God did miraculous things for these kids and IN these kids.  One part of Project Serve is to be given work assignments by the participating host urban church.  Another more important part is teaching the youth how to discern a need in the community, make a plan to address that need and then implement that plan.  I was the leader of a team of 20+ youth from 3 churches :my youth group at Calvary Reformed (urban,) Bay Presbyterian (suburban), and Cornerstone (rural) in the teaching time and in the work projects.  (There was also another team comprised of Scranton Road Bible Church and Antioch Christian Fellowship working at the host church of Scranton Road as well.)

The "given" work assignments were things I had put together beforehand like 1) beautifying the host Calvary church: cleaning the van, planting flowers, repainting the basketball sign on the court outside and cleaning all the glass windows; 2) working with the Detroit Shoreway Community Development Project, which gave us the assignment of scraping, prepping, priming and painting an entire worn down urban playground on Madison and W. 73rd,  3) painting over graffitti in the neighborhood and 4) working with Dan and Amy McElwaine of the Bridge Street School to help with their home in the city and to move the Bridge Street School out of the church where it was previously located.

But the BIG project that they had to come up with on their own started with our prayer walk on Monday. We asked various residents in the neighborhood what they would like to see change in their neighborhood that 20 kids could do in a week and unanimously, the residents kept saying clean up the alley on West 64th Place. They had to sit down and discern and plan what they needed to do to accomplish that.  They first knew we'd have to rent lawn mowers and weed whackers to clear the alley. Bear in mind we only had $100 to work with. They wanted to mow the whole thing down and plant flowers and plants and make a stone path through the alley and build a stone bench.

They began to inquire where we could rent mowers and other equipment and the cost of gravel for the paths, but when we went back the next day to the alley to plan out the design, the city of Cleveland was already mowing it! GOD was already going before them by providing that service. They were so pumped that they could see Him working on their behalf! Then one of the boys on our team called his brother who owns a construction company to inquire about the cost of the gravel, but his brother donated all the gravel plus he sent a dump truck and unloaded it for us on a pallet in the alley. GOD again was providing for them beyond ways that they had even asked.

The man, Ramiz, who took the sledgehammer to the oven last year lives right next door to the alley.  This year when we started to clean it up, he came out and made very threatening gestures toward all the kids and even cocked his hand into a "gun" and pretended to be shooting at the kids. The kids were very frightened and I knew I had to do something.

I went over to Ramiz and started to talk with him. I asked him if we could clean the alley, plant some flowers and plants there, and make a path and build a bench. He only spoke Spanish and kept talking about drugs and prostitution. I could not get him to understand me nor could I understand him. Just then a friend of his pulled up in his car and came over to us on the sidewalk and began translating for the two of us. This was a huge evidence of GOD's presence and help by sending this guy who spoke both English and Spanish.  Basically Ramiz was trying to say that we could clean it up, but that he did not want us to put in tables or chairs or even a bench because at night, people would come to the alley to shoot up smack or smoke crack or turn tricks if we made it a place where they could sit down. 

I finally understood what he was communicating: fear. Fear that this abandoned alley would be an invitation to crime right next door to him if we made it "too inviting."  This was why he destroyed the clay oven last summer.  He didn't want tables and benches because people would come at night and turn it into a den of crime. And I learned later that his daughter had been murdered in that neighborhood Christmas 2004. I went back to my team of kids and said we would not be building any benches or places to sit down and explained why. They all perfectly understood.  He left us alone and has left the alley alone.

We wrote him a big thank you note after that. And the youth really learned why it's so important not to go into the city and just make a plan for what they think would make something nice, but to really listen to what the people in the neighborhood are saying.

God worked mightily on behalf of these kids. They all marvelled at these miracles and how He blessed them and their work. And they saw themselves as a blessing, too, to the people who live around that alley.  One guy at the other end of the alley named Hillbilly helped us all week long as we worked, letting us borrow his tools and watering the plants and flowers we had planted.  (By the way, we spent our entire $100 on the plants and flowers.)

When we got back to the Y on the 4th day we spent our reflection time talking about how much we had blessed Hillbilly and how much he had blessed us.  The kids knew how much Hillbilly's help had blessed them and they also believed they had given Hillbilly hope not only about his neighborhood but about youth. They prayed for his salvation.  They made a huge thank you card and gave him a Project Serve t-shirt on our last day in the alley.

The alley now has a perennial garden, a community vegetable garden, a rock-lined gravel path, a circle with hostas and perennials and three young saplings (a maple, a birch and a flowering pear.)  The youth now know that they can discern a need and plan a project and implement it on limited time and a limited budget. They especially know that God will bless them when they seek His heart for people and they let Him break their hearts for people. 

It was a long, exhausting, hot, and humid week. The week ended with a powerful worship service and anointing and prayer time. Over half the youth re-dedicated their lives to Christ and I saw God bring some to real repentance over their attitudes.  (I had to, at one mid-week point, sit each of my youth down privately and talk to them about their attitudes toward other youth and toward working wholeheartedly for the Lord.) But all in all, a powerful week! I expect great things from these kids. Christ is counting on them and on us, too.

Gail Tanner