Looking for that one lost sheep

As we move towards the end of the school year, it’s a good time to evaluate what we are doing and whether it has any worth. At 121, our primary project at the moment is the detention program at one of the high schools in the Pretoria North area. For the past year we have been going to the school every Friday and presenting what we like to call a life-transforming program. This program is built around a theme and is presented on as a powerpoint presentation on a big screen, with activities and discussion points that are worked out in small groups with trained facilitators.

One such presentation had as its theme ‘JUNK’ and looked at the kind of ‘junk’ learners might be carrying in their lives. On the worksheets learners are given to complete they had to explore their junk using metaphors and describe what that junk does to their lives or what role it plays. Here are some responses:

“My junk is like… a hole in my heart. It makes me feel like a disappointment and a failure. It plays a big role in my life because it feels like it is controlling it. I need to talk to someone and ask for help.”

“My junk is… depressing and full of hate. It is one of the reasons why my school work looks as it does and why I feel depressed all the time. I need to convince my mom to leave.”

My junk is like… a fly. It makes me disobedient. It makes me feel like I am not good enough. It makes me do disobedient things.

“My junk is like … a lost cat. It feels as if I am lost and I don't know what is going on with me. I get angry and then cut myself. I don't know how to get out. I don't like hurting myself.”

The response that struck me even more deeply than these was from one girl who has been repeatedly at detention both this year and last year. She always seems distant during the detention session, almost disconnected from what is going on around her. When asked what role her junk plays in her life, she wrote that it did nothing as she felt nothing. More frightening that any of the pain expressed on worksheets over the past few months was this ‘feeling nothing’.

Some people we have spoken to feel we are wasting our time working with teenagers who have no desire to change. Yet we believe that our role is as much to create an awareness of the need to change as it is to actually play a role in the change process. Some people feel we are wasting our time with teenagers who are never going to make it anyway. These people have told us that we should rather focus our energies on ‘the good ones’. Yet it is these learners, that are so often rejected, dismissed, and forgotten, that we feel most strongly called to walk a journey with. It is that one lost sheep that we want find.

Although we don’t have measurable, tangible results for our efforts and we can’t ‘prove’ to anyone that we have been successful, it is the kind of feedback that we are receiving on worksheets that convinces us again and again that some of the teenagers we are working with are desperate and neglected and experience some sort of connection to us and the program we walk them through. Several times, when asked what the best thing about detention has been, learners have written ‘knowing that someone cares’.

We thank every one of you that have supported our work through finances, prayer, emails of encouragement, advice, insight, or assistance, through sitting in and facilitating a session with us or just through being interested enough to read these (irregular, sparse) news updates. We hope to have a more structured communication system in place in the new year. In the meantime, please keep praying for us, and pray especially for those teens whose lives we may have touched but may not always have the opportunity to follow up as we would like.