Mentoring High's and Low's

Working with Dee is full of High's and Low's.
So ended up with these great floor seats for today's SMU game. We were late getting to the game partially due to the "crap" he fights thru everyday. So upon waiting for Dee to get ready, I learned two things. One of his teammates had been shot the night before (should be fine, thank God), and his mom got laid off after 9 months from a great job at a call center.

The up's for the day were this text I got back from him last night - "I really thank God for leading you into my life. You have showed me a lot and I just wanna say thanks for everything you have done for me. I have never had a person care about me like you have, so I just want to say I appreciate you." But the other HIGH, you will love, is he's only played football one year, since I've been his mentor, and that was in the 8th grade at Edison, and I swear it was Vince Young out there. So he got invited to a football camp that Baylor hosted. They clocked him in a 40 at 4.3!

Let's get the kid in Orange!

Have a great week.

Dee is the kid next to me, the other two young men are the boys Trey and Melissa Hill have taken in and are raising as their own.

Sweet Retreat

We believe the First Annual Pine Cove Mentor/Mentee retreat might have been the best event that Mercy Street has ever done!  This was a sweet 24 hour time frame of connecting and building relationships.  All activities were very intentional - from the get to know you questions for the drive down to Pine Cove, to meal times together, to the times of worship.

Cabins were assigned with 5 mentors and 5 mentees, and at lunch, those same 10 people would sit together and get to know each other better! This was a great opportunity for mentees to make new friends and for mentors to get to connect and make friends with other mentors.  This always helps in the journey to have someone else who understands what you’re going through in the trenches and in the good times.

Free time is always the highlight of being at Pine Cove, and we had a whole 3 hours! Horseback riding, basketball, barn swing, canoe riding at sunset - you name it, we did it. There was even a time for mentors and mentees to conquer fear side-by-side on the double zip line!  We finished the afternoon with a team activity: the whole cabin had to work together to come up with a skit to perform using the random props that were left in a bag in their cabin.  Later, everyone got dressed in camouflage and put war paint on their faces for the theme night.  The game took place in the woods and the mentees worked towards a goal to find certain places the mentors tried to stop them.

One mentor, in particular, felt like he had done a poor job mentoring lately and really wanted to use this retreat as a springboard to a deeper relationship. The Lord was gracious to answer that prayer and he left the retreat feeling energized and ready to tackle the rest of the year with his mentee!

The opportunity to be with your mentee for 24 hours allows mentors to see what their mentees are like out of their comfort zone, not too cool for school all the time, but to hear them really share their hearts.

We had an awesome time of worship Saturday night where Darnell spoke about cultural differences and the gospel followed by a breakout time with reflection questions. It was neat to see mentors and mentees all over the room asking questions and sharing.  One of the last questions was for the mentee to make up their own question, and we’ve heard from several mentors that there were some good ones asked like, “Why did Jesus have to die?”, or “How do you tell someone about Jesus?” Good spiritual conversations were had that might not have taken place otherwise.  Later that night we had a camp fire where we roasted marshmallows and had hot chocolate with chocolate chip cookies.

Sunday morning we had a mentor enrichment, followed by a sweet time of worship where Darnell encouraged the mentees that they could be used by God right now while they are young. He used the analogy of a small acorn growing up to be a huge oak tree.  We then had Timothy, an alumni mentee, challenge the mentees to take advantage of their mentors because there are lots of kids who don’t have mentors.  Mentors are there to be your friend, not like another adult that tells you what to do all the time, but truly a friend that’s going to help you through life and guide you.

At the end everyone was given a small journal with these instructions: the mentor is to write a prayer for their mentee and the mentee is to write a prayer for their mentor. After the prayers were written, they switched and got to keep those journals as a sweet keepsake for each to have for years to come, reminding them of the ways the other is praying for them. We also wrote prayers for West Dallas on poster boards and it was moving to see prayers about protection and safety for West Dallas.

Overall it was just an incredible event on all different levels! We plan to keep this tradition going, so please make plans to come next year!

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