Got Jesus?

You may have read my story about working in a group home. I worked there for four months. It was the worst job I ever had. Within the short four months I worked there, I had built up resentment of the kids and of the system. These kids were in a bad, bad place. I knew it and some of them knew it.

I was a recent graduate from college, and this was my first job. Yay! It made me feel so happy I bothered getting a degree from college. This was what I was educated to do, supervise emotionally and physically abused teenagers who had been taken from their homes.

My nickname from the kids was the f**king b*t*h! Yep that’s what they called me because I enforced the rules on the kids. That was the only thing I could do.

My resentment towards the job, grew and grew, day by day. I remember one incident when one of the girls kicked in a door. It was a double paneled door, so when she kicked it in, her foot got caught on the hole she just created, and fell, splat, on her bottom. She lay there on the floor, with her leg up in the door screaming for someone to come help her. My supervisor, myself and another counselor stood at the end of the hall watching her bellow. We weren’t allowed to touch the kids, so in our deep resentment towards the job, we just watched the girl bellow louder and louder. “Can’t touch her,” we said to each other. “Nope, can’t touch her.” She began hollering obscenities, until my supervisor asked her if she was going to calm down. If she would calm down, we would assist her in pulling her foot out of the hole she just created, in the door.

I think we all experienced a sense of revenge, watching the girl scream all the horrible words she could think of with her foot hanging up in the door.

As a Christian, I knew, there was only one thing these kids needed. We didn’t need to tell them to feel good about themselves. We didn’t need to listen to their problems for hours on end, hoping to relieve them of their horrible pasts. They didn’t need to be placated or allowed to do whatever they felt they wanted to do, because their home lives had been so bad. That was one theory held by some of the counselors I worked with-let the kids do whatever they pleased, because their home lives had been so bad. That’s how I earned my nick name, because I believed that wouldn’t do them a bit of good. I believed the very least we could do for them, was to enforce the rules, for their own safety and for the safety of the other kids. So I stood as a stark contrast to the counselors who believed anything should go, these kids have had a tough life.

Last night I got to hear the exact viewpoint I have believed about kids with these backgrounds. A friend, invited my husband and I to a Camp Alandale charity event. Camp Alandale, takes the kids, like I used to work with, to camp, for a week. And as they said, “They pour truth into these kids.” They give the kids the gospel, they give these kids Jesus, the ONLY solution to their problems.

I heard several testimonies from people who had gone to the camps. They came from horrible pasts. Many of them had been sexually abused, physically abused or both. They were emotionally damaged. But the beauty of this camp wasn’t to give the kids a good time, make them feel good about themselves, and then pat them on the head and send the on their way. No, this camp gave them Jesus. The only answer to these kids desperate lives. The only solution to the unimaginable heartache and pain they have suffered. I cried through these stories. That’s what those kids in the group home I worked at, needed. But because it was a state funded operation, God could not be mentioned.

But Camp Alandale offers the solution to these kids. I heard a story of a sexually abused boy who was catatonic. He never said a word the whole week at camp, until the last day. On the last day, he stood up and said the men who abused him said they loved him, but he knew that wasn’t love. He said he knew what real love was now and that was his Savior, Jesus Christ.

I am thankful to my friend who invited me to see that there is hope for physically and sexually abused kids. It’s the only hope. And Camp Alandale is doing a fine job in creating for kids a camp experience, and “pouring truth” truth into these kids. It was really good for me to see and hear about Camp Alandale.