Love Thy Neighborhood

"I don't think we can do anything to make a difference." answered one of the interns.

"Yeah," another chimed in, "people don't seem to change really. My mom is white and married a black man and her whole family is still racist."

"I disagree!" said the third intern. "It's like the ripples on the water, you never know how much your choices might affect someone else or how far out your example will go. If we work towards reconciliation then maybe that'll go out and affect other people."

"The civil rights movement is an example of people working really hard to make things different. We have a long way to go, but we do benefit from the generations before us and their work towards reconciliation. I mean we all get to sit in this same room because of those who did the hard work of reconciliation."  I said.

"Maybe...but I am really tired of this. It is hard when you don't see change." replied the first intern.

"Plus, this isn't worth it unless we commit to doing something longer. I mean camp is fine and all but it doesn't do anything if we don't do stuff all year."

"I couldn't agree with you more! So what are we going to do and who are we going to be?" I said with a grin.

Above is a snippet from one of our development times, the topic of the day was "racial reconciliation" and we focused on responses to the many racially charged events in the news. I had just asked the interns what they think it would take for different people groups (in our neighborhood, race is not the only dividing line) to be reconciled to each other.

This internship has easily been the highlight of my year, we have had 4 interns. This year, for the first time ever, Youth Impact has been able to host an internship for high schoolers. Sandrine has been describing the internship this way: "High Schoolers learning about Jesus, serving, and making things better, helping kids in our neighborhood learn about Jesus."