My roomate, Justin, teaches at a school in a rough neighborhood here in Portland, and it happens to be a school that partners with The Mentoring Project, a mentoring program I started a couple years ago. We are now mentoring 65 kids and are rapidly expanding our reach. We provide mentors to kids through church-based programs and believe strongly the church holds a big chunk of the solution to the fatherlessness crisis in America.
One of the many ways I get feedback about our program is through Justin. He actually sees our mentors showing up at his school to spend time with their kids. A story he told me last night took me back thirty years to similar memories from my own life.
One of the kids at Justin’s school has a dad who has been issued a restraining order. Our mentors name is Ross Hallbach and for the sake of privacy I’ll refer to his mentee as David. Ross was recruited through a church’s partnership with TMP, and then trained by our staff.
Ross has been mentoring David for about six months and shows up for an after school program once each week (though they spend time together outside this hour) and over time discovered David enjoyed playing baseball, playing catch. Ross realized David really liked baseball and so began to prepare him to play in little league.
Ross invited Justin to go to one of David’s games and Justin described the scene as though he were describing the seventh game of the World Series. He said David was sitting on the bench but kept looking over at Ross and Justin, every few seconds, just to check and make sure they were still there. And of course they were. It was David’s turn to bat and he ended up being walked, but then stole second and was hit home. When he crossed home plate, he had two older guys (read larger than life heroes) to look over at who were yelling and jumping and cheering him on. As a guy who grew up without a Dad, I can’t begin to tell you how much I celebrated that something like this had happened in a world where there is such bad news floating around about fatherlessness. It felt so good to hear about a guy who was choosing to tell a much better story, and in turn giving a kid a better story too.
I wanted to post this little article as a public thank you to Ross Hallbach. Recruiting men to get involved in the lives of the fatherless is a tough job, and it turns out the greatest of men answer that calling. It takes time, devotion, patience and Ross has given David and The Mentoring Project all of that. Ross, I can’t thank you enough. And I know someday, maybe ten years from now, maybe twenty, you are going to get a phone call, or a knock on your door, and it’s going to be David and he is going to thank you in a way that will bring your life more meaning than anything I could say in this article. Scripture says God will provide fathers to the fatherless, and you are the hands and feet of God.
The Mentoring Project already has 65 other mentors equally as devoted as Ross. I wish I could name them all, tell their stories (some of which are too remarkable to be believed). We have already heard hundreds of stories about improved grades, higher self esteem, more emotional stability and former frustration and confusion turned to excitement and joy.
I am confident that were it not for the mentors who stepped into my life when I was David’s age, I’d probably be in prison or perhaps even dead. I thank God for my mentors every day, and love working with The Mentoring Project to give back to God what it is He gave me: A friend and role model to look up to.
Tomorrow we publicly launch our website. We’ve not had one for a year, and part of the reason is we didn’t want to put a marketing face on such a fledgling program. But our program is robust now, and its turning out stories that, at least in our office, are keeping the Kleenex company in business.
Would you do me a favor? Tomorrow, I will tweet a few times to announce our site has gone live. Would you mind retweeting the news? We want churches all over the country to know that if they want to tackle the issue of fatherlessness, we are building a program to help them. We want single mothers who are exhausted and confused to know the church in America sees them and hears them and is trying as hard as it can to help. And we want young kids growing up without fathers to know while their earthly fathers may have abandoned them, Father God sees them and loves them and is working through His people to help. And we also want the world to know that a kid in Portland ran the bases and had somebody there to cheer him home. Thanks Ross.
