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Identity plus skills equals confidence. That is the equation that Stephen and special guest Chad Wallen from Advance Camp unpack as they discuss how encouraging mentees through practical, skill-based camps can impact their lives. By showing mentees how to do unique skills like blacksmithing or general contracting work, and building them up in the process, these experiences can unlock new trajectories in the young man's life and set him on a path toward success.
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:You're about to listen to a great interview with Chad Wallen from Advanced Camp. He teaches young, fatherless boys how to do plumbing, how to fix bikes, how to blacksmith. It's crazy, and it's it's compelling. I hope you enjoy hearing his story of how he started his organization in his heart behind mentoring kids from hard places. If you enjoy today's episode, please let us know about it by rating our podcast, leaving us a review, or sharing it with someone you think would benefit from the content.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the You Can Mentor podcast. I am sitting here today with Chad Wallen from Advanced Camp. Chad, how the heck are you?
Speaker 3:Doing good. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Doing good. Thanks for coming into the office. It's it's really encouraging to not have to be on Zoom for a podcast interview. It means a lot. Where did you come in from?
Speaker 3:Granbury.
Speaker 2:Granbury. Where is where is Granbury?
Speaker 3:Granbury is about 30 minutes directly west of Fort Worth.
Speaker 2:Okay. You're
Speaker 3:amazing. On Lake Granbury.
Speaker 2:That means you left at, like, 5 AM this morning to get all the way over here. So It
Speaker 3:was almost an hour and 40 minute drive, but it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 2:You're an amazing person. So, Chad, you're the leader, the founder of Advance Camp. Let's let's hear about Advance Camp from your own words. Why did you start Advance Camp? What what led you to doing what you're doing today, investing in Fatherless Boys?
Speaker 3:Okay. That's 3 questions in 1. Let's see. I'll start with, what is Advanced Camp? We we're a local ministry that we specifically mentor and teach tangible skills to fatherless young men between 6th 12th grade.
Speaker 3:Fatherless is a very broad sweep. We have young men that come to our camp from all different walks of life and all kinds of different backgrounds and environments. So one thing I'll actually start with, you'll hear me say young men, you won't hear me say boy or kid throughout this this whole thing. And that's part of what we teach is identity. We call them a young man because that's our expectations for them, and that's a expectation we want them to make for themselves.
Speaker 3:If we call them young man and ask ask them to act as it as if, You'll start seeing confidence build up. So just to start off with that. So Advanced Camp all kind of started created in my mind probably 10, 12 years ago. And it was in the midst of my dad working at a a state penitentiary and telling me the statistics at his penitentiary is 95% of the the men incarcerated were from fatherless homes or a lack of positive male role models in their life. So that kinda just what starts stewing in me is, okay.
Speaker 3:If if that's the case, what can we do or what can I do to preventatively keep them out of incarceration? And so I originally wanted to start ministry. No name was attached to it, but to take on 3 or 4, young men and teach strictly automotive. So get a car donated, work on it, rebuild the interior, the the engine stuff, get it up and running good, sell it to then use that money to get another vehicle and work through the progress again.
Speaker 2:Now what kind of car are we talking? Like, we're talking Buick Park Avenue, LeSabre.
Speaker 3:I mean, honestly, when I when I started thinking about it, I immediately went to the Gremlin. I just think it's a cool car. That wraparound bubbled back window, those things are pretty
Speaker 2:You're really gonna get some some good sale value back from from, repairing a grim Yeah.
Speaker 3:Come on. Those are cool cars. That's still on my bucket list to own one day. So that's kind of where it all stood from. And, unfortunately, I got super discouraged.
Speaker 3:I had multiple people tell me, do you know how much it cost to take, you know, to start a nonprofit? You you have to have a board of directors and, you know, that you gotta have this, you gotta have that, and you you have to go see a lawyer and, like, all this stuff starts stewing. I'm like, man, I I had multiple people. I I reached out
Speaker 2:501 c threes.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I know. Right? That's a lot of c threes. And, so I was like, man, I I only got 499 in me.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, so that was kinda where it started brewing, and and, people just discouraged me, to be to be honest, and it kinda just it kinda went quiet. And my wife and I at the time were also serving a single mom's ministry in Oregon. And the guy that was running that single mom's ministry approached me and said, hey. I'm thinking about starting something for the young men, you know, that their moms are involved in our program and teaching them some stuff that, you know, they don't come to school on Monday and be like, oh, yeah. Me and my dad went fishing, or me and my dad changed oil in the car.
Speaker 3:And the the young man that's sitting there that only has a mom at home is, like, almost embarrassed to not you know, to to say anything because he's never done it. Doesn't know how to do it. Didn't get to spend the weekend with his dad. And so it's really kind of how it started, developing is out of a place of let's teach them some things or do some things with them or, you know, let them experience some things that keep them from being embarrassed. About 2, 3 camps in, the gentleman that him and I started it, I was running the mentor side of it, and he was running the, you know, quote, program side of it.
Speaker 3:He was thinking of what the next topic was, how do we tie it into scripture. 2 or 3 camps in, he's like, you know what, Chad? I'm tapped out. Like, I'm I'm serving all the single moms. We have a program that we're working on with them.
Speaker 3:We have, you know, 108 acres, 30,000 square foot log cabin lodge. I I'm over my head. Can you pray about taking the camp over and running it from there on out? I said, no. I'll do it.
Speaker 3:He goes, no. No. No. I want you to go think about it, pray about it, come back to me. I said, no.
Speaker 3:You don't understand. I've actually been praying for this, so this is an answer to prayer, not something to pray about. And so I took it over at that point. I ran it for about two and a half, three years in Oregon, and then my wife and I just got this wild hair to move to Texas, specifically to start a lavender farm on Longhorn Ranch.
Speaker 2:And that's when Lavender farm on a Longhorn Ranch.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And then it tied in a wedding venue to it. Yeah. Come on. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So we actually had a lavender business in Oregon, and we were looking for land there, until we came out and visited Texas twice, fell in love with it, and said, well, why don't we do it where we wanna do it, not where we are right now? And so in the process of looking at moving and looking at land and what is that all gonna look like, I started feeling really guilty. My wife and I were foster parents, had been for about four and a half years. We're serving the single mom's ministry. We were involved in the church with men's ministry.
Speaker 3:My wife was involved with women women's ministry, and then we I was also running advance camp. And throughout all this guilt, I started going to some of my men my mentors, some of the guys I looked up to leadership in the church and saying, hey. This is what I'm battling with. What how do I handle this? And I'm a slow learner, and it was a 4th or 5th guy that said, hey.
Speaker 3:Have you thought about the fact that God may be training and developing you to be able to plant this in Texas? And like I said, it's probably the 4th or 5th time I heard it. All different guys didn't know I was talking to each other. Finally hit me. It's like, alright, God.
Speaker 3:I get it. I'm supposed to start this in Texas. So in Oregon, it was just basically an activity sheet tied to the single moms ministry. Here in Texas, it actually started as its own 501c3. So we're our own LLC here.
Speaker 3:We're our own entity as Advance Camp. You know, people look us up on Instagram or Facebook, and it's Advance Camp Texas. That's really that's for this location. We're looking at expanding into a couple other states at this point, but that's how it looks now. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's kinda how we got to where we are at and why I did it, is really as a preventative thing. That's why Advanced Camp even started is to prevent young men from going down a path that they didn't have to go down. They can know that there's other options and that they have a a godly father that loves them. They don't even if they don't have their earthly father, they still have a godly father.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I I love this story. And your dad, is he still working in the, I mean, the detention center?
Speaker 3:No. No. He, he retired 7, 8, probably, years ago. So now he's retired. But
Speaker 2:Did he ever take you to, to work? No. I don't think there's a take your kids to work
Speaker 3:day when you work at a State Penn. I think that's frowned upon. Yeah. No. I never went.
Speaker 2:But And so and so out out of him sharing that, it put this idea in your head of, man, I really want to provide activities for boys who I mean, the 95%. I I I would imagine that some statistician somewhere is saying that there's a correlation some somewhere there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You got 95% fatherless men.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I I can't think of the resource. I can look it up on my phone. I'll have it in my notes. But the resource that, the most recent one is statistically out of everybody that is incarcerated in the United States, 90% of those people are men.
Speaker 3:10% are women. Out of those 90% that are men, 75% of those nationally are from fatherless homes. So it's a little different, the prison he was at versus what it is nationally is a little higher there. But that just kinda gives you an idea, you know, statistically. I I wish I had all my notes in front of me so I could actually resource where I'm I'm hearing this from so people don't think I'm just pulling statistics out of my back pocket, but there's a statistic that 80% of homeless are from fatherless homes.
Speaker 2:So I
Speaker 3:start you start like, once the that ball starts rolling of what's the impact on a a a fatherless home, a home where the the dad is not being engaged. What does that look like as a trickle down to the rest of society? And that's where I see Advance Camp steps in and speaks in the place of the father. We don't wanna take the father. I wanna call us a crazy uncle or something.
Speaker 3:Right? But, you know, I don't wanna call us the father of these young men, but, because we try to direct them to the to the godly father, not not us. We we still make errors as well. Right? So I try to just call us, like, an uncle or a mentor, you know, role versus a father role.
Speaker 2:And you said kids go to school. They talk about the things they're learning from their dad. Mhmm. And all the kids that don't have data around, which is a significant portion of children nowadays Mhmm. Don't have the story to share, and that leads them to feel left out.
Speaker 2:Yep. And so advanced camp exists so that kids don't feel left out. But why why is why is that so important about, I guess, a kid's sense of identity being formed by what I'm missing Mhmm. Or what I'm I'm not getting that other kids are getting?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think some of it is kind of the where's my value lie. You know, I we we are talking about identity. That's the thing I speak on probably the heaviest. My dad was, so I will become, you know, if dad bailed on the family and just took off.
Speaker 3:Well, my dad, he bailed on us, so that's just kinda guy I'm gonna be. I got a camper right now that, you know, dad was convicted of murder, and they they went into this deep depression because their words were, well, my dad was, and we're biologically connected, so that means I'm gonna become. And you all know that that's a bold face lie. Right? But you gotta speak into that.
Speaker 3:So that's where, like, the identity piece of it comes into. But the other piece of it is when they start learning these skills and learning these different things, even if it's, you know, even if it's cooking. I actually found our cooking camp was has been the most successful for confidence. And so they start learning these skills, and they they go home, and they bring those confidence into the home. I get text messages from moms or aunts or grandmas, whoever has custody of these young men, all the time of I I I honestly I don't know what you guys are doing, but they're coming home with confidence that they've never had before.
Speaker 3:And so, well, that's not in our mission statement. Our mission statement is to teach them tangible skills and love of Christ. Period. End of story. When you teach them those two things, the natural response is higher confidence.
Speaker 3:They have skills that they never had before. They get time spent with them that they've never gotten before. They get to do things over the weekend they've never got to do before. Now they can go to sit in their classroom and be like, man, you know what I did this last weekend? I did blacksmithing.
Speaker 3:70% of that class throwing a number out there. 70% of that class probably, like, what's blacksmithing? And I've never done that before. They're like, got a one up. Right?
Speaker 3:So, you know, it's kinda this this cool thing that we we kinda people always ask me, what do you guys do? That's a pretty broad question. It's almost what don't we do.
Speaker 2:You
Speaker 3:know? So we we try to teach anything and everything that we feel like a dad should have stepped in and taught. We even in a few months, we're gonna do one of RC cars, remote control cars, and we're looking for a local company to partner with us on that to provide us with both the knowledge base and the equipment to teach them how to repair them. You're basically working on a small car sitting on a table in front of you, and then you get to go erase it. Like, how cool is that?
Speaker 3:But it's just something I feel like a dad would sit next to their son, work on RC car together, and then go out and play. You know? So we kinda our our ideas kinda flow out of all different directions.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Identity plus skills equals confidence. Mhmm. Is that is that a good equation? Yeah.
Speaker 2:That just that's what I heard from you, what you just said. Absolutely. And identity is really centered on I mean, even what you said about boys versus young men. Mhmm. Like, that subtle shift creates a a different sense of identity of I'm a man.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And kids have a, I guess, have a lofty view of of men, like Yeah. Being manly or or whatever. It it sounds like something that I want to become. Yep. And so you're you're depositing those things in very, I guess, not indirect, but they're it's the small things.
Speaker 2:It's the little things that strategic. Yeah. Yep. That you're planting seeds. And then the skills, I would even say, blacksmithing is a very random thing for a kid to learn, and yet it may unlock a lot of other untapped kind of potential that this kid has just by learning that.
Speaker 2:Like, fixing an RC car may lead to a kid becoming interested in cars Mhmm. Which then leads to him possibly becoming a mechanic. Yeah. That's that's not, like, too far fetched to to draw that correlation.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It absolutely is not too far fetched. And the cool thing is we just did blacksmithing, and it's one we do annually. It's it's honestly one of our most sought after camps. When I tell people we do blacksmithing, they, like, drop their jaw.
Speaker 3:Like, that is super cool. Can I come? I was like, well, see, are you under 18, over 6th grade, and don't have a dad in the home? Like, no. I was like, sorry.
Speaker 3:You can't be there. You know? So I get that all the time, or I I have wives say, can my husband go? Because he really needs to learn that. Sorry.
Speaker 3:He's outside the age group. So, our blacksmithing one is cool. This year, we had to mix it up a little bit, and I had this guy show up that just super passionate farrier. He does horseshoeing, and it is so cool to watch this guy work. And he was so passionate about it.
Speaker 3:You could just, like, you could tell how excited he was about his trade, and that totally impacted some of our young men. I actually had one young man at the end of it. I was standing there talking to the guy just thanking him for coming out and spending his time and and sharing his knowledge and his passion for his trade. And one of the young men walked up to him and go, hey. Do you ever take interns?
Speaker 3:Because, honestly, this was this was really cool. And I can't I didn't even know this was a, like, a career path. I I didn't know this was a trade that I could do. And he goes, oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Every year I have an intern during summer, and he goes, I I I'd love to do this. And so it's one of those moments, like, this guy could have been totally lost on where am I going in life. I have literally, I have no value. I I don't know what I'm gonna do. I I I don't know if I'm gonna go to college, if I'm gonna, you know, whatever.
Speaker 3:Right? And to be able to have his eyes opened up to blacksmithing as as a actual career path, as a farrier, I mean, who knows? And so it's really cool to watch. Sometimes people look at like you said about RC cars, you never know where that path is gonna take them. But most of the time, we do locksmithing just because it's fun to do, and it's all ornamental stuff.
Speaker 3:We make hooks or we make, you know, hearts out of horseshoes, you know, used horseshoes that are otherwise gonna get tossed out. We've made crosses out of bar stock. We've done flint and steel, you know, to start a, a campfire. Like, we've done all these different kind of fun ornamental things, and to have a farrier come in and say, hey. This is what I do for a living, and I do really well at it.
Speaker 3:It like, all of a sudden lights start going off with these young men, and it's really cool to see that come to fruition of being the goal and then seeing it happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It sounds like a lot of the skills that you teach engage the imagination of kids Mhmm. Because it's something that's either so manly that it just stands out. It's like, we're building horseshoes or, like, I I saw in your newsletter, like, you were building bottle openers.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And it
Speaker 2:was like, you had to create a bottle opener in order to drink the Topo Chico thing. Okay. I was like, okay. That's a there's a reward and incentive to learn how to make this skill because you're not gonna drink if
Speaker 3:you Yeah. Exactly. You can have plain old bottled water if you like, but you can't have in Topo Chico without it.
Speaker 2:But, like, other things like repairing a bike Mhmm. Like a kid who wants a bike, like, that would interest them automatically. So, like, oh, wow. We're gonna work on bikes. And I assume that tapping into that imagination is an intentional thing.
Speaker 2:There's a reason you're doing those activities rather than gathering everyone up on a computer and saying, hey. Let me teach you how to write a an an email. Yeah. Like, that's that's not necessarily gonna be something that kids are like, oh, wow. Like Yeah.
Speaker 2:A skill that I'll use the rest of my life. Like Yep.
Speaker 3:You'll have plenty of time learning how to send an email. Most of us avoid those.
Speaker 2:I mean, just tapping into the imagination of a child is, like, a really useful thing to to give them the story Yeah. If that makes sense. I don't know if a kid's gonna show up to school and be like, my mentor showed me how to write an email. I can brag about that. But and not to say that it's all about giving them something to brag about, but something that I recognize even in our own mentoring relationships is that the kids in our program long to talk about their mentor Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In front of the other people. And how are we creating that sense of ownership that, like, the mentor and the mentee relationship, there's there's a sense of ownership. Like, he wants me Mhmm. And, like, I want him. And and I think that comes through these experiences and and skills that are maybe a little out there or or just super engaging.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And that's kind of the neat thing is the skills that are out there. I love that part of it, because I feel like even as adults, we get tunnel vision. Right? We get, this is my goal.
Speaker 3:And they say that men compartmentalize a lot. And so I think I think we're probably more commonly, you know, get that tunnel vision, but, you know, like my wife and I do date night every Wednesday. So my focus on Wednesday afternoon is date night. What are we gonna do for date night? And I think these young men are kinda coming from the same perspective as they get this tunnel vision of where's my path in life?
Speaker 3:And they're they're unfortunately, regardless of environment, I think it's all young men. They I I remember growing up and, like, my focus was what am I gonna do with my life, but I only saw what was in front of me. And when you have 12 topics, 12 different topics you teach every year, and sometimes we actually throw in a 13th and a 14th topic as, like, little added pluses. If we're teaching these things, man, that it goes from a, like, a tunnel vision to a funnel. And all of a sudden, they're bringing in all these other ideas of, oh, that's what automotive is like.
Speaker 3:That oh, that's what bicycle tuning is like. Oh, that's what blacksmithing is. Oh, that's you you can actually become a professional fisherman. Oh, I I didn't I didn't know that. You know?
Speaker 3:They start going through these things in their head of okay. Well, if if you could be a professional fisherman, who's who's recording that? Oh, they're a videographer. Oh, I could go into videography. So these the the snowball starts happening that and it and it really opens up their vision of what they could do that they never thought about before.
Speaker 2:Something I I think about is, like, hunting. Mhmm. Hunting is a random skill for a kid from the city to learn, but, like, it may be really helpful for them to understand gun safety
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And the focus that it takes to to understand what you do when you have a gun
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And knowing if it's loaded or not and where to point it and respecting guns.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And, like, if I I would imagine most of the kids out on the street that have guns have not had that form of training.
Speaker 3:No. Probably not. And and it's
Speaker 2:the same for all of these other skills that that really there's foundational skills underneath of, like, respecting the craft, focusing, listening to instructions, engage like, doing blacksmithing, that sounds like if you mess up, you're gonna hit your finger with a hammer.
Speaker 3:Very possible. Bring yourself is most common. Okay. No. Maybe I need
Speaker 2:to go into the blacksmith.
Speaker 3:We need to take you next time we do this. Yeah. You can shadow us.
Speaker 2:But but all of those skills, you're not just learning blacksmithing. You're you're taking on a lot more skills that have cross purposes. For sure. And I think that it it's it's more than a random skill.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of stuff that we teach that you have to teach problem solving, troubleshooting. I We did general contractor camp, and they learned how to plumb a sink, do electrical circuit. Literally, that we had a false wall with just the beams, and they had the blue invert or blue junction boxes, and they had to bring power into the plug, which then took power to a light switch, then took power to a light bulb. And then they had to wire it correctly, plug it in, and it'd either blow a circuit, or it wouldn't, you know, turn on the light bulb.
Speaker 3:Or if the light bulb turned on, that means they they ran it correctly. And we did have a professional teaching that. I wasn't doing that. So but that's troubleshooting. They're problem solving.
Speaker 3:Mechanics is the same thing. You know, that something's going on with the car. It's doing a noise or it's it's missing whatever. You have to troubleshoot. So it does it does hit layers for sure.
Speaker 2:Did you did your dad teach you troubleshooting? Like, what was the process in your own life?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I know my dad, when something was broke, he was like, let's figure out how to fix it. And that has informed my entire life of not just giving up or saying this is broken. I gotta find someone to fix it. I'm, like, mentally geared to try and fix it myself Yeah. Even if I don't feel qualified.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, I hate to say it. I mean, my dad's still involved in my life. My I think my parents have been married for 45 years, but my dad worked at a lumber mill. Majority 27 years he worked at a lumber mill before he went and worked at the corrections facility.
Speaker 3:And, he was working either graveyard or swing shift. And so he's typically gone from about 3 o'clock until, you know, in the afternoon until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning during the week. And so during the week, I didn't see my dad. He was gone before I got home from school, and he was asleep when I got up to go to school in the morning. So, unfortunately, I didn't get a whole lot of that, but that's also what's driven me to do what I do now.
Speaker 3:Knowing that I didn't get some of that time, I didn't get some of that teaching, I feel like I missed out on some stuff. You know? So it's it's really been a driving force of who am I and what am I gonna do with what I've experienced to impact these young men's lives. So, yeah, most of my troubleshooting came from I got a buddy I still actually talked to. It's funny.
Speaker 3:I'm working on, instead of taking it to McKeen, like, I'm working on our 7 3 excursion that was donated to us. And my wife told me last night, she goes, you know, you spend about 60 hours working on that thing. Right? I'm like, do you know how much money I just saved advanced camp? I not send it to a mechanic?
Speaker 2:So That's what I do with haircuts. My wife cut my hair. I'm like, do you know how much money we saved when
Speaker 3:I do my hair? Absolutely. It
Speaker 2:doesn't look that great.
Speaker 3:But Save me money on cutting my hair, and we'll go to dinner instead.
Speaker 2:Come on. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And so I've been working on this thing, and I still it's so funny. I hope you listen to this podcast. His name is Dan. We've been friends since freshman in high school.
Speaker 3:I've been out of high school for 13 years now, so we've been friends for a long time. And when he found out I got the 73 excursion, that's the 73 diesel, he goes, man, you got any questions about that thing? I've kinda gone through the front to back with one of these. And any questions, let me know. I could probably help you with it.
Speaker 3:And I was like, man, that's problem number 1. You should never have opened that door. So he gets text messages from me 2 or 3 times a week of, hey. This is I'm doing and this is what I'm doing and, hey. What how do I do this?
Speaker 3:And so it's funny thing is is him and I used to turn wrenches back in high school in his garage until 1, 2 o'clock in the morning working on cars. And and, really, it's it's amazing how much in life I can relate back to troubleshooting a car. Like, why isn't it shifting right? Why is this clearing you know, not clearing enough and, you know, whatever. Right?
Speaker 3:And there's so much that goes into a vehicle that it helps just in life, mechanically in life, bicycles, RC cars, putting together a chair. Like, there's all this there's all these pieces going to a vehicle. And him and I actually worked on restoring a, 85 Mustang and, 64 Land Cruiser, and we tore that Land Cruiser down to the frame. And, I mean, it's seats and it's suspension and it's transmission and tires and engine. And it just so puts you in this place of troubleshooting.
Speaker 3:And so that's where I learned most of mine is his buddy. And he's still to this day. Him and I still chat back and forth text message of, hey, man. This is what I'm trying to troubleshoot. Can you walk through it with me?
Speaker 3:And so that's a lot of it stemmed out of there. So it didn't stem from my dad as much as it did a buddy in high school that that's how we stayed out of trouble was working on cars.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So well, in the skill of asking for help, and it's, like, it's one skill to know or to to to desire to troubleshoot, and it's another skill to know how to ask for help. Mhmm. Because I think one of those, you're just toiling, trying to fix it yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But to know that someone wants to help you, and they're they're just a question away. Yeah. I mean, I read a study on kids disadvantaged youth are far less likely to recognize that their teacher is there to help them. Haven't heard that before. And so I mean and and most of that is just a cultural view of school is like, hey.
Speaker 2:Do you know like, going to school, this teacher is for you. Mhmm. Like, not against you. Like, they're they're not there just to get you in trouble. Like, they're there to help you, like, excel in school.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And
Speaker 2:so you can ask them for help, and they like, that's their job Yeah. Is to, like that they derive satisfaction in being a teacher to help you. Mhmm. Like, that's their paycheck. I mean, obviously, teachers don't get paid very much.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:And they derive their satisfaction from helping helping students. Mhmm. But if a student doesn't know how to ask for help or that others are in their life to help them, that's they're gonna miss a lot of opportunities to grow.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and I'm sure at advanced camp, you have to know how to ask questions, or you just sit in front of your I don't know. I'm I'm trying to imagine how you start building a a bottle opener. I'm just imagining, like, a a bar of metal, and you're like, well, what do I do next? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It literally started out as a piece of rebar. Like, wait a second. I use this to secure concrete. Well, I'm gonna make a bottle opener out of it?
Speaker 3:Okay. Perfect. You know? So, yeah, it's a a lot of questions. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's how we get down to it is you you have to dig in. You have to be okay asking questions. And the cool thing is is our mentor group is just awesome. I mean, I every time I bring on a new camper and I do my interview, I brag about our mentors quite a bit because they they're kind and they're they're great communicators with the young men, and they wanna be there. And so that helps.
Speaker 3:But they they do a good job of asking questions and letting these young men know that it's okay to ask questions. And I'm I'm I'm a huge advocate. When I had the blacksmith there, like, I knew exactly what he's gonna do. I've watched this before, and I'll still be like, hey. So why do you do it like that?
Speaker 3:Like that I mean, I'm I'm trying to trying to wrap my head around it. Like, why did that happen that way? And, you know, it just kinda sets that groundwork of, hey, it's okay to ask a question, and it's okay to have a better understanding of what's happening. So, I mean, I think that opens up these young men's, ability to to be more engaged because they know they don't have to sit on the in the the back row of the classroom and twiddle their thumbs, and, hopefully, they can just get it to the next bell.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How how do you teach how do you teach that? Like, the asking for help, asking questions. I mean, it kinda sounds like, at least from my own experience, mentors are looking to answer questions that aren't asked. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's like, well, let me teach you the things that you're not asking me about because these are the things that you really need to know. And it's and that becomes the focus rather than how am I equipping my mentee to ask good questions. Like, exactly what you just said. Why do you do that? Is it just as simple as telling your mentee, like, hey.
Speaker 2:This is really important, like, to ask why, to ask how, to ask Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think I see a lot of it with our guys, and I'm not involved in every conversation because we're all in always in a group. But if there's somebody teaching, you know, a young man will lean over and ask another mentor, like, hey. What's what's going on? You know, they'll ask questions or whatever. So I'm not a part of every conversation.
Speaker 3:But what I feel like our mentors do really, really well is the leading by example. Man, I keep hearing this from different people, but a lot of times these young men learn things because they're caught, not taught. And so that's kind of the neat thing about our group and and my life model is, you know, it's the whole thing, do as I say, not as I do. But that's the problem is we need to be doing it right so they're seeing it right so they can continue doing it right. So I think that's, that's one neat thing about our mentors is they're setting that example of watching how it's happening.
Speaker 3:They're getting you know, the young men are catching them doing the right thing and asking the right questions and setting the right example. So that's that's kind of the model that we go off of. I mean, of course, there's times where we're like, yeah, it's not real it's not real appropriate or, hey, a better way to ask that question is. But I I try my best not to be correcting as I am setting the example.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's really good. So what share some stories from just the impact of doing advanced camp over the years. Any stories of of kids learning a skill and that leading to kinda what you said is, like, away from tunnel vision into this funnel of all of these opportunities they're opening up?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Probably the biggest one that stands out. I kinda already told the one about the farrier. The young man's gonna intern. I mean, honestly, before he came to camp, he had never done blacksmithing before.
Speaker 3:And to walk away after 4 and a half hours of beating metal with a hammer, he said, man, that was cool. It's, you know, it's not something people normally think about and know about. But the biggest one that keeps sticking out in my head is we did a general contractor camp, and it sounds like we're going to do it again this year, partner with another local business, and teaching them how to frame a wall, plumb a sink, and how to do the electrical, connections, and do a full hookup for the plug, the switch, and the light light bulb. And this last year when we did it, I had a young man that that comes. He's pretty quiet.
Speaker 3:Not pretty quiet. He's really quiet. Not very good social skills. He's just very reserved, and he kinda sticks to himself. He's not really engaged or he doesn't really get engaged unless he's engaged first, and it was really neat.
Speaker 3:He's sitting there working with a guy doing the electrical circuit and set hooking that all up, and and the guy, sitting there kinda showing him, you know, how to do the right tips on the on the the wire so you can make sure it hooks on the screw correctly and what direction to do it. And he leans over to the the teacher and says, this young man leans over to the teacher and says, you know, I've I've always wanted to be an electrician. And the teacher's like, well, I don't I'm not just an electrician. I also teach at a tech school in Arlington and in Dallas. And he's, like, man, if you wanna do this, let's let's get this figured out.
Speaker 3:And it's really neat, like, this this young man, he he wouldn't have even had the path per se to to say it to anybody unless he was in this environment with this guy who was engaged, was teaching the skills, and just opened up the ability and the opportunity to say, man, I love that. I've always wanted to do that. How do I get involved? And so that's one of the one of the really cool stories. The other thing that I've noticed we talked about earlier is that confidence piece.
Speaker 3:And I get a lot of text messages from moms or aunts or grandmas saying, hey, man, I don't know where this confident what you guys are doing, but this confidence is incredible. I had a a mom actually message me after our lawn care camp. And at lawn care, we teach how to use the equipment, how to prepare the equipment, how to take care of the equipment. And so we're doing it and, we actually have a chainsaw that was donated to us and, one of the young men pointed out and goes, I'd like to learn how to run that chainsaw. I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 3:Let's do it. So we had a a piece of wood out, a long log out, and so we're just having them cut slices off of it, just get familiar with it, how it works, and, you know, to teach them how to do the bar oil and how to do a mix of oil gas and what the different ratios look like. Is it 40 to 1 or 50 to 1? And so they're going through, and I grabbed one of the mentors and said, hey. Can you run through run this chainsaw with him?
Speaker 3:Man, this is a big chainsaw. Like, it's a lot for me to handle as an adult, and this this guy's 12. And yeah. It's it's a beast. Brand new Husqvarna.
Speaker 3:Somebody had donated it to us, but they actually bought it on Amazon and had it shipped directly to my house for a camp as a tool for advanced camp. It's super cool. And so it's neat because the next day, the mom sends me a text and says, I don't know what you guys did with him yesterday, but I've been trying to get him to help me out around the ranch. They have, like, 8 or 10 acres. It's, like, I've been trying to get him to help me out around the ranch cleaning up debris and tree limbs and and do the lawn and weed eating, and he is he is just always against it.
Speaker 3:And she sent me a picture of him starting the chainsaw to help clear brush. I'm like, that's pretty that's pretty dope. Like, at one minute, he saw mom. I don't want anything to do with it. Well, come to find out, it's probably not a I wanna be rebellious.
Speaker 3:It was a confidence thing. Like, I I don't know how to do this, and I don't wanna look silly. I think I know as a man, I don't always like to do things I know I'm gonna look silly doing. You know?
Speaker 2:Evangelism. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I know. Right? That's I yeah. That's that's one.
Speaker 3:I was thinking, though, I was totally different place. For our my I've told you I said something out earlier. My wife and I do date night every Wednesday. And so we used to take turns on who was planning it. She planned when we went roller skating.
Speaker 3:I'm like, babe, I don't know if you know. I haven't roller skated in probably 25 years. And so I'm like, man, I don't know if I wanna do this. And then you have to get to the point of, no. Not gonna know anybody here, and I'll probably never see him again anyway, so who cares?
Speaker 3:And so it's one of those things that I think just naturally in men, we are like, well, we don't wanna do something we're gonna fail at, or we're gonna look silly doing. And I'm sure that's what it was with him. As soon as we could we could set time aside to work with him on the chainsaw, show him how it worked, lift him up with words, I'm like, man, that was that was killer. Like, that was that was perfect. That's exactly how you run a chainsaw.
Speaker 3:You did an awesome job with it. We, I I can't tell you how how important it is for me to tell our young men that come to camp how proud we are of them. Yeah. To hear that from a man is a different different voice than hearing it from a mom or an aunt. And so, anyhow, building that confidence up, it just made a shift in his behavior because now he's not rebelling against it.
Speaker 3:He is embracing it because he has the confidence for it. But then also mom's super stoked because she's getting a work out of it now. So that's kinda cool.
Speaker 2:Alright. Let me check. 1, 2, 10 fingers. Alright. Hey.
Speaker 2:Great job with the chainsaw, bud.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Exactly. You got them all. Got all your toes too.
Speaker 2:So That's that's amazing, Chad. Well, as as a last kind of encouragement, you you come alongside other mentoring organizations and lead these things. So give an encouragement to a mentoring organization that's looking to implement these either on their own or with an organization like Advanced Camp.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So for for 1, I I just love to serve these young men. I feel like the sooner we can get to them and speak wisdom and life and identity into their lives, the better. And teaching these skills is our gateway to do that. So if there's any, you know, single moms ministries out there that hear this, and they say, hey.
Speaker 3:We we're serving the mom. We don't have anything for the young men. Please reach out to me. Worst case worst case, I can give you some ideas to teach these young men. Best case, you're close enough that I can travel and I can help.
Speaker 3:Either help launch an advanced camp style event or maybe we're close enough that those young men can come to our camp that we do. I have guys travel from Greenville and Garland over to Granbury. It's that important to the moms that they travel that far. They're traveling almost 2 a little over 2 hours to get to us. So that's one thing is, hey, you know, don't don't let idea and what to do, how to do it get in the way, because I'll walk you through it.
Speaker 3:What what we've done, how we do it, why we do it, what scripture we add to what do we talk about? How do we bring Jesus into turning wrenches on a car? We do it, and we can do it. Blacksmithing. There's all kinds of scripture about blacksmithing, actually, all the way back to Exodus.
Speaker 3:I mean, there's it's all over the place. And so if that's what your hurdle is, if that's what your struggle is, please reach out. I'd, at worst case, love to be a resource. But secondly, if you already have a ministry going and you're like, hey. We're we're teaching, you know, you know, sports skills.
Speaker 3:We're doing after school programs. We don't have any tangible trade skills that we do, and we would love to be able to implement that once a quarter. There is a couple, ministries I've I've helped out with, and I'd I quote partner with them. And I when I say partner, that's a very broad statement. It's come beside them and serve the same people under their watch.
Speaker 3:So, you know
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because when people think of camp Mhmm. They don't think of you showing up with a trailer of bike repair equipment and doing it on their turf. Yeah. And so I I think that's
Speaker 3:Exactly. It can be a day camp. I mean, it I've helped out another follow-up ministry, in Fort Worth, and I literally showed up with our big lifted Ram Van and 2 bicycles or 3 bicycles and a bunch of bike parts. And I've been van is gonna be the
Speaker 2:cover image of this podcast. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Absolutely. It's yeah. It's it's fun. We get a the young men love it.
Speaker 3:They love to ride in it. If there's a car to ride ride in, it's that one, but we'll see. The excursion is gonna give it a run for its money. But, I mean, we showed up, and then we taught, like, literally down the basics of changing a tire, and that's a that's a biggest thing. I mean, bikes get parked because the tube gets flat, and it literally just sits there.
Speaker 3:You replace the tube for $7, and your bike's running again. So just keep that in mind, like, we we wanna partner and and be able to serve these these young men and, ultimately, these single moms through doing our camp and and speaking in their lives. So that's that I'd say that's the encouragement. Don't let the unknown stop you from doing it. I can help with some of those unknowns, some of those questions.
Speaker 3:How does it work? What does it look like? How can you make this work with this environment? I've coached a couple other nonprofits of how to get up and going if somebody wanted to do that. But, man, I just I just have a heart for these young men that they are literally they're our future.
Speaker 3:If we can change the statistics of what they are now, which are scary, scary statistics, if we can change that for this generation and the next one, I mean, it's it's a win. So please, yeah, don't feel don't feel afraid to reach out and even just pick my brain with silly questions.
Speaker 2:So That is Chad Wallen, Advance Cam here in Texas. He's not he's not doing lavender and longhorns yet.
Speaker 3:Yet. Yeah. Unless somebody's got, like, 30 or 40 acres listening to this, and they're like, hey. We'd love to do Advance Cam.
Speaker 2:Come on. Let's go.
Speaker 3:Man, that'd be cool.
Speaker 2:Make it happen. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It's fun connecting.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And and if you want Advance Camp to partner with your program or you just wanna learn learn more, I'll put his information in the show notes so you can connect with him. So thanks for listening, guys. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Thank you.