#bipartisanism

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By Lynn Binder

  My first mission wasn’t to a foreign country nor did it entail even heading into the country. But to the families and children of the inner city neighborhood we spent most of last summer working with; it was still a miracle from God.

Last summer, my church youth group spent several weeks working to restore a neighborhood park in what we call, “the bad part of town.” What I quickly came to find out was, “the bad part of town,” was a place where many, many wonderful people lived.

“The bad part of town,” is a place where people do not have much money, their homes are not like my neighborhood and the police patrol the streets looking for people who among other things sell illegal drugs.

Looking back on our Mission, I’m actually surprised my parents let me go with the youth group into an area of town, they avoid evening driving through.

Our Mission Trip Summer Project was a combined effort of several church youth Directors and two different organizations which work with inner city families. I know my parents felt better that our local police seemed to be looking after us on a very regular basis all summer.

The park we were on working had become basically a garbage dump. There were abandoned cars and trucks as well as everything under the sun from refrigerators to couches and chairs littering the area.

Our end of the project didn’t begin until vehicles had been towed away and the local garbage company had brought in their employees as volunteers to remove the appliances and furniture. When we first saw how big and how much we could do with what had been a garbage dump, we were very, very excited.

Then we got down to work and by work I mean down on your hands and knees cleanup. It took most of a week to simply make certain that every square foot of this city block was free from anything like beer bottle tops to broken glass to needles before we started prepping the dirt for planting grass, shrubs and flowers.

There were some fast, fun and nearly instantly exciting jobs. After a fencing company replaced the poles and chain link around the basketball courts, it took only a morning to put up new bank boards, nets, and paint the lines back on. Playing on the court with the local children that afternoon is a memory which will last a lifetime.

Putting back together what had been a playground took more time. The new equipment was donated but had to be built. But the crowd of onlookers – ages 2 to 82 – which gathered daily made the task much easier.

Of everything I remember about last summer, painting the new Park Mural will probably always be my favorite.

The Park ends against a building on one side. The Building owner had agreed to allow a Mural to be painted which would be replacing twenty years of graffiti.

With guidance from a local artist who laid out the mural, the neighborhood children filled in the blanks creating their own Magical Park Scene. The smiles on the faces of the local children and their parents when the park was officially reopened could light up the darkest of nights.

My first mission trip allowed me to sleep in my bed every night. I didn’t have to leave home being away from family and friends for weeks at a time. But in the end, I gained a new family and made many friends while helping those in need of a hand make a dream come true.

  Editorial Note:

Following up on our Forty Shades of Love Lenten Series, we will continue to explore how we can all, Live to Love bringing that love to our world. 

Peace be with you.

Richard A. Mathews

Dr Franklin H Littell was an American scholar who spent ten years working on deNazification projects in Germany and dedicated his life to Holocaust and Genocide studies. He has witnessed at first hand the effects of genocide, and has extensively studied the sociological happenings that create the proper political environment for genocide to occur. In 1988 he published an article titled Early Warning, focused on identifying political movements with genocidal intent before it's too late. Included in this article is a list of 15 criteria of events or attributes of a political movement that imply a future genocide, and he says that if any one party portrays 10-11 of these criteria, “it's time for the alarm bells to start ringing.”

Additionally, the Encyclopedia of Genocide, edited by Israel W Charny, cites the same article with an additional 16th criteria, and states that a pattern of only 8 to 10 attributes “should be enough to start red flags waving.”

Well, what if I told you both the Democratic and Republican parties of America meet precisely 8 of them, with a ninth occurring naturally in the country.

I might as well be writing a blog about how not to be popular with Americans.