Last week was the infamous G.O. Basketball week here in the Dominican Republic! I had the privilege of watching my husband do what he has grown to be so good at. I wanted to post a blog entry about how incredible the week was with the campers and the Americans who came to serve, but another G.O. staff member beat me to it, and quite honestly, I am so glad she did! She painted a much better picture than I could have. Thank you Goody for the post you wrote below. We are grateful for you!
***
"you could hear a pin drop. and in a country as
loud as ours, that's saying something. you know when you can tell something big
is coming, whether you know what it is or not, something in you just knows? all
your senses hone in on what is taking place before you. you are acutely aware
of how people are positioned, where they are looking, who is drawing the
attention. you wait in anticipation for "the event" to occur, not yet knowing
what exactly it is going to be. i was waiting, expectedly.
the young men that surrounded me, somewhere around
two hundred of them, were fidgety. some of them knew it was coming too. others
didn't want the words to be spoken. still others were waiting for the charge.
to be part of something bigger than any of them even knew possible. because in
reality, nobody ever really expected anything of them anyway.
i could hear it in Will's voice. he wasn't going
to shy away from this conversation. he knew this was the moment. he knew a
week like this was his platform. God's platform. Will knew that if he wasn't
bold, if he wasn't real, if he didn't hit them where it hurt, then all of this
they'd been doing would have been wasted on deaf ears.
he started to talk about fathers. risky subject.
maybe you or i have a pretty good picture of a dad because we grew up with
amazing ones. but these boys don't have that good fortune. a majority of the
fathers here are the furthest thing from what a father is supposed to be. and
when i say majority, i'm not exaggerating a statistic so you'll be blown away;
the cold, hard truth is good examples are few and far between. they abuse their
children, beat their wives, drink incessantly. and that's if they are around.
most "fathers" are but a vapor in the wind. you only speak of them when signing
official papers or are enlisting in school and the school officials need to know
your father's name. do you know a couple dads like that? i know twenty; and
they all live on the same street.
so when Will brought up their fathers, for most of
them it was like opening a wound they would rather just put a bandaid on. but
Will wasn't having it. he knows that if something doesn't change, 99% of the
kids sitting in that room would grow up to be just like their fathers.
abusive. deadbeats. criminals.
Will asked them to raise their hands if their
fathers drank a lot. more than half the hands in that place shot to the roof.
the others raised their hands, not physically, but with a disgraceful
expression. "how many of your fathers hit your mom?" less hands went up this
time but their expressions went from disgrace and shame to hurt and angry. "how
many of your fathers hit you?" only the hands of the younger boys stayed up.
the older ones know you don't let others see that kind of truth. "do you want
to be like your dads? do you want to follow in his footsteps? do you want to
abuse your kids and beat your wives and get drunk every night?" i could hear
the quiet sound of influence passing over the crowd. the sound of sniffing and
tear-wiping began too.
something incredible happens when a person is
empowered. when they realize they have expectation. it ignites something in
them. they suddenly feel like who they are now doesn't have to be who they will
always be. change is a powerful thing.
there was this moment when i could barely see
through my own tears and i watched as Will's eyes welled up too. i realized
THIS is God's redemption plan for this island. maybe the young men who are
here, listening, will change the course of an entire community. maybe looking
back ten years from now we could track a new generation of husbands and fathers
to this very room. maybe, all it took was one guy from louisville, kentucky to
charge these boys to be Men of God. and almost as if it were rehearsed, when
Will asked this room full of broken boys if they wanted to be Men of God they
chanted back at him, "Hombres de Dios," with fists raised in the air. not
because they were expected to or they would win a prize if they did it really
loud but because the flame was lit and the torch was passed and for a room full
of boys, the buck was stopping here."
