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Introducing You Can Mentor, a new podcast about the power of building relationships.
Show Notes
Episode: 1
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WELCOME
You Can Mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others.
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MEET THE TEAM
Zachary Garza Sr. Writer/Interviewer
Daniel De Jesús Host/Interviewer
Caroline Cash Host/Interviewer
Stephen Murray Producer/Editor
Daniel De Jesús Host/Interviewer
Caroline Cash Host/Interviewer
Stephen Murray Producer/Editor
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SHOW NOTES
Creators and Guests
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.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
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:Relationships are in our design. Our natural makeup. No one has to teach us to connect to and interact with and learn from our surroundings and the people that surround us. This is our nature as humans. Dependence.
Speaker 2:Our development depends on relationship and our health demands that we have them. Our needs of companionship, belonging, affection all are impossible without the context of relationship. This is why we say relationships change lives. Jesus affirms that the greatest things we can do are wrapped up in building relationships. He says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Speaker 2:And that the second is like it, to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is a bedrock of Jesus's ministry. His intention was to lead people into a relationship with God and relationship with those around them. He built these relationships through personal sacrifice, embodying His words with His life to His death on the cross. And then after raising from the dead, he called his disciples into that same ministry to help others build a relationship with God and with those around them.
Speaker 2:The 2 greatest commandments contain our 2 greatest needs. Our need for relationship with God and our need for relationship with people. A mentor is someone who chooses to actively invest in the lives of others in their community, who sees these needs and responds with action. Our desire is to help everyone who listens to this podcast know one thing, you can mentor. Hey.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the first episode of the You Can Mentor podcast. This podcast is all about the power of building relationships, and our hope is to equip and encourage mentors. This podcast is powered by foreigner mentoring program in Dallas, Texas. I am here with my cohost or should I say quad hosts because there are 4 of us. And so I wanna hear from you guys.
Speaker 2:Who are you? Where are you coming from? What's your role here on the podcast?
Speaker 3:Hey, Steven. My name is Zachary Garza, and I am a giant. That's a fun fact about me. You are. You're, like, 6 foot 8.
Speaker 3:Yes. That is correct.
Speaker 2:I saw you in your bowling shoes. Those were
Speaker 3:They looked like clown shoes.
Speaker 2:What were your what's what was your shoe size?
Speaker 3:Size 17.
Speaker 2:17.
Speaker 3:Oh. Really impressive. Really impressive. And that hurts my feelings.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's
Speaker 3:Holy shit.
Speaker 2:It is at the bowling alley. It's incredible.
Speaker 3:So my name is Zach Garza. I have a wife at home. Her name is Sarah. She's incredible. And I've got 2 boys on the ground, Zachary junior and Steven.
Speaker 3:And I have a daughter that is gonna be born this week. Super excited about that. Before 4 Runner Mentoring, I was the 8th grade football coach, offensive coordinator for a low income school in East Dallas. I'm passionate about mentoring and building relationships because I am a kid from a hard place. And because if it wasn't for my mentor stepping into my life and showing me how to be a godly man, there's no way that I'd be here today.
Speaker 2:Daniel, tell us a little about yourself.
Speaker 4:Yes. Thank you. I'm super, super pumped to be here. I'm Daniel the Jesus. And I let's see.
Speaker 4:I was born and raised in inner city Chicago. Born and raised there for about, for most of my childhood, then spent my teenage years in Houston. I am a dad of 2 amazing daughters, Emmy and Ellie. They are 7 and 9. And they're just, just the joy of my life.
Speaker 4:And, I have spent the last 12 years doing kids ministry in the local church. Kids ministry is like one of the best training grounds for folks who want to grow in their leadership, who want to grow in their patients, and just to be around the energy and like the heart of kids is something that has impacted me in in a very deep way. And so I feel very fortunate to have had that experience. And I feel like I just I have an empathy, for a child who, feels like they're they can't help but feel like something is missing from their lives. They might look around and see other kids at school or kids at church, who have these amazing father figures or mother figures in their life who are speaking words or who are really just present in their life.
Speaker 4:And I know that for me as a kid, like I was constantly aware of what other kids were experiencing and what I what it seemed that I was missing. And that, you know, that can do a number on you as a kid. And, and so yeah. So I feel super fortunate now that as a as an adult, you know, I get to, I get to sit with and encourage, kids who might be feeling that way and let them know that there's hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's awesome. Caroline, Cash Money.
Speaker 1:Hello, Steven.
Speaker 2:Tell us about yourself.
Speaker 1:Yes. So my name is Caroline Cash, and, born and raised in Dallas. Love it here. It's a great city. I think I really started being passionate about kids when I got involved with summer camp ministry, and was a part of summer camp ministry for a long time, like, 6 years or so.
Speaker 1:And, just seeing seeing the way that a kid can walk in on a Sunday night when they show up at camp and they have all these walls built up, and then the way that they leave on a Saturday morning, and when you know that the kid is totally different from the kid that walked in a week before, I think that just got me really excited and wanting to know more about why, and why why kids are the way they are. And I think that that is the conversation that we are having here is who we are and why we are the way they are, and how relationships can change lives.
Speaker 2:Come on. That is awesome. My name is Stephen Murray. I've been in Dallas the last 8 years now, which is crazy to think about. I have worked at a church like Daniel for the last while.
Speaker 2:I think the last 6 years I've worked at a church, doing college ministry. My wife and I have been passionate about student ministry and also, helping refugees and asylum seekers adjust to life in America. And so that has really, influenced the way that I see life. I see the world. I see people's stories.
Speaker 2:God has given me a a heart, to see where people have come from. And not only that, but where they're headed. I'm excited about engaging this topic and talking about, how we can encourage and equip people to mentor because I see the value. I see the future. I see the hope that we believe in for these kids and even for the mentors themselves.
Speaker 2:They're gonna be changed as they enter into the space. So if I'm looking to mentor a kid in my community, why do I need this podcast?
Speaker 3:That's a good question, Steven. And I think it all points back to whenever I first started working with kids from hard places. I was a 25 year old football coach, and I met this one kid named Jonathan. Jonathan was 15 and he was, in the 8th grade. And this kid had more facial hair than I did.
Speaker 3:He was about 5 10, £200. I mean, he looked like a full grown man, And I started to get to know Jonathan. I started to spend time with him. I began to learn about Jonathan's life. The first couple weeks of school, Jonathan started to miss school, started to miss football practice.
Speaker 3:He started to make a lot of zeros in his academic courses and began to ask the question, why? Why isn't Jonathan coming to school? Why is he getting zeros? Why is he skipping all of all of our football practices? And I knew the answer wasn't that he was dumb, and I knew the answer wasn't that he didn't care.
Speaker 3:I knew that there was something else that was causing Jonathan to make these choices. After spending some time with him and asking him, you know, very specific questions and trying to find out why these things were taking place in his life, he began to tell me that he had to take care of his sister every Monday. His dad couldn't line up childcare. They couldn't afford daycare, and Jonathan had to skip school every single Monday just to take care of his sister. I found out that on the weekends that he had to work after school, his kid just had more responsibility on his plate than I did as, as an adult.
Speaker 3:As I saw Jonathan and as the the Lord began to cultivate my heart towards him, I didn't have any idea how to build a relationship with a kid like this. The point of this podcast is to equip mentors with basic tools to help overcome mentoring obstacles that tend to come up whenever you build relationships with kids from hard places. That is the number one goal. The second focus of this podcast is to encourage mentors to persevere in the relationships with these kids whenever things get hard. Because these kids have so many obstacles in their life that are preventing them from fulfilling their god given potential.
Speaker 4:You brought up identity because I think that when you really think about the simplicity of the mentor relationship, it really goes back to just accepting and affirming that kid for who they are. And that's it. And I think the temptation for a lot of mentors and maybe why a lot of mentors don't feel like, equipped is because they are assuming that it's going to take, this much knowledge or these specific experiences or gifts or talents that I have that I now need to pass along to my mentee, that I have to that there's just this big thing or these things that I have to bring to the table in order to make an impact on this kid's life. And I think what I'm so excited about, what we're gonna learn in this journey of this podcast as we interview these these different mentors and and experience these stories, is that it's not complicated, you know, that that it really does just take, the ministry of presence. So just showing up, of being consistent, and then just sharing life with these kids, you know, that that you don't have to take them to a football game every single time or just give them this grand experience or share this grand story of pain in your own life, you know, to to, to make an impact on them.
Speaker 4:Right. You know, it's I think we're gonna find that the tools and, the resources and the advice or the counsel or the encouragement that we give to our mentors, is really just gonna be about sharing life. And it's it's that simple.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. One of the tactics of the enemy is to lie to us and say, you have to have all of your stuff together to mentor.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:You have to know this much of the Bible, and your life has to look this way, and you have to have this title, and you have to be the perfect father, the perfect husband, the perfect wife. You you have to have all of these skills before you mentor. And I think that that's a lie because you do not have to be Superman to make an impact on a child's life. It's that simple. You just have to show up and you have to care and you have to love Jesus the best that you can and give them someone to look up to.
Speaker 3:Because there's so many kids out there who don't have a dad in the house. There's so many kids out there who don't have a man in their life that they can look up to and say, oh, so that's what being a godly man looks like. There are so many kids out there who don't have positive role models that they can emulate. Mhmm. And our goal is to help you as a mentor or as a potential mentor believe the only thing that he wants is your yes.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. God is all about faithfulness. Mhmm. The faithfulness of showing up, the faithfulness of telling him that he's full of value, telling him that he is a son, taking your finger and pointing it in this kid's chest and telling him who he is and who he isn't and whose he is. And you are a son of God.
Speaker 3:You are a daughter of the most high king and you have so much to offer. And I'm here to tell you that you're not some thug, that you're not some kid who doesn't have anything to offer. I don't care what you look like. I don't care how much cash you have. I don't care the color of your skin.
Speaker 3:The Lord Jesus Christ loves you. And when he sees you, he sees his most prized possession. And it's our job to take the father heart of God and to try the best that we can to convey it to those who follow him and say, the Lord loves these kids. The Lord loves the fatherless. He loves the poor.
Speaker 3:He is for these kids, and he wants us to be formed too. God is looking for people to say, who will be the father to the fatherless? Who will be an example of me and set the lonely in families?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Whenever we say yes, God does amazing things.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to the first episode of the You Can Mentor podcast. Feel free to visit youcanmentor.com to view our show notes. We want to be a resource to you in any way we can because we really do believe that relationships change lives. Whatever podcast app you're using, click the subscribe button right now and we'll send you a new episode every week. That's right.
Speaker 2:Every week helping you overcome common mentoring obstacles, sharing encouraging stories, and Zach Garza's voice in your ears, always a treat. And hey, if you have time, you can go ahead right now and listen to the next few episodes. We're releasing a few of them this week just to give you a feel for what to expect from the podcast moving forward. If this podcast is helpful or you know someone interested in mentoring, please let them know about us. Sharing is caring.
Speaker 2:And if there's only one thing you took away from today's episode, let it be this. You can mentor.
Speaker 1:You Can Mentor is a podcast powered by 4 Runner Mentoring Program in Dallas, Texas. You can learn more by visiting forerunner mentoring.com.