to keep living her life the way she’s been going. She puts forward a very walled defense and I’ve never seen her cry.  This time when she came in she came up to me and gave me a hug, before chapel time. We shared a message of God’s heart for each girl in the room, His desire to have them for His own, and then the honesty of how we have approached and treated God. As we shared the truth about repentance, and the need for them to turn from the lives they have been living far away from God.  Sarah had tears welling up in her eyes as I got to look her in the face and declare over her how much God loves her, and that she has settled for far less than what He has for her. I shared that He wants her to be His and this life she is living is far less than He intended. I told her the good news is that this IS NOT AS GOOD AS IT GETS. There is HOPE, there is HEALING, there is a RELATIONSHIP with JESUS CHRIST.  We got to talk after chapel and she shared how she has never experienced God literally tugging her like she had tonight. She had questions of who God is and His purpose for her (which she had never been this open before).  She is so tender and excited to get to know Him. What a joy to share with these beautiful ones and see the Holy Spirit minister to them; bringing understanding of who God is, HIS LOVE for them, convicting them of sin with soberness of how they have turned from Him, and then drawing them to repent and embrace His PLAN of salvation, grace, and NEW LIFE. Thank you for your support and what a tremendous blessing it is to be with them.

Chrisy Wachtler

Last Friday night was a huge success when three Jr. High counselors invested their personal time and finances to enjoy a family style dinner and board games at the center.  Both teens and caring adults shared Mexican food, Yatzee, and laughter.  Twenty-three teens will remember the night when they got to sit down and have fun with their Jr. High counselors for a few hours. 

Every Thursday at the youth center we have youth group.  Well this particular evening was filled with tips on personal goal setting.  Twelve youth listed a few of their life long dreams.  After sharing them, we were able to help lead a discussion on how to get a little closer to their future dreams in the year of 2009 – goal is to make the most of 2009.  They even came up with some hindrances and things to avoid this year.  Afterwards we all circled around the snack bar for a food race.  Baby food (sweet potato), sour apple sauce, dill pickle, a whole lemon, and tapioca pudding made for outbursts of giggles and one garbage run.  Overall, we had a great night of community fellowship and relationship building with teens and adults.

Kelly Culver, Puyallup Youth Investment Center

We started Sozo Kids almost 2 years ago because we had close to 30 elementary-aged kids coming to Teen Late Night every night until midnight. It was clearly not a place where they belonged, but we couldn’t keep them away. Some kids were walking 6 miles each way in the middle of Winter from the Eastside just to be there! And they would walk back home at 1am. I don’t walk on the Eastside late at night—how much more inappropriate for 3^rd graders! Sozo Kids was birthed out of a need that we could no longer ignore.

Sozo Kids is a Late Night ministry for kids in Kindergarten through 5^th grade on Friday nights, and consists of games, crafts, snacks, worship, and a message about the hope of Jesus Christ and the truth of the Bible. The fruit looks so different than with Sozo (for teens)…we don’t see kids leaving lives of gangs, violence, and drug addictions like at Sozo and Remann Hall. Instead…kids are coming to know who they are in Jesus Christ as grade schoolers, and never engaging in that lifestyle to begin with!

I work with the teens as well, and I know many of the kids’ older brothers and sisters who are fully entrenched in gangs, violence, drugs, alcohol, and violence. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to look at a little girl named Virginia and see the purity and innocence that God is preserving, and to know that God has intercepted her from the enemy. Instead of living a life of gangs, drugs and violence like her brother Kyle. I am confident that Virginia will graduate from high school, will know that she is treasured by the God of the universe, and will be used to influence others for God’s Kingdom. This is the fruit of Sozo Kids. What an amazing gift to be a part of this ministry, thank you.

-Doug Jonson, Sozo Coordinator

The other day Darrin Miller and Dwayne Parker, our City Life and Juvenile Justice Ministries staff, stopped by my office to share some exciting news. They, along with a group of fellow community leaders from Tacoma, had just met with Dr. Art Jarvis, Tacoma Public Schools superintendent, about continue

If you walk into our office this week you will hear “Bang, boom, saw” as our office gets a facelift.  We are expanding the foster care ministry and building two new visit rooms with a viewing hallway. 

Next week case manager row will no longer exist.  This is where our new visit rooms will be, with a viewing hallway in between.  As a contracted agency with the State of Washington we facilitate visits with children in foster care and their parents.  Most of our visits are supervised which means that we see and hear everything that happens during a visit.  Our viewing hallways help us facilitate a supervised visit without intruding on family time.   

We try to make our visit rooms as inviting and fun as possible. Tom and Ellen,  YFC foster parents and Patricia, a YFC case aide will spend the next couple of weekends painting under the sea and Noah’s Ark murals on the walls to make the visit rooms more enjoyable for the kids and families.   

Below is what Case Manager row looks like currently, next week it will be all walled in with three separate rooms. 

The old kitchen and 3rd visit room have been gutted and will be turned into new offices for the case managers, yes they will now have doors!!!

The women’s restroom has also been gutted and will become our new staff kitchen and our other two bathrooms will be used for the office staff and guests.

We are excited about the new changes and look forward to expanding the ministry of YFC Foster Care.  Stop in once the remodel is done and get a tour of our newly remodeled offices!!!

Sometimes the grass seems greener on the other side. “Ezra” a junior at Foss High School spent his freshman and half of his sophomore year at Foss and then he decided he wanted to change schools and go to Stadium because he thought it would be cooler and he had always wanted to go there.

Ezra had given his life to Christ three years earlier and was doing well in the midst of numerous things working against his pursuit of Christ as King of his life. Ezra’s life has been shattered over and over again by the affects of alcohol and drugs and numerous other unhealthy variables. Althought Ezra gave his life to Christ three years ago his enviornment didn’t change. The constant pressures of alcohol and drugs were in his face everyday. Last year at the end of the first semester Ezra transferred to Stadium High School and all that he thought would be so great only got worse. He decdided to begin to pull away from his connection with our City Life adult leadership team and the relationships he had with people in the church. Before he knew it, he was smoking marijuana regularly, drinking, going to parties all the time and not going to class anymore. Things seemed to get worse and worse for Ezra, but the truth is that the Word of God does not come back void. It accomplishes what is set out to do. In Ezra’s case all he could think about as things got worse and worse were, “my life was so much better when I was walking with God.” The next thing you know Ezra decides to transfer back to Foss High School and asks if we can talk.

Over a meal he confessed everything he had been doing for the last five months and that he didn’t want to live like that anymore. The Love of Christ drew Ezra back to the light. Please pray for Ezra as he has continually temptations in his face everyday due to continual circumstances. Pray for strength and greater revelation of who God is. Pray also for Ezra’s families salvation.

Kyle Nelson   - Foss High School City Life Director -

January 13th 2009, – Tonight a young man who has been coming to SOZO for quite some time gave his life to the Lord.  I don’t know if anything can really top the joy of watching it click for someone.  Watching someone understand for the first time that Jesus paid a penalty so they can live, is an amazing miracle not to be taken for granted.

My friend Terrence, has been in and out of Remann Hall for various gang-related activities.  He has also been a regular attender at SOZO for some time.  As the night began, one of our volunteers from Remann Hall told me she saw him earlier in the day and believed he was arrested for something.  I went to go talk to Terrence’s older sister to see if everything was ok and find out more of the story.  But there Terrence was, standing right next to her, obviously not in detention. I asked Terrence how he was doing and he said he was fine, but you could tell he didn’t really feel like talking, which is usual for him. We went about our night in the normal way… Food, games, laughs, and a message of hope.  After the message, Terrence approached me (wow) and said we needed to talk.  We sat down and I listened to him describe the emotions of his heart in an extremely mature way for someone who’s just 14 years old.  He told of how he had been arrested for burglary.  He had kicked down the door of a local residence with some other kids in his gang.  A police officer was just a block or two away and caught them in the act. 

“The first few times I went to Remann Hall,” he said, “I was mad, crying and stuff.  Now it’s different.  I mean, I don’t even care anymore, it’s just like, whatever, it don’t matter… I done that already.”  I listened carefully as he told how his life going in circles.  The same patterns, the same choices, the same consequences.  He shared that he was tired of it all, and he shared that he didn’t want to grow up like his dad – an aimless criminal.  And he pondered what the point of it all was…  He wanted out, he wanted change. 

At this point, there were two things going through my heart.  One, I really just wanted to give this kid a hug.  Sounds strange, I know, hugging a gangbanger who just got arrested.  But I could tell he was really feeling down on life – and he needed someone to tell him that it would be okay.  Secondly, I knew that here was a youth who was ready for something more.  I asked Terrence a few questions about his relationship with the Lord.  He believed in God and he wanted to be a good kid now because he was tired of his old life.  We talked about sin and how the bible says that we all deserve to die because of sin, and how “being good” doesn’t take away our sin.  “So what do you do?” he asked. 

“Well, you have a court date coming up right?”  I asked.

“Yeah..”

“Well, what would you do if at your hearing, the judge found you guilty and sentenced you to a year in Remann Hall, but before you were led away, he told you that because he loved you so much, he wouldn’t let you go to jail?  Instead, his own son would take your place, and pay your penalty for you.”

“Man I’d be trippin.”

“Well Terrence, if sin leads to death, and we’re all sinners, what is God supposed to do?”

Something clicked in Terrence’s eyes.  With a wry smile he said, “That’s what Jesus did!  He paid the price!”

We prayed then and there.  Terrence asked Jesus to be his savior and Lord.  He told Jesus he wanted to live for something real and meaningful that night.  He asked God to forgive him for his sin and his, and to change him from the inside out.

May we never lose the joy and wonder of that moment in our own lives.  We were all condemned, without hope, without meaning, until God rescued us from the penalty of our sin.  Thank you Jesus for Terrence, and thank you for saving me.

Myron Bernard