Red and Yellow, Black and White

For my Intro to Social Entrepreneurship class I have to have 16 hours of service-learning and mine is with an organization called Martha O'Bryan.  Just so I don't mess it up I'm going to copy and paste their mission statement from their website so you kind of understand what's up: On a foundation of Christian faith, the Martha O'Bryan Center empowers children, youth, and adults in poverty to transform their lives through work, education, employment and fellowship. This organization has been around for a long time but just recently a school here in East Nashville, Stratford High School, gave Martha O'Bryan space and has let them turn it into the greatest after school program spot.  They call it the Top Floor and have about 5 rooms that are dedicated to different stuff like homework help, college guidance, just relaxing and so on.  The kids are required to do at least one hour of homework to keep coming there and after that they can play pool or eat snacks etc.  Basically, I go there around 2 and hangout/tutor/mentor high school kids and it's amazing.  The students come from all over the place such as Somalia(majority), Argentina and Kenya.  They are not your typical "poverty" kids. What I mean by that is they do not look like they struggle because their spirits are beaming.  They work hard and have aspirations of making themselves a better future.  Martha O'Bryan is helping break that generation of poverty cycle and let these students know that they have just as much of a chance of getting into college as the next kid- all they have to do is work at it.  The first day "on the job" I sat down with a girl covered from head to toe in her traditional Muslim clothing.  (I can tell you that I was expecting to be all happy go lucky about Jesus and open since it was a Christian organization and all but that was not the case... and I am glad)  With all these different backgrounds and religions you have to be a bit more careful not to come with your shield and sword ready to fight the battle of Christ.  I have learned that the best example of love I can be is not slipping in "Christian" phrases but rather just loving on these kids no matter what.  It does not affect me whatsoever after getting to know them because they are absolutely incredible and so so unique.  AH ok let me get back to my first day... so I sat down with Q (I'm just going to shorten it to the first letters in their names) and she was working on combining sentences with conjunctions, which is harder than I thought and English is my first language? Anyways, she begins to tell me she is from Africa and can speak about 3 other languages along with English.  She does not seem to mind her school work and I am amazed because the next stuff we worked on dealt with electronegativity in science!?  She simply looked at me and said,"I don't understand" and I wanted to be like "Of course you don't - you barely know English!" The stuff we continued to talk about instead of her homework covered everything like what brought her to America and how her dad lived in Italy and just random stuff that probably seemed weird to talk about but we didn't care.  I left that day feeling small.  I almost felt dumb, to be honest, because these kids know so much and have such rich backgrounds that I hadn't had to really experience that yet- and they all came to East Nashville. what? haha It is just another example of how crazy awesome God is and places people where HE wants them.  
    On Tuesday I went up there and sat with a girl named D.  D's family is from Argentina and she speaks spanish to her brother as well as tries to explain it to the other kids when they have homework, but it doesn't usually help since she always ends up confusing them with her slang haha She is hysterical and so full of life you just can't help but want to continue talking with her.  She asked me for help with her Algebra 2 homework and my goodness we sat there for a good 2 hours before making any progress because neither of us knew what the heck was going on.  Martha O'Bryan has a lot of Americore volunteers working their as well so I asked one of them to please help us before we both cry.  There's a girl there with Americore that graduated from Yale and I made an idiot out of myself because I asked her where she went to school and she replied "Yale" and because I thought she said Yah I again said "Oh no, WHERE did you go to school?" and she just looked at me and I knew she was thinking....you're a moron... haha 
   Alright, I wanted to tell about today's experience.  I got there around 2 and walked up the stairs to hear laughter and conversation among everyone just hanging out.  I plopped down on a couch and began talking with two guys there about random stuff and then one kid began to explain how he wanted to be a neurologist.  I immediately got excited and wanted to encourage him until he continued with his reasoning which was to make money.  He said it was the only way he would make alot of money and he didn't really even care about being a neurologist but knew it was a job that would support him.  My heart kind of sunk as I heard this because I just knew he has been raised on the mentality that the only way to success is if you get one of "these" jobs. He had no concept of pursuing what he was good at or what he really wanted to do because he was blinded by the idea of surviving and having a lot of money.  It's hard to encourage such an aspiration, to me, when I know the motive is like that but what do I know? I have never had to survive.  However, he is a rare case because a lot of the other kids really do want to pursue in a field they are gifted in and have goals to get into places like Vanderbilt and Harvard, which is not out of the question for some of these kids.  I am amazed by their perseverance and ability to block out what the world tells them.  They don't hear the words "You can't" because the team at Martha O'Bryan surrounds them with encouragement telling them they CAN. 
    After talking with these guys, I was put on the duty to take two crazy kids outside and throw the football around.  D and T are both high schoolers and have more energy and excitement than any kids I've ever seen.  They are hilarious because they "feed" off each other and crack themselves up moreso than anyone.  After playing a lot of something that resembled football I got to sit with T for a bit and just chat about life.  I asked him what his favorite subject was and he legit said "Girls" and then proceeded to tell me about his 15 GIRLFRIENDS haha I laughed so hard.  T is always singing and him and D actually made up a rap that's not too shabby!  But when we were sitting there, T asked me if he could recite the 50 states in alphabetical order and because I was amazed at the ability to do such a thing I immediately said YAH! So he recites the states and then sings a toon with it and tells me how he loves to sing.  he said he has some of his own songs and after singing one to me he began using sign language.  He said his mom was deaf and taught him how to sign so he liked to use it in his songs so she can understand too.  My heart filled with compassion as he continued to tell me that his dad died on his birthday this year and that he missed him and swears he feels his dad next to him when he wakes up every morning.  This made me want to just jump up and give him a hug right there but I knew I needed to remain cool and just let him talk.  By looking at him, you'd think this girl crazy kid was just another teen skating through school too distracted to care about anything but that's the opposite of what T is.  He wakes up early every Sunday before his mom gets up (so he can watch cartoons) and then walks to church.  He said he loves getting up early because he is the first to arrive and gets to see all the others coming in.  I was overjoyed to hear his love for church and asked him to sing me his song he said he wrote for God.  I can honestly tell you that I had to hold back tears listening to his praise.  It was so simple with words referring to how we need each other and are God's family so we should not be mean to one another.  I worshipped God in that moment listening to T sing.  
   Sorry there is just so much that happened today that I don't want to leave anything out! Another one of the volunteers there is from Germany and just moved here about two weeks ago.  She said that in Germany, after high school the boys are required to either serve one year with the military or one year doing community service and even thought girls do not typically have to do that she wanted to do a year of community service and got plugged in to little ole Martha O'Bryan center here in Nashville, Tennessee.  You can just tell by looking at her that her heart is genuine.  She moved here not knowing anyone and basically floats around looking for someone to help.  Her, myself and two other girls walked back down to the football field and began talking about typical girl stuff. You know, boyfriends names and funny P.E. stories and what we thought was cool and what not.  Two girls were from Somalia, one from Germany and one from America- all sharing the same feelings and thoughts.  It just blows my mind how wonderful that is to be able to connect with anyone by merely sharing the "human" factor.  We cannot escape our inevitable girly feelings and I may be crazy in thinking this but I just loved having that in common because our backgrounds didn't matter in that case- we were just teenage girls wanting to talk and that's the same no matter where you're from.  


PS. I went to my first hockey game tonight and yeah...  I friggin' loved it.