Brief Reflection on NM Kids Club Work Crew

1. People are messy. In a sense, no one will ever be perfectly suited for a good work. But God challenges us to do good works anyway. The miracle is not that a person finally gets prepared to do good works; the miracle is that people decide to do good works.

2. People really develop in the context of relationships. God has brought these kids here. Kids Club is our opportunity to love them, share the good news with them, and build relationships with them, regardless of what that person's relationship with God currently is.

3. Getting up at 6am when it's already 105 degrees outside, sweeping stuffy buses littered with Gatorade cups and sticky candy, planning a lesson that will probably have to be adjusted on the spot, wiping down tables covered in glitter and glue, singing and yelling till you have no voice, throwing away half full milk cartons, dragging a kicking screaming cursing 7-year-old to the one person whom he can trust to tell how much he gets beat up at home, quizzing kids who purposely give the answer opposite of the one you're looking for, driving without AC in 114 degree afternoons, sharing with five sweaty kids a wiry van seat whose stuffing has been completely ripped out, scraping your arms in a slide tackle, bruising your knee while carrying 40lbs of water, burning your shoulders crispy in the sun despite multiple applications of sunscreen, mopping muddy floors, scrubbing foul stopped-up toilets hoping it won't overflow, picking up more Gatorade cups on the fields and parking lots, communicating with hurt tired frustrated peers, playing soccer till you're dehydrated, picking teams twice when they're uneven, telling kids 7 times not to jump over each other into the pool, getting dunked when you weren't playing, losing a few articles of clothing each day going from here to there, resisting the urge to confront a friend's sin because this just isn't the time or place, praying to God that the 20 people in your 15-passenger van will remain safe on the high way, being confronted with how much your poop really does stink, rooming with 5 smelly snoring dudes, getting up after 5 hours of sleep and doing it all over again...that's how much a smile and a hug is worth at Kids Club. :-)

4. SB1070 The law is philosophically sound as a rock, just like Joe Arpaio. You can't tell a country they don't have the right to control who comes in or out of it. Moreover, the case of a state taking initiative to spur the federal government into action lies in the vein of the American spirit that has made the nation great.

However, Arizona is not going to return 460,000 illegal immigrants to Mexico. First it's an impossible task because Arizona has enjoyed the soft border for too long. If they didn't want to have an immigration problem, they should have thought about that before the construction boom of the 90's and 2000's. Second, the economy would fail if they did remove so many workers. You might say that 460,000 able workers and consumers is an institution too big to fail.

So while SB1070 does nothing but further alienate hard workers and tear families apart, no program has yet been established that will protect immigrants as they seek to become legitimate citizens. For millions of people in our country and the successful businesses they work for, no adequate path to citizenship has been designed. That's a failure on the government's part.

How can immigrant groups resist the allure of gangs and drug money when the government is unwilling to protect them?

Because I believe God is just, and because I think He gives us the power and the responsibility to become as He is, I support Americans for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. The people I lived and worked and worshiped with these weeks have lived long enough without basic rights. It's time to provide a means by which immigrants can make it right and become legitimate.