Weekend Stories

Sorry...this post has nothing to do with Valentine's Day, even though it is February 14.  It's a lovely day, but I just am not writing about it right now.  I was reading some old email (that's what I do when I feel like wasting time), and ran across one that I sent to my friend Sonya on November 24, 2009.  The excerpt below is a description of one of our weekends with our urban youth ministry(?) in downtown Chattanooga.  Well, it's funny to call it that, because really, as you will see, it was more random and unpredictable than that makes it sound.  Apologies to Elisa and Ben, because I just emailed this to you.  And apologies if anyone is offended. I hope not.  Enjoy. :)

Weekend stories.  Yes, we had some interesting ones.  Friday night we
thought we just had two teens at our Bible study, and then, randomly, like 5
kids showed up at the door.  We meet at a neighborhood house, and they were
neighbors, and someone had told them about it, so they came.  They ate with
us, and stayed for part of the Bible study. One of them stayed the whole
time.  It was pretty cool.  One guy was probably gay--talked efeminite, had
a pink mohawk, tight, girly clothes and some make-up.  Was the oldest, a
high school senior.  His sister was wearing the brightest clothes I think
I've ever seen, and had a huge, green tie, and heaps and heaps of colored
plastic bracelets--classic, overdone early 90s. Yet somehow, stylish rather
than tacky.  Only teens can do that.  She was a Sophomore I think?  And her
friend was in 8th grade--he's the one who stayed the whole time.  And then a
few other guys came in who were about 8th or 9th grade, relatively normal.
:)  They were all super respectful though, and interactive with us.  We just
talked about different stuff and let them know we were glad they were there,
and they said they'd like to come back.  That was another moment I was so
glad to be with pretty laid-back, flexible people like Elisa and Ben.  We
totally just went with it.  I think my year in NZ would have been totally
amazing if they'd been there with me. :)  And thankfully we had heaps of
food, and I brought heaps of cookies that they liked a lot (but the cookies
were real ugly--super flat, and ran together, so I had to cut them apart in
squares).  On Sabbath, Elisa and I were picking up some kids on the South
side for church and lunch (the "Tree Family" we call them, because all the
kids' names start with Tre.  TreShonda, TreMonte, TreDarius, TreMone,
Trenace.)  Anyway, we were waiting outside the house as we always do, and
this older black lady came walking down the sidewalk sort of just jabbering
to herself.  She might have been a bit drunk, not sure.  She came over to
the house we were at, and asked us what we were doing there--not attacking,
just sort of asking.  Elisa said we just came to hang out with the kids.
From there she started sort of going off a little bit, we couldn't really be
sure if she was mad or just passive aggressive or what, but was like, "I
see, come down here to see how they live...my mama used to tell me about
white folk who'd come down like that...real nice of ya'll, real nice.."
stuff like that.  Mostly it sounded like she didn't like white folk a whole
lot, but I'm sure she probably hasn't had the greatest experience with them
most likely.  I can definitely understand the viewpoint, yet sometimes it
feels like we can't win.  If we don't hang out, then we're kind of acting
racist, and if we do, we're just being charitable because of our white
status.  Darn. Anyway, the rest of the day went well with the kids though,
at church, and with our picnic afterward.  Well, Dishon got a bloody nose
from hitting his head on the swing or something when he was trying to do a
back flip off of it, but he was ok. :)  The weekend before was probably more
exciting because there were heaps of people that came to hang out with us.
But that's another story, and that's most of it anyway.