Detroit
Summer Outreach changed my
life forever. In Detroit, a city sometimes in great
darkness, I was able to see light shining. Light
shines the brightest in the greatest darkness, and I
came to see that that is why the light of God is so
evident in Detroit and that light changed me.
This light
shone through in the work that we did in the city. I
worked with the Street Team program this summer. This
is a summer work leadership program set up by
YouthWorks Detroit, which employs around 25
high-school age youth that live in the city.
YouthWorks sponsors workshops to instruct applicants
on proper business etiquette,
such as how to look and dress for work, how to manage
finances, and how to prepare for an interview. Then
all the applicants are interviewed and 25 are hired
for the program. These 25 youth are then split into
separate crews and I was privileged to help lead one
of these crews this summer.
I can honestly say that the 6 weeks I worked with
this crew were some of the most rewarding of my entire
life. I learned how to love others around me and to
love these youth. Some of them came from broken home
situations where they would live in up to 3 homes
throughout a week and some of them came from more
stable environments. That is really irrelevant though, because what I saw in these
youth, who became my good
friends, was what I saw in
myself, a very basic need for love. I looked at this
opportunity as a chance to be just that, someone who
would love them well. That is a good intention but in
that attitude is still a little pretentiousness that
says I have a lot to give and need nothing. That is
where I was blown away because as much love as I
attempted to show these youth,
I received back a hundredfold.
Every morning as we walked into the building to start
the day I was greeted with a chorus of “Peter!”
followed by a barrage of hugs. That is what inspired
me to go throughout the day, that is what got me out
of bed; I did not want to miss that. The work we did
sometimes seemed pointless,
but the relationships that were formed with these
youth, who became my friends, was the gift I received. This summer was all about
relationships, with the StreetTeamers, with my fellow
interns, and with God.
The
summer began for me with a couple of weeks of training
and I was almost a little disappointed. I met a lot of
great people and we got to know each other pretty
well, and we learned about how to serve and I got a
little taste of the service that needed to be done in
Detroit. It was nice to get to know all the interns
and to grow with them, but I hadn’t come to Detroit
for that, I had come to work with the youth. As a
whole, the group of interns and staff bonded really
well during that time and that would keep us together
when we were tired and exhausted during the work
-days. I realized that I did learn
a lot during training and that helped me in the work
that followed.
One of the most important lessons that I
learned was that this is not in any way about me. I am
quite a loud and outgoing person with a lot of energy, and I often like to be the
center of attention. However, during these first
couple of weeks I was not the center of attention and
I identified something there, this desire for
attention. I knew that it was there, but I found in
myself that I evaluated my days by how much attention
I received and I decided to change that and instead
evaluate my days by how much I had loved others.
The schedule
was a pretty exhausting one. We would wake up every
morning at 6 am and have breakfast. Then we’d go to
morning prayers and then have an hour for meditation,
personal prayer, and preparing for the day, before we would head out to work
until around 5 pm when we would get back and help
set up dinner which was at 6 pm. At night we had
small groups, prayer meetings, chores, other
activities and occasionally we had free time. This
schedule led to some very tiring and exhausting days, and it was then that we needed
the most help, from each other and from Jesus.
Morning
prayers were vitally important for me this summer. The
time in the morning that I would give to God was
always the time that gave back to me. When I was able
to push through my mental fatigue and exhaustion and
engage in prayer I found the ability to focus more on
Jesus and then I was able to focus more on others
instead of my own fatigue. My small group leader
suggested that I have a prayer that I would pray
before every morning of work. I thought that was a
good idea and I wrote up a long prayer to say every
morning. Then the first morning of work I was in
morning prayer and a simple prayer came to me: “I have
a broken spirit and a shallow love, use me”. That was
the prayer that I decided to say every morning and it
helped focus me on what was important and forced me to
turn myself to God deliberately everyday.
Another
way that I was forced to turn to God was through my
small group. I was put into a small group where I was
the only American and the rest were from different
countries. This group was one of the best small groups
I have had the pleasure of being a part of. They were
the most open and honest group of individuals. From
day one, when we shared our testimonies, everyone in
the group was real with where they were at in their
lives and what they were going through. This continued
for the whole summer. When everyone is honest with
each other and doesn’t try to hide the fact that they
are struggling or going through a difficult time
, that brings about an environment
where the truth can have an impact. That meant that
when we asked questions or gave encouragement or
advice the whole group knew that these words came from
a place of genuine interest and love for them and that
build up a brotherhood between all of us because we
knew that we had each others’ backs.
These youth in this program were some of the most
special individuals that I have had the pleasure of
meeting. I built friendships working with them and
talking with them about practically everything.
There are two stories in particular that
illustrate for me how lucky I was. The first came early
on in the summer when we took a group of the Street
Teamers to Pittsburgh to participate in a week long
service camp working on underprivileged homes in the
area. There I got to spend even more time with these
young people and got to know the youth in a way that
bonded us together. I worked with one girl in
particular, Grace, for the whole week and was really
inspired by her attitude. At the
end of the week we were honoring everyone in our work
group and when she got to honoring me she told me “You
are the older brother that I never had and one of the
best people I know”. I will never forget that moment
when I gained a great friend and a little sister. I
heard God in that, I heard him telling me, look at what
happens when you give everything, when you offer your
life as a sacrifice. I can work
through you and surpass your wildest expectations.
The other example that really struck me happened with a
young man named Ellington. I really enjoyed him, he was a guy with a great heart,
and I had spent a lot of time with him in our work. On
the last day of work he had happened to find a wristband
with “1 Peter 3:15” written on it and he gave it to me
because my name is Peter, and
throughout the day he kept telling me: “We are
brothers”. It is a really small event, but it had a huge
impact on me. God didn’t need me to be in Detroit for
the summer, but he wanted me to be there to experience
his love, to learn how to give
it to others and to receive his love through others.
See related
stories from YouthWorks-Detriot
>
