By Jim Weber
Reprinted from the Touchstone Support Team Letter, July 2007.
There were nineteen of us at a long line of tables in the little mom-and-pop Cajun restaurant. Sixteen members of our party were teenagers, and we were celebrating. We had just finished two days of hurricane relief work. We spent the first day painting the house of a woman who, after fifteen months of constant reconstruction, is finally finishing up her rebuilding. We spent the second day building a shed for a family who, like many Hurricane Katrina survivors, needs storage for their belongings while they live in a FEMA trailer. Our students had worked hard with great attitudes, so they had good reason to make a little noise. With a crowd like ours, our waitress could have been irritable, but she wasn’t. Instead, she was sweet and helpful, patient and hard working. When it came time to pay the bill, I planned to make the tip generous, but she was the generous one. She asked about our work here in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, and then she said, “Thank you for coming. It’s encouraging to us to know that there are people like you in the world.”
Stratford High School students come from a rough side of Nashville. Their neighborhood is constantly in the news. They know that a lot of people are afraid to walk their streets. Local news media come here to do stories on gangs and school violence, even though their graffiti-filled footage was shot on the “nice” side of town. And on this particular trip, when someone’s money came up missing, guess who got blamed? The Stratford kids. At first, when they heard they were being pegged with one more bad rap, they were angry. It was the first day, and they wanted to quit, but they didn’t. They kept working, and they did a good job. They didn’t grumble or complain. They just worked hard.
In our debrief meeting at the end of the day, I was able to tell them that down through history, many good people have been blamed unjustly, but the ones who stand out, handled it with grace and forgiveness. Jesus is the perfect example. He suffered unfairly without complaining or cursing. Instead, he forgave the ones who falsely accused him. That’s what our students did, and it was a pleasure to tell them that they reminded me of Jesus. Frankly, it was an encouragement to me to have students like them on our trip.
After dinner on our last night we had another debrief meeting. In that meeting I told them what our waitress had said about them. I said there are two kinds of people in the world. We all know some people about whom others might say, “It’s discouraging to us to know that there are people like you in the world.” Unfortunately, many people assume that all Stratford students fall into this category, but they don’t. Our group proved that. So it was a delight to get to tell them how powerful they were. In just a few days, they were able to show even people who don’t know them that they are capable of affecting others for good. Even though she had never seen them paint one stroke or hammer one nail, our waitress was moved and encouraged by their presence. Now that they know they can do that, I urged them to find other opportunities to do it.
A few weeks later, one of the students told me she had an idea how she could keep affecting others for good. She wanted to challenge her church youth group to plan their own relief trip. She’s not waiting on someone else to make it happen. She’s going to start something herself. She’s gotten a taste of what it feels like to use her power for good, and she wants more. That’s so exciting. It’s what we’re working for, and like our waitress at the Cajun restaurant, I am encouraged to know that there are people like her in the world.