The Return of the King

(The retired professor that is Lowell Noble. Lowell and his wife Dixie are good friends of ours who had a major part in us moving to Jackson. They have been out of town all summer but spent this past weekend here. They are 2 of the most amazing people I've met and I think they are worthy of a future posting to let you all know why we love them so much )


Things have really picked up for us here in Jackson MS, so for the first time my weekly blog posting is late. The youth conference took up all of our time last week. We had a lot fewer youth show up than expected which ended up to be a good thing. As the conference went on we noticed many areas where we were under prepared or where there had been a lack of planning. Emily and I ended up playing major roles in the conference. We got meals ready, ran the snack shack, gathered trash, and put on a 3 on 3-basketball tournament. We had groups show up from all over the country including California, Tennessee, Michigan, Illinois, and Virginia. We had a good time hanging out with the kids and organizing activities in the evening. You never would know how much work goes into putting something like this on until you’ve done the behind the scenes preparation and take down. We are both still recovering from the long days but found the experience very rewarding and something we we’re glad to be a part of.

( Emily and a local group of students who attended the conference )


( A blurry photo of our late night 3 on 3 tournament in which we used glow in the dark basketballs)


(Dolphus Weary speaks to students in our packed little clubhouse)

Today we began preparing for the after-school program that will begin on Thursday. We have decided to make it free of charge in an attempt to draw in the children of our immediate neighborhood. Most of the kids that hang around at our park and basketball courts can’t afford to pay for a program, so we will try to get donations from local businesses for snacks and supplies. I have been placed in charge of the program and I’m becoming increasingly excited about it. After participating in the summer program I can see the value of investing time with children who, in our community, are at a great risk of falling off the radar educationally. Tomorrow we will hit the streets of our neighborhood with flyers to get the word out about our program. There is one family in particular that I am hoping will choose to take part. They are a tribe of 8 kids whose father is in prison. There is a mom in the home but it looks as though the two oldest girls (middle school age) take care of the family. They show up most evenings at our house and we usually go out and play with them. Two of the young boys named Bo Bo and Mario always ask right away if we’ve got any drinks. After noticing this pattern every time we see them we now ask them first if they have any drinks. We want to be their friends and not people who enable them to continue in the cycle of poverty. It seems to me that if you become friends with people who are oppressed the only way you can be a true friend to them is to learn their situation and look for ways to help them help themselves so that when they overcome they will look back and see that they did it themselves. Our neighborhood is full of people who have lost their vision for what a community could be (distracted by meeting their families physical needs). John Perkins has said that to rebuild our broken communities we need to raise up leaders who will have a vision for what could be. That vision must then turn into passion and then passion must lead to action. Its hard for us as white people moving into a black community to try to initiate this process ourselves because so many people see us as outsiders coming in to help them by way of charity. Hopefully as time goes on people will come to recognize that we have not come to give a handout but to live among them and to learn their struggles making them our own. Looking around our community, it is obvious that the way to begin its development is to reach out to the young people. All this to say that I think the fact that both Emily and I will be working with kids over the next year is a good way for us to become involved as we continue to learn about these issues.

( Playing cards on the back porch of our house with Lowell, Dixie, Noah (lowell and dixie's great nephew from Seattle), and our current housemates Milton and Cheryl.)