I want to tell you a story about a young man at Willow Pond. Let’s call him Mike.
Mike has been one of the hardest kids to build a relationship with yet. He did what he wanted to do and didn’t care what you said to him. He would come to the Kids Club to make an appearance, but he regularly took one or two kids with him when he left.
Mike was a natural leader. People liked him, but he usually led them down the wrong path. He never really wanted to be a part of what we were doing in the Kids Club.
One day I had a conversation with him about how he wanted to be remembered. He looked at me and said, “I can’t be like you...a good Christian and all.” Over a 6 month period Suzanne and I began to talk with Mike about his life: what he wanted out of it and what kind of man he wanted to be.
Slowly I noticed a change in him. He started to come to Real Men, a group we have to talk about what it means to be a man. He had a lot of questions and I could see he wanted to live his life differently. He talked a lot about how he wanted to be a Real Man. How he wanted to be a good father.
One day at a Real Men meeting the group went on a scavenger hunt for wisdom. What the boys didn’t know was that I had given a "box of wisdom" to one of the residents at Willow Pond!
So we began our journey. We looked for wisdom in the dumpsters and in the pond. Hot and sweaty we looked for wisdom all over the apartments, but we couldn’t find her. So, I asked them “When you don’t know where wisdom is, where should you go to find it.”
I was happy and surprised by Mikes answer: “You go to the person that knows where it is.”
Then Mike looked at me and said, “Do you know where wisdom is?”
I looked at Mike with a smile and said, “Well, yes I do.”
I took the Real Men group right to the spot where earlier I had dropped off the "box of wisdom." I told the boys, "When you need wisdom, you go to the one that has wisdom." Proverbs 2:6 says, "For the Lord gives wisdom. From His mouth comes knowledge and understanding."
I am happy to say that Mike is now at every Real Men meeting, attends the Kids Club on a regular basis, and has made a monumental change in his life! Praise God!
-- Rickey Fanning
