I am not sorry that on this drizzly Saturday morning I got out of bed to help clean up a field that belongs to a drug dealer. I am not sorry that my back hurt most of the day and that part of the clean up included picking up a clearly used syringe. I am not sorry that just a week earlier in the same location some friends of mine witnessed a shooting. I am not sorry that by the day’s end I was “nailed” by a soccer ball as I stood a little too close to the newly cleaned field’s christening. And I am least of all not sorry that my twelve dollar tennis shoes from Big5 were ruined by the entire endeavor.
Today, with the help of some amazing students from APU whose dedication and love for the community inspires me, I helped clean a field adjacent to a rundown trailer park in a rough part of Pomona that by our count more than 30 children call home. I think there were about ten of us who didn’t live in the community and we were greatly outnumbered by the children and youth while many of their parents looked on. Before the day ended, we mowed, weed-whacked and trash picked an area big enough to create a healthy soccer field I am hopeful will be the site of many, many games in the coming weeks and months.
Since January, I have been hanging out in Pomona once a week to try to help some “at-risk children.” This weekly gig has been an absolute blast touching my soul in a way few things ever have. Most days I leave sad it will be another week before I can return. I have thought so much about how to write about this amazing journey I’m scared my words will scarcely be able to reflect the richness I have felt in what on paper seems like such a simple thing.
I found myself at this place because I answered an ad in my church bulletin. As unlikely as that might sound, but there I was at church last fall reading an opportunity humbly described as “tutors needed to help underprivileged kids living in Pomona.” I thought as the director of an afterschool program for homeless children in LA’s skid row I might be uniquely qualified for this. I contacted Pastor Jose who told me the back story of how the woman who served as the care taker for this small community asked if he could help find people to help the resident’s children.
The small trailer park, where many of the units are dilapidated campers, has a permanent building designated as “Pomona Gardens Tutoring Center” adorned with the most basic needs a school aged child would require to complete their homework. My executive director empowered me to spend one day a week on this project in Pomona despite the distance from downtown.
In two months this whole journey has exceeded my expectations. The first day there were just two of us and the children overwhelmed us. Within a week, we had more than doubled our adult ratio and the quality and caliber of those who came has been a complete blessing. Now we have divided to be on site two days a week growing our relational capacity. As well, a few weeks ago we took the children to a concert at a local concert and were overwhelmed by the response.
And in those hours I am there, I do a fair amount of tutoring. But more so, I am hearing these amazing resilient new friends’ stories. They are stories of hope, stories of what might one day be and stories of lives lead in the most harrowing of situations. I believe in this community and have so many dreams for it. I love that I get to call this “work,” and long for the day when I might get to see some of those dreams come to fruition.
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