The Real Heroes

I just finished meeting with a close friend and partner with New City – Barrio Nuevo. We enjoyed a time of brainstorming and thinking through how to reach our teens both with a good dose of common sense, hard work and the Gospel. I’m so fortunate to have awesome friends who are great to have as real partners with our South Phoenix youth and families. As we were sitting outside in this cool coffee shop a couple of other friends joined us.

I initially share with one of the guys what I do and how I’m blessed to be able to pursue my real passion in life and have it as a career. (I tell our teens that it is so key to discover your real passion in life and attempt to see God make it into a lifetime career.) As we transition into the inside of Lux I get an opportunity to hear from another new friend about his life story. We end up talking about dating, marriage, sex and the real focus behind having relationships that last. It was fun attempting to explain that marriage is so much more than sex and chemistry but a relationship that is at the center that continues to grow and produce fruit.

Our conversation then flows into talking about creating sustainable businesses that will ultimately help our youth get jobs and provide for their families. It just turns out that one of the guys is a talented auto repair guy who is also into car restoration. We end up talking about the logistics of birthing a small business in South Phoenix that would provide quality car repair and also be able to train a few of our teens who have shown an interest in this type of vocation. I cast a vision of my new friend partnering with a few other of my yuppy friends who love to do car restoration. I mention that I have a couple of friends who are presently running small businesses as car mechanics. It would be interesting to approach them and see if they would be open to partnering together with some help from a few businessmen. Our goal would be to train a few teens that could be able to do car repair in 6 months to a year with training.

I get the contact info from these guys and will connect with a few other friends who have shown an interest in helping create sustainable small businesses. My real point in this blog is to share about another friend, George, who is retired. He, like my younger good friend, is pouring his life into New City – Barrio Nuevo. I understand that everyone is busy and has too much on their plates. So when I ask a volunteer to come early on a Saturday to help or come during a weekday that it could be a hardship.

My friend, George, has become a key player in our painting projects. He is such an amazing worker who dives into any job we are doing and gives a 1,000 %. We recently did a downtown Coffee Shop and Church. This was a larger building that required a few of us to meet a few times before painting to do repair around the building, trim bushes and power wash everything. George was one of my friends that came and worked a ½ a day doing the power washing.