Road Rage

I am so fortunate to have great friends who really have a heart and openness to help out my kids and my grandmas. Tom and Kim have been helping us paint houses with their youth group over the last two years. I have so much appreciate their heart in being servants! It was at Christmas during our outreach to the downtown homeless that I actually discovered what they do work wise. As their passion for video and communicating unfolded I realized that God had opened a door for me to be blessed through their putting together a high end video to help me raise awareness of the great need in South Phoenix.

So as we are doing our typical Wednesday night tutoring I have Kim and her production crew visiting and interviewing some of our kids and our tutors. As little Bookie, one of my kids, talks about life with his dad being in jail, his mom being out of control and grandma being the one who is truly there for him it hits Kim out far out all of the stories with Barrio/New City happen to be.

As we were driving around on Tuesday afternoon my main road was blocked off. I had no clue that this wasn't your typically auto accident but actually a road rage shooting that left one individual dead. I end up having to take a long detour to drop everyone off. The next day I pick up Bookie to hang out with me and then I hear the story that it was his dad's cousin who was shot last night and died because of the road rage. Wow - it gets closer and closer to home.

As we finished tutoring and Kim's production team wrapped up we talked about Bookie and his crazy life. How do we get people involved when there are always some concerns about safety and being around danger. Yet, what draws me to do this is that I don't Bookie to be like his dad or mom and become a statistic. All of this is happening because I wrote a short piece on Bookie in my monthly newsletter. Kim, who is really sharp, fell for Bookie's picture and story.

So is it wrong to use my little Bookie as 'bait' to get people to step up and be involved in making a difference in my South Phoenix neighborhoods? God is at work and will use both the forgotten and those who seem to be important by the world's standards.