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Is there any HOPE

for a

GHETTO CHILD?

Dave Frederick

Hope in Christ Ministries

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DEDICATION

To the hundreds of young people we have had the privilege of serving over the past 8 years.

We have learned so much from you!

We love you and desire for each one of you the HOPE about which we write.

Copyright 2006

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 4

“It had been a great day” 6

“All she really wanted to be” 8

“It was such a stupid mistake” 11

“Both parents were drunks and addicts” 12

“She was in 23 different foster homes” 15

“As a little girl, she always loved Jesus” 20

Today… 21

About Hope in Christ Ministries 23

What can I do? 24

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Introduction

Hope. I think that most of us take it for granted. Hope…that there is some way that things will work out. Hope…that we will get the money somehow. That we will find a job somewhere.That we will find someone to help us do something. For most of us it is unthinkable to feel that we have absolutely no one to turn to and nowhere to turn. No hope of things really being different. The future seeming pretty much a depressing continuation of the present pain. There is always hope. Someone. Something. Somewhere. Unless you are a ghetto child… And then…dreams will always just be dreams. Hope will always seem a fantasy. And the future will always just be more of the same. There is just too much garbage. Too many insurmountable obstacles to overcome. Too much past to get past. Too much… No hope. Have you ever met a ghetto child? It is so easy for us to go through life living our own lives in our own worlds and not really seeing them; not be a part of bringing them hope. I trust that you will take time to read this short little booklet. It introduces you to one such ghetto child. One among the many that we meet and

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serve week after week through our ministry as we seek to offer them the hope they desperately need and yet so often have given up expecting to experience. I am hoping that by the time you finish reading this brief story you will feel compelled to help offer them hope! God bless you as you read.

Dave Frederick Hope in Christ Ministries The Coffee Oasis June 8, 2006

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“It had been a great day”

“Katie and I were trimming back the trail with loppers. The guys were doing the ‘manly’ work, hauling gravel to another part of the trail. The

guys were taking a break. I walked up to the guys (I guess I was taking a break too☺) and started giving them crap about sloughing off on the job.They started returning it about how easy us girls

had it and the easy work were doing. So I became all big and macho about how I could do their work

just as good as them.So…they started filling the wheelbarrow with

gravel. I told them to fill it full. I grabbed it and started down the hill. It started dragging me.

Before I could make it down the hill, it tipped over and dumped all of the gravel into the bushes!

They were pissed.It was fricking heavy!”

She said that whenever she was having a great day, something was sure to ruin it. It had been a great day. A trip to Arlington to pick up a dress for prom. A scenic 5.2 mile hike on the Lime Kiln Trail she’d worked on as part of a youth work crew. Next she’d taken us on a sightseeing tour through Everett, recounting for us the different

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places she’d lived, schools she’d attended, and experiences she’d had. And finally dinner at Herfy’s with her drug addicted and alcoholic mom. Her older sister had even joined us for a few minutes. Only her grandmother could not make it because of a priority commitment to play bingo! It had been a great day. Something was sure to ruin it.

There was a letter waiting for her when we arrived home. It was from the State Department of Health, Nursing Assistant Program requiring court restitution records regarding the felony she had received when she was 14 years old. It’s not that she was unaware of the likelihood of receiving such a letter; but it hit her like a shotgun blast.

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“All she really wanted to be”

”When we got home I got the mail. I had been waiting forever for the NAR (Nurse’s Assistant

Registered) Certification which everyone else had already gotten when they completed the training.There was the letter. I started reading. My first reaction was…WHATEVER. Then I read it again

and was really pissed off. I showed it to my foster mom and then went to my room. I didn’t want to be around anybody so that they couldn’t see me crying. I was pissed. ‘F’ the world! Finally I had something that I wanted to do with my life that

was legit and now I was going to have to get some stupid minimum wage job like my mom.

I couldn’t do anything because of the felony. It would always be there. There was no way that I

could pay off the restitution!”

Since age 13, all she’d really wanted to be, after she’d eliminated drug dealer and stripper from her options, was a nurse. It started with a conversation she’d had with a teacher. She thought she was pregnant and was talking with the teacher about her options. Though the teacher, who’d had an abortion herself, advised her to get an abortion (because of

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her age and the negative impact a baby would have on her life) she could sense the personal regret in the teacher’s eyes. It struck her that delivering babies would be awesome! And a legal job! Her dream traveled from being an OB GYN doctor to a delivery nurse to wanting to be a nurse of any kind.

It’s all she really wanted to be.

For years it had just been a passion, a dream, but drawing closer to high school graduation she saw her opportunity to pursue it a little further. An opportunity arose for her to take a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) training class. She started the training on March 6th. On her written final she was among only 5 students who received a 100% out of 32 who started the training! She graduated April 5th. She now has 120 days to take the Washington State CNA exam. But that dreaded letter. It arrived April 1st, but it was no April Fool’s joke. She’d known that she couldn’t practice as a registered nurse with a felony on her record. But there had been hope… Hope that she could start the process…become a CNA…save money as she studied for her nursing degree…and

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by the time she graduated with her nursing degree have paid off the $8,500 in restitution and fees which would allow her juvenile record to be closed and the juvenile felony removed as a hindrance to her dream.

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“It was such a stupid mistake”

“We were staying at a motel on Evergreen Way.My sister was visiting. We were being wild and

crazy. I told them what we did. My sister freaked out. It was NOT the reaction I had expected. I thought, “O crap.” My sister then went to the

school to tell them what we had done!”

It was such a stupid mistake. Already stoned, but not high enough, she was on her way to the “jungle” with a friend to get higher. Rock in hand. Walking by some cars. Goofing off. Messing around like she was going to scratch the cars. No real intention of doing it. A friend’s dare. Several cars scratched. The wrong done. The result. A felony on her record at age 14, and $8,500 required for restitution and court costs.Though she was hardly aware of what she was doing…she was destroying a future dream. “Of all the things I’ve done,” she commented, “I got caught for that!”

She had experienced a lot.

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“Both parents were drunks and drug addicts”

“When I was 4 or 5 years old we were at a friend’s apartment. Everyone was drinking. I was chilling

in the room with them. My parents started fighting. They always fought. It started over a case of beer. Dad was pissed off at mom and

started leaving with the case of beer in hand. Mom started after him, attacking him to get the case.

She ripped out chunks of his hair. I was yelling at mom to stop. Someone called the police. Dad left with the beer! They both got picked up and hauled

off to jail. I was always visiting mom in jail.I got picked up the next day by grandma.”

When I was 9 years old, mom, my sister and I were staying off and on at a crack house. Earlier in

the day mom was pulled over and taken to jail because of driving without a license. A guy named

Smurf told me that mom was in jail. She had called him to bail her out. I hung out at the house

all day with a bunch of people. Everyone was getting high or cutting up the dope. I was

watching a movie. There was a loud knock at the door. Everything happened fast. A guy put the

plate of crack under the couch. The police busted down the door, yelling at everyone to get down on their faces. My sister and I stood up to see what

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was happening! The police pointed their guns at us! They began searching and cuffing everyone.They were ready to take my sister and me into custody. The officer was telling us on the porch that we were going to be put into foster care. At that moment, mom walked up. Smurf had

bailed her out. It was the happiest I ever was to see my mom!”

She was the youngest of 5 children, 2 boys and 3 girls, by three different dads. Both parents were drunks and drug addicts. Her dad was a heroin addict. Her mom was a stoner who started using crack cocaine when she was 10 years old. Her mom had 6 felonies and too many misdemeanors to remember. She was always in and out of jail. Despite this, she mostly lived at home with both parents until she was eight years old. At age 8, her dad left to “go to the store” and never returned. Later she found out that “Easy”, her mom’s boyfriend at the time, had “shot him up with something” and threatened to kill him. Mom went to jail again and she moved in with grandma. When she was kicked out of grandmas for kicking grandma (who was holding her down and

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choking her), “living” became an endless blur of cheap motels, assorted apartments, crack houses, a women’s mission, cars, bushes, “Crazy Jims”, and the like. With her mom selling drugs, her daily life and experience was filled with drug dealers, drug deals and house raids. She began smoking pot at age 9. By age 11 she was drinking and using daily. When she was 14 she went to a party and the only drug available was meth. Thus began her entrance into the world of tweaking. She did three lines that first night.She became a regular meth user. At age 11 she was placed into foster care. She has continued in foster care until the present except for about a year back with her mom around ages 13-14. It was a year of the same “living.” Living the drug life and involved in a myriad of sexual relationships, she became pregnant at age 14. It was at this time that her two sisters, seeing the downward spiral of her life, convinced her to turn herself again back in to foster care.

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“She was in 23 different foster homes”

“I was 12 years old. I had just been kicked out of a group home in Seattle and was being moved to

Bellingham. I found out 1 hour before it happened.Driving to my new home my case worker told me that the guy was a state trooper. Crap…I hated

cops. When I first showed up he was the only one there. He gave me some root beer and nuts. He was nice. I really liked it there. Besides me they

had another 9 year old foster girl and a 15 year old adopted daughter. I really liked them. Finally, I

thought, I had found a home. Then…things started getting weird…slow…off and

on…not sure… At first it was weird touching…rubbing my hand. I don’t know. He

always tried to get me alone with him. Alone out in the pasture where he would sneak a kiss…

other things too.One night I stayed up watching TV. His wife went to bed. He stayed up. He gave me a Corona and

sat down next to me. He began rubbing my shoulders and told me that he had never loved

anyone like me.Another night when I was sleeping I woke up and he was sitting on my bed watching me. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. I wanted to say

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something forever, but I didn’t want to ruin things.I liked them. I had a home.

One day I was out at the pond with my foster sisters. We were talking about kissing. Who we had kissed. Who had kissed us. I wanted to tell

someone…anyone…so much about what was happening. I did then.

Their daughter ran home crying. I chased after her freaking out. Her dad was at home. She told him.

She told her mom when she came home. He denied it. She got mad. No one believed me.

I stayed in my room all the time. I started cutting myself. I was put into a psych hospital. I was

moved soon afterwards.”

From age 11 to the present, she has been moved over 23 different times, stays varying from “5-day beds” to a couple of stays over one year. Take a brief look at her foster care history… At age 11 she was first placed in a home in Darrington, but it only lasted 1 ½ - 2 weeks because the people feared her mom “killing them.”She was moved to a group home for one month. From there she was moved to a Christian home that she hated. They didn’t like her because she wouldn’t talk (a trait that followed and hurt her in many foster homes). She was taken by the foster dad to “visit” her sister and moved into a

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foster home next door. She made it there 2 ½ months before being kicked out after lots of drama. Next followed 1 – 1 ½ years of over 9 different stops mostly lasting 1 week to 1 month. At a group home in Seattle, she started cutting herself. She was kicked out of there for being drunk and high all the time. At a home where she finally seemed to settle in (she really liked them and even desired to be adopted) in Bellingham, her hopes again were dashed when the man made sexual advances towards her. Her allegations were denied by the man and not believed by the authorities. She again began cutting herself and was sent to a psych hospital. She managed to finish out 7th grade living with a single mom in Everett. After the year out of foster care and back with her mom, she began the foster care gauntlet again…nine more moves from age 14 until the present. The first three were the same routine of “5-day or month beds.” It was beginning to sink in deeply that “nobody wanted me.” Nobody wants a teenager problem child. It was at a group home in Everett that she gave birth to her daughter – a “psycho home” full of behavior problem girls.

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She was moved to a home on Whidbey Island after the birth where she remained 1 ½ months. She was moved back to Everett where again it didn’t work out after 4 ½ months. Her next stop was a guardianship with a cousin. This time her stay lasted over a year until things fell apart. The couple had little ones and were not used to a teenager. They struggled, like others had, with the fact that she didn’t talk. She got suspended for cussing out a teacher. She got suspended again for an MIP (minor in possession). And it was time to move on again. Another Christian home was on the agenda. Again it didn’t work out. Eight months later it was over. And yet, it was also a beginning. She felt forced into going to church. She would put up a front. She resented every Sunday. And yet, the music and preaching began to seep in. She began to see how it related to her. She felt pure child-like joy coming back… Then, she was moved into the home of the “psycho bitch.” She was stopped from going to church. She went crazy there. And yet it spurred her on to read the Bible daily and pursue a relationship with God that would help her through her present hell. Five months was all that she could handle. She asked to be moved to another foster home.

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She was told that it was her last move. She’d better make it work. That was February 2005. It is now June 2006 and it is working. It has been hard. Being in a home where she could get comfortable, maybe too comfortable. Surrounded by people nudging her to do good, yet she wanting to do bad. Loving Jesus and yet struggling… Struggling to finish high school…to be a parent…to not drink…to be good…to not just want to say “to hell with it all” and go back to “the jungle.” It’s hard for a ghetto child to hope. And yet it was in the ghetto of “the jungle” that she’d first experienced hope.

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“As a little girl, she always loved Jesus”

“I loved singing songs on the bus taking us to Sunday School. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. Jesus loves me this I know. Deep and wide. And many, many others. I loved Jesus with

all of my heart. Back then I always remember having a love for Jesus in my heart.”

Between the ages of 5 and 8, she lived in “the jungle” in Everett. On Sundays a husband and wife would come in a church bus into the ghetto and pick up kids who wanted to go to Sunday School.Her parents and sisters weren’t interested but she loved it. She would get all dressed up. She would NOT forget her Bible. (If you remembered your Bible, you would get candy on the bus on the way there!) She loved the bus ride to Sunday School. They would sing songs in the bus. They would have singing competitions. One side of the bus against the other side. She also loved Sunday School. How they talked about Jesus. Everything sank in. At the end of each Sunday invitation she would get saved again! It was awesome!

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Today…

Those days as a 5 year old back in the jungle seem a long ways away. A simple love for Jesus.A hope in the midst of her hellish surroundings. The years have taken their toll. The simple love for Jesus has become a daily struggle to believe. Child-like joy has turned into cynical despair. Hope is missing. I was talking with her late last night. The plan is that she stays with us this summer after she is out of foster care in order to save up money to get into an apartment. She had a question about it.One question turned into 1 hour of sharing her stress, hopelessness and despair. She is totally stressed out about the future. She looks ahead and sees impossibility. There is starting college, finding a job, getting into an apartment, caring for her daughter, paying all the bills, taking care of the court fines and restitution, etc, etc, etc… I look ahead and see hope for her. She graduates from high school one week from today.And then there is hope to become something that none of her family has ever become. Hope to graduate from college and become a nurse. Hope to move beyond minimum wage. Hope to move out of the ghetto. HOPE.

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Yet…the hopelessness is setting in. She has just heard that her drug addict mom has moved in with her sister in Everett. She knows that it is a dead end there and hates everything that all of that past and present stands for. And yet…the lure of the sick, yet familiar, is strongly drawing… Go back to Everett. Move in with mom and sister. Become a motel maid like them. The word on the streets in Everett is “you will never really get away…you will come back.” It seems inevitable…the hopelessness. Can you feel at all her pain? Does this brief glimpse at her story grab your heart and compel you to ask, “What can I do to help?” I hope so. We have so much. Should we not be sharing it with those who have so little? If this true story of one ghetto child’s life has stirred your heart at all, I pray that you would read on and see how you can help offer her HOPE. And not only her, but hundreds others like her. And…pass on this little booklet to someone else who might want to offer hope also.

HOPE. We take it for granted. To many it seems impossible. Let’s together offer it to her and others.

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About Hope in Christ Ministries

“Demonstrating the simplicity and sufficiency of Christ in transforming hopeless lives and communities”

Hope in Christ Ministries is a faith-based 501c3 non-profit ministry dedicated to serving the at-risk youth of Kitsap County by the following means…

Building Relationships – To come alongside hurting and homeless youth as friends, we

• Meet them on their turf or ours…Street Hope• Open up The Coffee Oasis as a welcoming and

accepting place…Oasis Youth Center• Cultivate mentoring relationships…Partnering Hope

Communicating Truth – To lead individuals to real life in Christ, we

• Proclaim the power of Christ to completely transform young lives

• Use the arts, music and drama to deliver Christ’s message of hope

• Offer ministry internships

Showing Compassion – To reflect the heart of Christ and follow His example, we

• Offer a drop-in refuge for hurting and homeless youth • Help at-risk youth find resources to meet their needs • Provide training and mentoring

Networking – To give our ministry added breadth and effectiveness, we

• Involve with churches, individuals, and like-minded organizations

• Connect youth with other individuals and organizations that can help them

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What can I do?

Hope in Christ Ministries/The Coffee Oasis seeks to offer hope to hundreds of hurting, homeless and at-risk youth each year.

We do it primarily through the gifts of generous and caring individuals.

If you are interested in participating in this ministry, please check any of the following:

__ I would like to help financially offer young people HOPE. Enclosed is $____________ to be used towards: __ Ghetto Child’s $8500.00 Court Fees and Restitution __ Wherever needed most

__ I would like more information about your ministry.

__ I would like you to speak at my church/club.

__ I would like ___ copies of “Ghetto Child” to pass out. Enclosed is $_________ to help towards expenses.

__ I would like to receive your monthly report/newsletter.

Name _____________________________________________ Address ___________________________________________ Email _____________________________________________

Please make checks payable to: Hope in Christ Ministries All gifts are tax deductible.

Mail to: Hope in Christ Ministries 822 Burwell Street Bremerton, WA 98337

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