By Curt Williams, Founder & Executive Director
Value. It was often said that you could tell a lot about an individual by looking at their checkbook. Well, today very few of us walk around with a checkbook, but if someone took a look at your debit card or credit card statement, what would it say about you?
For one thing, it would say a lot about where you place value.
It would tell your story, and it would say a lot about where your priorities are placed. I think about this a lot when I make purchases. I have been to countries where children go hungry, and otherwise healthy people die for lack of basic medical care, while we throw away so much and take so much for granted.
Here at Youth-Reach we are doing all we can to provide value to the boys we are entrusted with. None of us clock in and clock out, but we all live here on campus where we share life day after day with these boys, drawing them into what it means to live in a family and what it means to be family. We do not serve them as boys in a boys’ home, or as clients or a charity, but truly as sons that we adopt into our lives and hearts.
Yesterday, while collecting my bag after a return flight from Los Angeles, I received a call from the mother of a boy that I had in Youth-Reach 25 years ago. I’m still close to the now 37-year-old young man, but I had a sense of foreboding when I saw the call. I was unable to take the call at that moment, but I returned the call as soon as I could. As soon as his mom answered, and I heard the weeping, I knew.
“Paul’s gone,” she told me. My breath caught in my throat, and it felt like my heart stopped. No way. Not again. Not another one of my boys, but she went on to tell me how Paulie Gutierrez, this amazing, frustrating, wonderful and baffling human that I love so dearly was found unresponsive in an Oklahoma City hotel room. Paulie is a professional boxer, and he was there training for an upcoming fight and had recently received a lot of cascading bad news. As I write this, we do not know the exact cause of death, and knowing will not bring Paulie back, but I am awash in regrets. I last spoke with him a few weeks ago, and he was struggling then. This is our commitment to our boys. They are our sons not just while they are here and enrolled in Youth-Reach, but for life.
They are our sons.
We have recently come to you with an opportunity that is unique to the life of this ministry where you can step in and Sponsor a Son by committing to an ongoing monthly investment into the lives of our boys. Many of you already support Youth-Reach, and for your sacrifice, we are deeply grateful, but we are looking to enlist more of you among those who will step up with a recurring amount that we can count on as we step out to broaden our reach and increase our ability to reach more kids.
As you can see, we are working and living in a very difficult and emotionally charged environment where the lives of these boys are altered and where we put our own hearts on the line every day. For this, I am boldly asking for your support, your prayers and your encouragement.
Please consider the opportunity to Sponsor a Son today.
