Take away the gang’s influence on a community by making a positive impact on it. posted by Stanley C.
It was Spring of 2011 during a sunny afternoon in Boyle Heights. Jesse, Justin, and I went to pick up some kids to take them to boxing class. This was another Restore LA project that involved helping the kids from chaotic backgrounds find a productive activity to do. Our hope is that they will have more positive influences in their lives and stay away from pit falls like gangs and the drug market. It was also another way of showing the kids that someone, namely God, does care about them; and that as Christians, we were trying to show them the same love.
However that day, due to a variety of reasons, the kids could not attend boxing. What were we to do? Well, Justin suggested that we still find a way to help the community. He had an idea to go back to his house, get some trash bags and gloves, and then find a block to simply pick up trash. The idea was to show the community that there was another way to make an impact on society.
God’s love is powerful enough to change the world, and we are supposed to be messengers of God’s love. By cleaning up the dirtiest streets, we were showing our neighbors that there are other ways to act and the community can change. There may be local gangs that bring down a neighborhood, but they will only succeed if we do not try to counteract them. God’s love brings hope to people. Hope of life in both heaven and earth.
So we went through a whole block (in LA one block is huge) and picked up literally ever single scrap of trash we could find, down to small scraps of paper. We filled up 4 trash bags just full of trash and left the block as squeaky clean as 3 people can. A man came down to see what was going on and just kept looking at us as we kept discussing philosophy while picking up trash. The message wasn’t that we were offering free trash pickup, though we were, the message was about God’s love and why it is that we care.
That is what Restore LA is about. These little things that help change the world little by little. Mother Theresa probably got it correct when she said that “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” And maybe that day, Restore LA did change a small piece of the world a little bit.
[image by Viktor Hertz]
