What I Do Here

Sidewalk Sonday School Coordinator.

That's my job title, but what does that mean?  What is this Sidewalk Sonday School business?

Well, there's this trailer.

Monday though Thursday afternoons, I haul this beast to one of the neighborhoods on the reservation.  One of the sides folds down, and voila!  A mobile VBS classroom!

Each week, teams of volunteers of all ages from around the country read stories, play games, do crafts, and share snacks with the children of the reservation.

Houses in the neighborhoods we serve are arranged in a somewhat circular pattern, like tepees would have been way back when, with a playground sort of in the middle.  The first day I took the trailer out, I saw children jump up from the wheelchair ramp where they had been playing.  The oldest of the group brought the youngest toddling over, and I watched as the middle child of the group ran from house to house, rounding up her friends and neighbors.  They know our trailer, and they know it means a great snack, adult attention, and a chance to play and have fun.

Some of these children have and will never leave the reservation.  They are caught up in a cycle of poverty like I've never encountered, even working in a school district that almost NEVER has snow days, because if the kids don't get to school, many of them don't get to eat.  Families out here lack the basic resources most of us in the United States take for granted.  Laundry, including towels, is line-dried.  A lot of the kids show up dirty.  Not "it's summer, we play outside and don't get a bath every day" dirty, but "haven't had a bath in a week" dirty.  When you can't feed your kids--and many of these children go to bed hungry--soap is just not a priority.  Many families don't have transportation, and those are the kids who may well never see the world outside this reservation.  To those children, SWSS is church, as evidenced by the little girl who asked one of our team members at a work site on Monday if we were "bringing church today."

That's what I'm doing this summer.  

(most of these photos are from a blog you really should check out! Views from the Big Country )