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Dante Stack from Faith Ascent joins Stephen today to share his experiences with mentoring young kids, the challenges he faced, and the lessons he learned while working with them.
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What is You Can Mentor: A Christian Youth Mentoring Podcast?
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
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You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others you can mentor.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the You Can Mentor podcast. My name is Steven, and I'm here with a very special guest, Dante Stack from Saint Louis. Dante, how the heck are you? How How the heck
Speaker 3:am I? Wow. I'm such vile language, Steven. No. I always get nervous the first three minutes of any recorded conversation ever, forever.
Speaker 3:So I'll I'll probably act normal about 20 minutes into, this recording, but I am fine today. My wife and I just moved to Saint Louis 2 months ago, so we're still trying to figure out new norms and, like, figure out the weather. I it's kinda lovely. It was, like, 34, a low of 34 yesterday or the day before. And today, it's a high of 83, so I don't know.
Speaker 2:And that that's probably a little different from Oregon where you guys came from, so I imagine that that is a transition, the weather
Speaker 3:Thankfully so I was in Eastern Oregon, which breaks the mental image of what Oregon is because we were in a dry desert like climate, which our maybe everyone is smarter than I. But when I moved to Oregon, I was like, yay. Green, rain, wintertime depression, and none of that happened. So so, yes, it is a difference. Mostly the precipitation is and the green around me.
Speaker 2:That's the thing that I I associate with Oregon is just rain and Portlandia. I mean, just those kind of vibes. So you're saying that that wasn't your experience?
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's it's so Eastern Oregon is much more Idaho for a mental image. So
Speaker 2:But is it still as hipster in Eastern Oregon?
Speaker 3:So they look at those hipsters, and I think those Portlanders are, like, the worst scum of the earth. Let's be the exact opposite. And then you have, like, 1 out of 5 that do love Portland, so you have constant anxiety between
Speaker 2:You don't know who your your closest friends are.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. It it's a it's a turncoat situation constantly.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Well, Dante, would love for you to share what you guys are up in to in Saint Louis. I'll just preface this. I know your wife. She's been a part of a a mentoring think tank with me for the past year, and she was leading an organization called Impact Pendleton in Pendleton, Oregon.
Speaker 2:She's been so helpful on our phone calls, but she told me you need to in interview Dante. And I was like, who's Dante? You're Danae Dante, and then I found out that you you guys were married. I don't know if there's something that drew you together because of your names being so similar, but I was excited to get to interview you this morning. She was just saying y'all had a lot of mentoring experience together.
Speaker 2:And today, our conversation, we're gonna talk about that. But, also, I just wanna hear just what you're up to in St. Louis.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So to quickly answer that question, we both work at the same nonprofit now called Faith Ascent, which is looking at young people transitioning from high school to college and trying to reduce the number of those people that leave the church during that time period. So it's investing in trying to wrestle through difficult questions about faith and some apologetics as well. So that's we we were excited for the opportunity to do to work at a nonprofit together, which we weren't doing in Eastern Oregon. You, Steven, have definitely gotten the the lesser of the Stack household minds.
Speaker 3:I am louder than my wife and less coherent, so that's probably why she recommended me to come on a podcast. But I'll I'm certainly happy to to tell stories and to I know, at least from our experience in Oregon, a lot of times, it's way harder to get male mentors involved than to get women, mostly because women are better people than we are.
Speaker 2:That's that's true across the board.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess he had, like, what, like, Mary Queen of Scots or or he had he had a few bad nuts historically, but, we don't need to talk about Mary Queen of Scots today.
Speaker 2:But men have the lion's share. We can we can agree on that. Well, Dante, we'll just jump into my my questions, but I wanted to talk about some mentoring relationships you've had. And I know you guys spent some time in Tyler where the mentoring alliance is, and the mentoring alliance is kinda like well, maybe you could explain what the mentoring alliance is.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I was introduced to it as gospel village. Carlton Obi, at the time, was the executive director and came and spoke at our church on a Sunday morning. And then we had a post church, like, mini session where he went into greater detail rather than the 5 minute pitch. And it is 1 on 1 mentoring.
Speaker 3:There's not a lot of rules to it besides just be a presence, be a a consistent presence in the life of a young person, and it is a Christian coalition or Christian centered organization. So, yeah, I there's probably way more eloquent answer than that, but that's how my memory serves.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's awesome. So tell me the story of just you and Janae jumping into that. And one of the things our podcast is all about is just helping people understand stories behind mentoring. And so if we can give them pictures of mentor relationships, I think people will understand more about what it looks like to become a mentor, or maybe even if you are a mentor, feel like this genuine oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Someone understands what I'm going through. So I'd I'd love for you to share just the story behind being matched and what that relationship looked like with a elementary school student.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So once again, women are better than men. I heard the same gospel village speech that Danae did. Had no inclination whatsoever to be like, yes. Let's sign up and be mentors, and then they dragged me into it.
Speaker 3:And I think for me, the prevailing fear at the time was that, like, they won't like me. I why why would the kid invest in me? Like, I I can pour out my heart. That's easy enough. But a fear that, like, I don't have anything really to offer.
Speaker 3:I don't have insights. I'm not a father, so I don't relate in that way. And, like, I mean, whatever stories we tell, I think it it it comes down to presence and presence being a form of love. It is the most impactful thing we can give to anyone in our lives. I guess the the process of mentoring for me has been beginning to understand that despite my flaws and my fears and my anxieties, like, the consistent presence and the consistent just like, yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm I'm here. You wanna talk? You wanna not talk? That is a that accomplishes more at the end of the day than, like, grandiose speeches or whatever virtues I think I can instill into a young inquiring mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's great. So when when you and Danae get matched, my understanding is that you guys mentored a brother and a sister. Is that is that how that went down?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. So we did that, and then I I don't think we'd mentioned yet. Then once we moved to Oregon, I did my own had my own mentee. So I was I had the confidence after doing it with Danae to to run on my own.
Speaker 3:Sorry. And in saying that, I've now forgotten. Oh, yeah. So we did it together, which, you know, I I don't know how your mentoring alliance or your nonprofit works, but, you know, rule of 3 is really important. So that I mean, it makes a lot of things easier when you do it as a couple just logistically.
Speaker 3:So that made a lot of sense for us at that time. And then there would be times, you know, we we would kinda divide by the sexes, and, me and the boy would would go off and have our little chat, and the girls would hang out as well.
Speaker 2:Well and I I love that model of a husband and wife mentoring together because I'm sure that was a natural form of accountability in in you doing what you signed up to do, while at the same time, creates a lot of safety within the mentor relationships. And did you guys have connection with the the parent of the kids, or what what did that look like?
Speaker 3:So they, were in a single home with mom. So Danae did most of that interaction with mom in that case. And, you know, those that that, I think, to me, is the trickiest part of the mentoring is how the relationship with the with the parents and the child's life goes. But for the most part, our Tyler experience was really smooth. She was very caring and wonderful is a caring and wonderful person.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I don't have really great stories. Nothing's coming to to bubble on on the parent front. Sorry.
Speaker 2:I I I love your honesty in saying, like, honestly, Danae was, like, leading the charge on this, but I was interested because of her encouragement, and I jumped in regardless of how much confidence you had in in being a mentor or a kid liking you or not liking you that really once you started doing it, a lot of those fears and anxieties, like, kind of fell away?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So a couple things, though. You're giving well, you're still giving me too much credit. It really was, like, she's she wants to do this, and I know in my heart this is the right thing to do, but nothing in me wanted to do it. Thank you.
Speaker 3:And no matter what they tell you, it is a huge time commitment. You can't get around that. It just is. I have time. I just didn't wanna give it.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, then once you go and you meet the kids and also I have the personality type that I tend to glob on to the emotions in the room. So, our, the brother and sister are more on the introverted spectrum. So we do the first meeting at at their apartment, and they're kinda, like, hiding in the back a little bit. And so now I'm petrified because they're petrified. So one thing I've learned is just smile.
Speaker 3:Smile as much as possible. Helps you interculturally, and it helps you with children. Find ways to laugh, get through that first couple awkward days, and then it gets tremendously easier after that. When kinda on that note too. So in in Tyler, we lived, like, 18 they were on, like, the completely other side of the town, so it was, like, a good 18 minute drive to go pick them up.
Speaker 3:And then usually, we went out to do something. So then you're talking another 18 minutes. If you're going further, of course, we would ended up that time spending, you know, 90 minutes in a tie in an afternoon or evening in the car. So that tends to be where, like, the bulk of the conversations go. And the first several months we would do it with these kids, I would, like, be like, alright.
Speaker 3:I have my questions ready. Boom. Boom. Boom. Gonna ask them about their day.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna, like, grill them in the car the first 5 minutes, and it would never go anywhere, and then I would establish this this air of awkwardness that would take the rest of the evening to break. So I guess I'm rambling again. Sorry.
Speaker 2:I feel like every single mentor has experienced what you just said of, like, you get in the car, and you're like, I have these 5 golden questions, and it's gonna set up our entire interaction. And, like, the answers you get are, like, yes, good, yeah, no, and your questions are over. And you're like,
Speaker 3:oh, well, what do we what do
Speaker 2:I do now? So I just feel like everybody agrees with what you just said.
Speaker 3:And I think so maybe this goes to your question of I think we're talking before you started podcast of what the difference is between elementary school and maybe middle school or high school. So kinda what what I saw or experienced as an an an environment that creates a good atmosphere is actually for me to do a ton of the talking on the first leg of the journey. When you pick them up, I tend to just let them be quiet and run through my day, tell them how my day was, what's annoying me, what went well, maybe what I had for lunch, whatever. And then once you have, kind of a system, a routine with your kiddos, then maybe that one question that they know you're always gonna ask them can come up. For instance, we always did.
Speaker 3:I did both with the brother and sister and then my own guy, highs and lows of the week. So once you establish, like, this is a question you're always gonna be asked, and I'm gonna share first and then you can share. That tends to, most of the time, break down, kind of the introvertedness, and I think builds a lot of, I don't know, goodwill in the kid of he's talking a lot. That's fine. It's cool.
Speaker 3:He's being open and honest with me. Eventually, I can be there too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I think that's such a great tip of, I mean, really, it's just like, if we want our kids our mentees to open up, we have to open up. And I think carrying that conversation at first is such a great way to do that because you're not only modeling what you want them to do, but you're also creating an environment where you're being open and transparent, and that makes a safe place. So that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That and, like, playing playing games in the car. So we would always do, I'm going on a trip and I'm taking an alligator. You know, the ABCs, I'm going on a trip game. We play jukebox on demand, which is our version of, like, you sing 5 seconds of the song, and then the next person has to sing 5 seconds of any other song in the world.
Speaker 3:Just can't be the same song, and you can never repeat songs. And that that teaches you a lot, teaches you what type of songs they're into, what they're listening to, and is nonthreatening. And that also gets them to open their mouths and start coming out of their shell a little bit. And and then you can also pick songs like, Britney Spears' Lucky that I would always sing that they would learn to hate, and then they would scream at you in, you know, a happy way. So you create create those traditions as well of kinda like the my parent is so not hip type of Yes.
Speaker 3:Tradition, but with a mentor.
Speaker 2:That's what your mentee needs. He he needs the non hip, like, disconnected mentor who who's singing Britney Spears. Can you give us an example of what that looks like, Dante?
Speaker 3:Are you asking me to sing sing, Steven? I Is that what this is?
Speaker 2:Am. I am. It's for the people.
Speaker 3:So so you have to for the for the people. You have to understand. So I'm 34. So Britney Spears, I think her debut album came out when I was maybe in 7th grade. So those tracks are just embedded deep deep into my childhood psyche.
Speaker 3:But, you know, Lucky is a very good song because it's about Britney Spears singing. They say she's so lucky, she's a star. But then when she's alone, she cries, cries, cries with her lonely heart singing. Anyway and then you got a you got the high note right after that, which I'm not going to sing right now. So, you know, it's a good song about teaching that looks are deceiving, and you might be really sad even though you're popular.
Speaker 3:Wow. I say that as if I taught that lesson to them, which I didn't. I just sang the song.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. So you you've kind of hit on some traditions within, like, the first kind of moments you're interacting with them, like, these moments in the car. Are there any other traditions that you kind of, as a mentor, kinda created where there was just when I think of traditions, it's just kinda like the things that you do almost every time you see them. Is there anything else that you would you tend to do?
Speaker 3:So I think that depends on the kid. We didn't have many with our our brother and sister. I ended up falling into more and more, with my guy in Oregon. He he had a lot of discipline problems. He was getting in trouble in school.
Speaker 3:He he went to juvie while I was his mentor, which was exciting. So figuring out, like I I wouldn't say the word tradition, but I would say consistency became more and more how we built our relationship up. So in the beginning, I would just go after work. I would call, his mom and be like, hey. Can I come on Thursday next week?
Speaker 3:Oh, it fits my schedule better. Maybe I'll come on Monday, and I would kinda play it that way off of my schedule or what I perceive to be their schedule. But then, you know, their routine would get thrown off, and I would show up and no one would be home. You would run into that sort of thing, which I'm sure lots of mentors experience constantly. So then it became okay.
Speaker 3:No matter what, I don't care if you're not there. After work on Wednesdays, I'm driving to your apartment. Just expect me at 5:15. Expect me there. And your mom understands that.
Speaker 3:Everybody understands that. And if you miss it, then you missed it, and we're not gonna reschedule. I kinda drove myself into the ground for 6 months where it would be he would miss the date for whatever reason and then apologize, and then mom and him would try to reschedule later that week. And it's like, it doesn't create goodwill on me because now I'm maybe I do it, but secretly, I'm like, now I've wasted 2 of my nights to this kid and it that's not the right mentality I should have, of course. But that's the reality is you start feeling grumpy about it and then you're not looking forward to it and you bring that attitude into it.
Speaker 3:So all that is to say, create that consistency of time was really important for me, and then when we wanted to focus on education, it would be 3 times at the library, 4th time is fun. 3 times at the library, 4th time is fun. And then once we're at the library, then we'd start creating rubrics. We do this much time at doing our homework, and then we can go get lunch or get dinner or whatever. So I don't know if that that's not really tradition.
Speaker 3:That's consistency, but, I found that to be vitally important.
Speaker 2:I I think that's huge just in what what you just said of having a rhythm, not not even necessarily within the things that you do, but just the interaction in general of scheduling. Hey. Wednesdays is when you hang out with me, and it's not just randomly to where you can't form a schedule. It's just we're doing it Wednesday. And, I mean, I imagine if a mentor who was facing that same challenge just decided that to just have a specific day where we're saying, like, hey.
Speaker 2:If we're gonna hang out, it's this day. I'll see you here. That would solve a lot of issues with what what you just said. So I I think that's amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, like, my guy, within the course of 16 months, he lived in 3 different places. So, you know, he was, going to different schools and getting suspended and, like, so much in his life was up in the air and inconsistent. I think it's so valuable if we can do our one little part that he can consistently rely on you for this one thing. That builds trust as well.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I I couldn't recommend that enough. And then it makes your life easier too. Yeah. Turns out we like consistency as well.
Speaker 2:Well and and you you kinda mentioned that it was building this frustration and animosity where it was like, you're starting to not look forward to scheduling something because you're you're already feeling like this is going to be difficult, and they're probably not gonna be there. And it it it's reminding me someone was telling me about Jordan Peterson. His his book 12 rules for life. One of his rules is, like, don't let your kids do anything that would make you hate them or or something like that. And in a way, it's just a very natural thing.
Speaker 2:It's like, if you start hating your kids, that's the worst thing for them. So you can't let them do things that would lead you to start hating them. And I think that's the same thing with your mentor relationship. It's like, if you're starting to hate something, like, about the situation, you need to address it and not just put up with it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Let's, I mean, let's talk about just the you said that this kid in Oregon, he was facing challenges going to Juvy. You you had mentioned just some special needs that he had. What was that like? Can you kind of give us a a picture of just a little more of that relationship and what his needs were?
Speaker 3:That's a big question. So just to paint the the image, he's the opposite of our Tyler brother and sister. He's extroverted to the max, so never didn't have the awkwardness from day 1. He's, like, complimenting me and saying, like, I got the coolest mentor when he's hanging out with me, the first time. And I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You do. Alright. You know, it's like, who knew this would be good for my self confidence? But a a lot of the stuff, you don't interact with initially.
Speaker 3:Right? Because you're just building relationships to you're spending your 2 hours a week or whatever with him. And it's 1 on 1, and he's excited. So you're just having a good time, and I I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that's vitally important.
Speaker 3:But then as you as you talk more, like, with him, lying was a was a big problem. And he at first, you know, your your 1st 6 weeks, you're like honeymoon mentoring, and it's like, oh, he's just a storyteller. And then you're realizing, okay, there's there's a cascading effect of this this line that he falls into. And then you want to do everything you can to, like, help him not default to speaking or telling stories that are clearly not true. Well, how do you do that?
Speaker 3:Well, I guess I'll discipline him. And if you discipline him or discipline, have a stern talking to or whatever, and you see his eyes glaze over him, then you realize, okay. This happens all the time. He's been given this speech before by school officials, by his mom, by any authority in his life, by the parole officer. So I don't have answers for this, Steven, besides the this one story that, kinda haunts me in a good way.
Speaker 3:So after he went to to Juvy, I wanted to do something because all he had experienced, you know, at home, at school is just like punishment, punishment, punishment for a couple weeks. So I wanted to do not the library, which was, you know, our common outing. So, took him into the woods, which was, like, a 55 minute drive and then, you know, an hour and a half hike and then the 55 minute drive. You know? So it was a longer day for for me, for and for him as a mentor.
Speaker 3:And he's really loving the hike, and we hadn't really done anything quite like that before. And we had my dog, and so he's running around with the dog, and it's great. And he's enjoying nature, And I'm thinking, alright. This is this is the best moment. You know, he's enjoying this.
Speaker 3:We got to the end of our hike, kind of the top of a mountain. We can oversee all these trees, this beautiful area. We're sitting down. I'm like, alright. We're gonna have, like, the heart to heart talk.
Speaker 3:He's gonna open up his soul and cry, and it's gonna be great. And we'll hug and, you know, they'll make a Hallmark movie based off of Dante's amazing mentoring abilities. And I get into it, and I think, you know, I was trying to ask him, like, or try and get him to visualize. If you keep down this path, what happens? Trying to help him visualize a better path.
Speaker 3:And I got nowhere. His eyes glazed over. He gave me the answers that he knew would get him through the moment as he's adapted to do, and I'm bummed. And we start heading back and I'm like, oh, this is I just wasted this. And we get, I don't know, half mile back or half mile away from our car.
Speaker 3:We're almost back, and there's a cricket that he hears. And he's looking around looking for the cricket, and this little cricket had kinda wedged itself in a little rock cave, like a tiny little cricket sized cave. And he was overjoyed that this cricket had a home for himself, and he built himself a home. And so he's 12 at this time. He he throws in a little pebble, not thrilled, puts in a little pebble.
Speaker 3:So he's like, oh, look. Now he has a TV, and his imagination lights up. And then for, like, 30 of the 50 minutes driving home, I'm hearing about the cricket. And then he runs in, mom asks him how it went, and he's like, it was great. There was a cricket in a house.
Speaker 3:And to me, that's like, that that epitomizes what the best that we can do as mentors at the end of the day. You know, every kid's different, so this guy was a particularly difficult case. So maybe not everyone has this experience, but my experience was. Again, I I can I can give all the speeches? I can try my best to influence change, but a shared experience, a shared moment of presence is what he's gonna remember, and that's a positive.
Speaker 3:And I shouldn't be worried about if I've done enough, I shouldn't have sleepless nights trying to strategize about my next mentoring session with him, which I did many times. And I he was the type of kid that, you know, you would have trouble sleeping at night because you're worried about him, you're worried about his future. Anyway, that's that's that story.
Speaker 2:Wow. Well, I I think there's something to learn there of just recognizing we can focus so much on ourselves and and miss what this kid is experiencing. And, I mean, it's it's interesting that your takeaway from that grasshopper thing is, like, I'm a great mentor. Like, because he had this shared experience of my presence with him, and it, like, your greatness as a mentor had nothing to do with the conversation that bombed. Your greatness of a as a mentor is that you were out in the woods doing a hike with him, and, like, you're killing it.
Speaker 2:And, I I mean, I just think that's huge. And I I will say that it's it's powerful to to know that people are burdened for you, like, that I care about you. But I'm I mean, I'm sure that kid probably doesn't know that you had sleepless nights, like, thinking about him. That that probably isn't the case unless you told him. I don't know.
Speaker 2:But
Speaker 3:Yeah. I don't think I did. But, yeah, and and I'm not trying to say that none of those speeches or my virtue signaling didn't matter. Maybe it does, but I I most likely am not gonna see the fruit of that. But what I can see the fruit of in the day is this is the first time he has shown an honest joy in a month because his world has been very dangerous and very sad lately.
Speaker 3:So if I can provide that joy in that moment of presence, then, yeah, I I do I do consider that a win. Sorry, Steven. You were mid sentence, and I cut you off.
Speaker 2:No. That's great. You you were mentioning kind of some stuff about his school experience and how that translates to your mentor relationship. And so some of our mentors, they mentor kids with special needs that that isn't, I guess, the the cultural stigmatizing thought, it's like, this kid has issues reading. He has issues paying attention.
Speaker 2:He has difficulty with tests. Like, what what did that look like for for him and his schooling, and how did that affect your mentor relationship?
Speaker 3:I don't know, man. It was just something we kinda went to the to the middle on of, like, there's no way around this. Thankfully, in in my case, he wanted to go to school, so he was on, kind of, an odd what I experienced as an odd disciplinary track in Eastern Oregon where because of his behavior, they would only allow him entering middle school to go to 1st period of the day, and then he had to go home. And then based on behavior, he would be allowed to go to a second period and a third period. But this was a long, cumbersome years long process, not like one week of good behavior and then you get more.
Speaker 3:So working in my position, we did have the carrot of we gotta keep you you gotta ace school so that they'll give you another class because he wanted to be at school and he wanted to make friends, and he was struggling to make friends because he wasn't ever there. So that that made things simpler for me. I know in some cases, kids just don't wanna learn or, you know, the their needs make it so difficult that or the obstacle is so high and so hard to climb that they just wanna avoid it, and I don't know what to do in those cases. I don't know how to I I don't know as a mentor how we could hope to give internal incentive. We can give it external incentives, but those are only gonna last so long.
Speaker 3:I guess just being being a presence as well of knowing what their grades are and knowing what's coming up. Oh, you have a spelling test on Friday. Knowing those pieces of information so then you can celebrate whatever successes come And honestly, probably sweep the failures under the rug because the kid needs wins. And as mentors, you know, we kinda can play the, the doting uncle or aunt to a degree of we don't have to be the parent that rides them on everything. We can choose our battles, and we can also choose to make sure to find more successes than failures.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's really good. Did you did you experience just maturity level changes as as the kids grew up and and maybe even within this kid? I know you obviously saw him go from one period to 2 periods and and progressing academically. But what what did you see happening with his maturity level as as he was getting older?
Speaker 3:So my wife would tell you that the data shows that even 1 year of mentoring increases likelihood of staying in school and then and does so much for a kid. But I'll be honest, I it's hard to see that when you're in it. It's hard to see the the maturation process. I think there's more the where you see it is in the vulnerability that the child shows, especially getting older. And and maybe this is more a matter of the maturation of your relationship than than the kids' personal maturation.
Speaker 3:So our I am a white man, and Danae is also white, and our, mentees in Tyler were black. And it was right near the end, so over 2 years into our mentoring relationship that we have our first conversation about race, and it was brought on by by the boy. And it was awkward, and he kinda stumbled into it. And it was like, a, like, it was it was exciting because you felt like this is this is a a progress of vulnerability and asking real questions and relevant questions that are here and pressing and in the moment. And I'm a white guy, and I don't have that many black friends.
Speaker 3:And you're a black kid, and you don't have that many white friends. And we're coming to this gushy middle and experiencing this, and I learned probably more from that conversation than I was. I I mean, I mostly kept my mouth shut because this was just a a time for me to learn. Anyway, that's another long weird spiraling answer just to say, like, that's the the moments of vulnerability, I think. And maybe there's self awareness there to be vulnerable is where I would see maturation, and that's in myself as well.
Speaker 3:You're you're gonna mature as a mentor and kinda have a better instinct of when to share things. And when Holy Spirit's with you, a lot of times, Holy Spirit is just saying, shut up. Shut up. Shut up. And that's that's a maturation process as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think that's that's a great place for us to end just with thinking about well, maybe you have thoughts, but it sounds like when you got into mentoring Dante, you were like, no. And no. Like, this isn't something I wanna do, but okay. I'll do it with Danae.
Speaker 2:And now you're to a place where you've I mean, I think I think you would say you're different because of your experience mentoring.
Speaker 3:I I want you to say
Speaker 2:Yeah. But but just, for an encouragement to someone out there who may be in that same place that you were in in Tyler, what what encouragement would you leave them with from your experience of mentoring?
Speaker 3:Oh, oh, summing up. So exciting. So, again, I'll anecdotally point to my own experience of I come from a big family. I'm the youngest of 5. I have 11 nieces and nephews.
Speaker 3:I married a woman who's the second born of 7. So lots of kids always around us. I've been a teacher. I I've been around kids a lot. And perhaps because of that, I always thought I never I don't really need to do anything in that realm.
Speaker 3:I have enough interaction with kids. I've never wanted to have kids myself. But now I can see a pretty straight line between kinda getting for virtue forced into mentoring to wanting to do it myself to, that kinda let us up. Okay. What what can we give?
Speaker 3:We know this has value. We know I I'm a full convert now to best thing you can do for the kingdom of heaven, for the Lord, is is relational, is build some relationship. So, you know, James, the oft quoted thing, true religion is this, caring for widows and orphans. We're all we all feel like orphans at some point, whether or not we are as kids because we feel lonely and we feel like we're experiencing something alone. And being present with a kid can can ease that ease that suffering and make them feel connected to the greater world and connected to the Lord.
Speaker 3:So, anyway, moving forward. So so then after doing mentoring, and then it's like, okay. We we we still can give more. What can we do more? We can do foster respite care.
Speaker 3:We can bring kids in for a weekend, and we've done that. And now that's not enough either. So so we're going we're taking fostering classes now, and I imagine that'll probably lead to an eventual adoption scenario. Because the what what else can I do? I mean, I like to write books.
Speaker 3:I think it's I think it's fun to write books and learn about. I'm, like, the biggest theology nerd you can find, but that doesn't that doesn't build the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 2:Wow. Well, I I love what you said. That the greatest way to build the kingdom of heaven is through relationships, and that that is a a compelling statement. And I I don't know if it's a hot take, but I I feel like there is something about what you just said that is pushing people into a journey of mentoring and building relationships in their community with kids from hard places and just so appreciative of of the journey that God's done in your life, Dante, and excited to also interview Wait. Wait.
Speaker 2:Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Wait. Sorry. Sorry. This just came to me too. So so, you know, Jesus says at the end of his earthly ministry, go and make disciples.
Speaker 3:Right? And we all try to, you know, go evangelize our coworkers, and it's so darn hard. Because as adults, we just we got so much going on, and we got so many shields, and we got so many excuses and other places to turn to, but a kid doesn't. So it's so easy. It's again, to not equating children to dogs, but but it's so easy to engage with someone who just wants your presence, and that's so much easier, I think, to build disciple disciples and disciple makers.
Speaker 3:It's when you look at it from that perspective of our lives here are to build the kingdom of heaven, Like, this is the best way. It's just look at all the methods. Can you get a better way than this? I don't think so. And we can integrate it into our lives.
Speaker 3:We don't have to move to Africa in this scenario. So, yeah, go do it. Sorry. Alright. You you did it very eloquently, and I didn't listen to the holy spirit and just wanted to open my mouth again.
Speaker 3:So I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's awesome. Dante Stack, St. Louis. Can you give our listeners a website to look at your current work of what you guys are doing?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. That's very kind. So, we work at Faith Ascent. So you can go to faith ascent.com. Our main program is, like, summer camp for for bible nerds, for high school bible nerds.
Speaker 3:So they get a flush, like, college level academic courses, that are engaging their doubts and relevant biblical issues so that they can wrestle with the hard questions of Christianity and make it their own before going out in the world and being pummeled by it in an unsafe environment. So we're trying to establish safe environments where young people can work through their issues. So that's faith ascent.com. Ascent is spelled a s c e n t.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So good. Well, check out faith ascent.com if you're interested. Dante, it's been great interviewing you and hearing your story. I just feel like there's so many so many things that I've heard from mentors in in this conversation, and so really appreciate you sharing sharing your experience.