o the places you will go.

boardering the seventh week of my season in new jersey/philly has brought on some new friends:

tommy the mute: Thomas is a loveable man, he runs up with huge wide brown eyes and smiles and just hugs people. He always helps people clean there places after lunch at the shelter where I volunteer and he loves watching me get slaughtered at chess. Tommy is mute and when we first met him, he showed us his ID that said Thomas on it and had his picture. Tommy also has other problems which disable his sense of direction and he can't remember where places are very well. One day he had a doctor appointment with a local homeless outreach clinic that has free health care for homeless people (AMAZING!!!!). it is right by our house and so we told tommy we'd walk him there. we arrived, but then, he couldn't tell people who he was, so he showed them his ID and then pointed to a piece of paper in which the words " 1pm appointment" were written. The lady at the desk was sort of unsure of what to do because she had to ask him alot of questions about who made the appointment and alot of other nessicary data. so after we answered everything the best we could and the nurse came to get tommy, the nurse asked if tommy knew the way back to the shelter. He shook his head confidently in the negative horizontal manner. My Teammate Josh and i just thought about waiting with him, and telling our after school program sites that we'd be late, but the nurse said that she could see to it that he would be back safely.
This was two weeks ago and we hadn't seen him since. I tend to get attached to folks, so i began to wonder where he was. day by day i would turn corners on the street hoping to see a huge smile and a big hug, but not until yesterday did i receive them, and it was glorious.

the hard thing about being here is wondering if you will see people again. sometimes, we are told by our supervisor, people just don't come back and nobody hears from them. there are some people that i haven't seen again, some people that i've spent hours talking with about life and sports and vietnam and God. It's a beat life out on the streets, with little hope.

i know Jesus is here. he's gotta be

clinton street

out of our back window from the house i currently live in, there are approximately 6 burned out homes. 2 of them have roofs that have collapsed. the charred wreckage just sits and waits. there is not a grand emergency to rebuild-- the houses next to them are surviving; granted with only marginally better roofing than those that have collapsed. So there are no building crews on the block repairing what has happened. no one cares.

Philadelphia has been host to 271 murders so far this year. recently, i heard the names of those 271 victims who were under 21. over a hundred names read aloud. one of the ladies read the names of her best friend and fiancee, whom she had lost to gunfire this year. at the end of the list, one man said, "in the midst of this sorrow-- in the midst of all this violence and hatred-- there is a rock to stand on and there is a God who is greater than fear and hate and murder. Love wins, and there is hope."

How can we expect for kids in the neighborhood of camden to be hopeful when all that is heard are police and ambulence sirens. and all that is seen in the back yard are collapsed buildings and wreckage. is there hope in the midst of drug deals and prostitution in our back alley? is there hope in the fact that there are more people in the county jail in camden than there are in the actual city? is there hope the fact that more than 85% of kids grow up without a father?

these questions keep me up every night.

i was looking at the burned out buildings in our back yard yesterday and noticed something that i didn't see before. A huge vine with large foliage is growing from the rubble. Life is reborn from wreckage. There were sounds of kids playing in the street and the sun was shining.

In the midst of sorrow, in the midst of all this violence and hatred--There is a rock to stand on and there is a God who is greater than fear, hate, and murder. Love does win, and there is hope.

there has to be.