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You know Stephen. You know Zach. But how much do you really know about our other hosts? This week, our featured host is Lt. Wayland Cubit from FACT Mentoring. Join us as Stephen and Lt. Cubit discuss how FACT Mentoring started, why he's passionate about mentoring, and how a horse played a role in his first mentoring experience.
Show Notes
You know Stephen. You know Zach. But how much do you really know about our other hosts? This week, our featured host is Lt. Wayland Cubit from FACT Mentoring. Join us as Stephen and Lt. Cubit discuss how FACT Mentoring started, why he's passionate about mentoring, and how a horse played a role in his first mentoring experience.
Find out more about FACT Mentoring:
FACT Mentoring
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Find out more about FACT Mentoring:
FACT Mentoring
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
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:Welcome back to the You Can Mentor podcast. My name is Stephen Murray, and I'm here sitting with lieutenant Wayland Cubitt from Oklahoma City. He works for Oklahoma City Police Department and runs fact mentoring. Lieutenant Wayland, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:Man, I am doing fantastic. Busy, busy day, but it is always fun chatting with you. You know, there's always that conversation you have before you hit record. That was the one we should have ever recorded.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. You you've been unpacking a a bunch of stuff going on in your mentor program. Kids getting connected through events that you've put on that you had no idea have been meeting with mentors for years. Stories of games and mentoring activities you do where you teach kids authority and you teach them leadership and you teach them how to make room for other people in the room and not just posture to act like you own the place. I'll probably add all of that stuff on the end of this episode so people can hear it because it was awesome, man.
Speaker 2:So lieutenant Whalen, I I mean, you've been on our podcast before, but now we have extended an invitation for you to be a standing host. How do you feel about that invitation?
Speaker 3:I am like, what? Are you serious? Like, the number one mentoring podcast in the world? I get to lend my what do you mean? How do I feel?
Speaker 3:I'm, like, intimidated and honored at the same time.
Speaker 2:Oh, man. You're the one with the TED Talk, man. We're we're just sitting over here in in, I don't know, like, a dark room recording podcasts, and you're out on the stage. So I don't know what you're talking about. We're so honored to have you, man.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. And if I can if I can add, my goal is to add value everywhere I go. And so if you believe if you guys think that I can add value to the Midterm story, man, I want in. I want in.
Speaker 2:100%. Well, tell tell us about Oklahoma City. Tell us about just your background, and let us know about fact mentoring if someone's meeting you for the first time today. I know we've had you on the podcast before. That was probably a 100 episodes ago, and that's not an, overstatement.
Speaker 3:Reboot it because nothing I mean, I'm like, you get more change out of a nickel than you do out of William and Cuba. Right? So not much has changed. Let's see. Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3:Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful city. I grew up here. Yes, I've traveled. I I I tell people that I grew up as the black leader with the beaver, like mom and dad. And I had food when I got home and it was just very structured and it was, it was all of the mischievous things that boys do.
Speaker 3:I went to one school, my entire life from kindergarten all the way through high school, the greatest high school in Oklahoma City, Millwood junior senior high. I went there to kindergarten and 1st grade and 2nd grade and everywhere. So we graduated, I graduated with 75 people and those 75 people are probably was in kindergarten with us. So, you know, it was really, really I know now I felt like it's normal, but I know now that's pretty unique. But I've always wanted to be a police officer before.
Speaker 2:Okay. So that was from the beginning. You wanted to be a police officer.
Speaker 3:12 years old. 12 years old. Come on. On. I remember thinking about it, dreaming about it.
Speaker 3:Of course, I kept it to myself because that was not a popular thing to to want to be in my community. So or in my family, should should I say for sure? So I kept it to myself and kinda secretly admired it. But before that, Steven, what would you think that I wanted to be before I was 12?
Speaker 2:I mean, I would say you you probably wanted to be an astronaut.
Speaker 3:Close. Close. I wanted to be a stuntman.
Speaker 2:A stuntman. Come on. Well, yeah, I mean, same kind of profile. So
Speaker 3:Crazy. Yeah. Like, how I can can I really jump off of that and live? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Until my daddy stops, tells me, boy, get down off the house. That's not smart. Yeah. You know?
Speaker 2:That's great, man. I love it. So so, I mean, I I don't know. When you became a police officer, was that when you, I mean, you become 2021. I don't know how old you have to be to be a police
Speaker 3:officer. 21, but I was not I was not although I tried to get on, that that that young god knew that I was way too immature to be a police officer at that age. And so I didn't I didn't get to become a police officer till I was 26, 27 years old.
Speaker 2:I'm like, what was I doing when I was 21? I'm like, serving snow cones or something. So, yeah, can't imagine being a police officer.
Speaker 3:No. No. My mentality remember, stuntman, cop, 21 gun, probably not the right combination. God knew what he was doing. Yeah.
Speaker 3:God knew what he was doing. Yes.
Speaker 2:Tell tell me about your family. Like, I mean, you all we know right now is that you're 12 years old. You wanted to to be a cop. So tell me about high school. Tell me about just growing up.
Speaker 2:I mean
Speaker 3:Looking back, I I know now, you know, I was friends with everybody, and I wasn't a popular kid. Like, I wasn't, like, the most popular kid or not like that, but I was just friends with all it was everybody. The one the least of them and the most popular of them. You know, I was just kinda that guy. Like, I have the most wonderful wife in the world.
Speaker 2:I know I know if
Speaker 3:we it's not a competition. Woah. Woah.
Speaker 2:Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah.
Speaker 2:Come on. Come on, lieutenant. I know. You haven't met Katie.
Speaker 3:I know. That's what I'm saying. I don't wanna get beat the competition like the the wife of the Olympics. I don't wanna get into that, but but my wife gets a gold medal. And the reason why is because she puts up with me.
Speaker 3:And let me tell you, that's some heavy lifting. That's some heavy lifting.
Speaker 2:I can imagine you coming coming into bed and you're, like, talking about mentoring principles or, I don't know, some lesson that that you have.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yep.
Speaker 2:And she's just sitting there like, yeah. Okay.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yep. That's exactly that's exactly it. Not only do I come home with a mentoring story, a few times I've come home with kids that she had to feed and bathe and sometimes a house and even adopt.
Speaker 2:Right? My gosh.
Speaker 3:We've had foster kids. We've had 8 foster and adopt kids on top of our 4, and we we just celebrated our 29th, anniversary.
Speaker 2:Wow. Congratulations, man.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's it's been fantastic. And we're praying to god that he does not allow us to bring any more kids home. So we're we just wanna mentor and not raise any more kids. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I feel like, I mean, I've I've heard that more recently. People have been praying for God to close doors, not open them. They're like, lord
Speaker 3:Isn't that crazy? He doesn't listen, but he wants to do right? He does it because we've had that prayer after the first couple of foster kids, and he we kept on having to get them. So I know he's gonna do what he wants to do.
Speaker 2:So That's good. That's good, man. So, man, 8 8 foster kids, 4 biological man, I'm sure you got a ton of stories there, but just I mean, you sound like a father. You got a a father's heart, and you're running a mentoring program. So, I mean, it's incredible.
Speaker 3:It's a lot of miles in the mentoring world. Right? Because it I mean, even as a parent, you're parenting what you're mentoring to. Right? You're guiding.
Speaker 3:And so there's I can tell you here's can I tell you the mistake that I made in that journey, in my mentoring, and I can say this now, you will not have this problem in your mentoring, but my mentoring was not necessarily was not through a faith based organization? So the official mentoring came through the police department. And so I was praying for my kids secretly. Like, I get up in the morning and I'd be thinking about little Steven and and I'd pray and I'm like and I do all that kind of stuff. And then I and God would provide answers and wisdom and the opportunity to pour into Steven.
Speaker 3:And and then I would get with Steven to do all that kind of stuff. And I and when Steven had some success and asked me about that success, I never said I never shared my faith with them. I I made that mistake. And so there's there's for the first half of my mentoring journey that I, think my official mentoring journey, I'm upset at myself because I never gave God credit.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:When he gets all of the credit. And when the so I think that I've left some kids out there that went, man, sergeant cube, officer cube, lieutenant cube. He he did these wonderful things for me, and I love the fact that he did it. But I want them to be able to say, God did it. Not not not Whalen did it, not lieutenant cube, but did it.
Speaker 3:And so I don't have to and I know in in spaces that people are different I don't have to lead with my faith, but I have to include my faith.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's good.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:That's good. Give credit. And, I mean, point people to we had a guy on. He was like, we are the resource to the source. So Yeah.
Speaker 2:We we don't have to we don't have to take credit. We just gotta point people in the right direction.
Speaker 3:That's right. That's right. And I and I just didn't do that well. I knew it. I was doing it, but I never told my kids to look that direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's good, man. So where I mean, you obviously start working for Oklahoma City Police Department. Has that been your spot your entire career?
Speaker 3:No. No. No. No. I mean, I'm I I wanted to this was not in the picture.
Speaker 3:No. This although I was mentoring outside of the police department, I was doing it believe it or not, mentoring started in my life when I was 16 years old.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. I
Speaker 3:started mentoring. Didn't know didn't have a terminology. I was just volunteering at a at a at a children's home, at a group home in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 2:At 16.
Speaker 3:At 16. At 16. This must I must have told you this story before. Did I tell you the story? Okay.
Speaker 2:I know nothing about you, lieutenant Whalen. All all I know is your your 5 or 6 p's that you taught me. It was like presence, power. I got 2 of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay. So that was part of the first question. So I got in like I said, I as a popular kid, we always kinda mischievous, and we were out horseback riding near Oklahoma City, me and a couple of my best friends.
Speaker 2:That's what people do in Oklahoma. I mean, they just ride horses.
Speaker 3:And Not necessarily. I don't want people but I'm a city boy that happened to know a little bit about riding horses because my family comes from come from southeast Oklahoma. But the but my other 2 buddies are city boy. They didn't know about ride horses. So that's the why when we rode the horses, they gave me the the biggest horse and the hardest horse to control because I had a little horse and experience.
Speaker 3:Well, after we rode these horses all day long and all that kind of stuff, the horse gets away from me, gets get the bits stuck in its mouth. I'm not able to stop the horse. He's running to get back to the barn, and he runs into this blindsided by a chicken wire fence. So that stops the momentum of the horse, throws me over the horse, and then the horse falls completely on me.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:I and I and I was 15 and crushes my pelvis. Didn't know if I was paralyzed, didn't know how extensive the injuries were. I'm in the emergency room. My parents are there. All of my family is calling from from out of state to check on me.
Speaker 3:And I have my my mother's sister. My aunt is a minister in St. Louis. And she was one of those family members that called. I got tubes in my up my nose and down my throat.
Speaker 3:And and I, just want to be left alone. And my mother says, here, your aunt wants to talk to you. And I go, no, I do not want to talk to her. And we do this back and forth, pushing the phone to my head and I push it back and she pushes over and I push it back. And I can't say no.
Speaker 3:So she finally all you have to do is listen. And so, okay, I'm listening. And I am annoyed. I'm mad. Well, my aunt begins to prophesize to me and pray for me.
Speaker 3:And, Steven, this is what she says. She says, Waylon and it very dramatic. She's a very dramatic speaker.
Speaker 2:The prophetic people are always dramatic.
Speaker 3:She is. And she and she begins to tell me what God is telling her about me. And it's she said, you are going to be instrumental in some young man's life. You are going to change the life of some young man. I want you to feel that.
Speaker 3:And I'm like, and and here's the thing. I don't know what she's talking about, but I am crying uncontrollably. It pricked my heart. Soon as she gets done praying, my parents don't know why I'm crying. I think they think I'm crying because I have to listen to this.
Speaker 3:I'm crying from what she's saying because it's convicting me. I know it's true.
Speaker 2:Or they thought you were crying because a a a car with 4 legs fell on you. Like, I mean, a Ford. To Ford.
Speaker 3:Yes. They have no idea where the stairs are from. And so I get off the phone and that's that. I get well. I'm 16, 17 years old.
Speaker 3:And I to right now, cannot tell you why I turned into this little dark parking lot close to my house and to discover this group home back there. And it's all of these kids, half half of which were African American young young boys that were having to live there because they couldn't do with their family for whatever reason. I don't know that at that point, I had no idea what a group on really is. That does not with their parents. And the director there talked to her and she goes, you should volunteer here and not volunteer.
Speaker 3:And they approved me as a mentor through the background check because I had no background. I mean, I was just 16. And so I started bringing, when me and my friends would play football, like, we're gonna go play at the group home. So I would bring a group carloads of boy men up to the group home. We play cards and dominoes, and we play football.
Speaker 3:And and I'd bring my my mentee that they matched me with to my house to eat dinners and, and just included him in my life. At, at that time, I had no idea what I was doing, no idea what I was doing. And I have no idea where that young man is today. I can see him in my I mean, I know what he looks like in my mind, but I I don't I don't know. I went to college and that that whole thing ended.
Speaker 3:That place closed down and was repurposed. So I've been doing it in some level my entire, adult life.
Speaker 2:That is crazy.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Crazy. Yes. And so, I I mean, you're showing up to this group, a 16 year old mentor, which I I mean, I just love what that speaks to, I mean, the future of any any boy that's in high school right now of if we could just get aunts to to speak prophetically into boys' lives when they're in high school and say, hey, you're gonna be influential in some kid's life. And because we know that's true. Everybody everybody can be that.
Speaker 2:Everybody's gonna be influential in somebody's life, positively or negatively. But but I just think her willingness to to speak that into you in your in your dark moment, I mean, she probably didn't see where where you just have now. No.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm thinking back, and I was like, if she was right, which boy was it? Is it my son? Is it, you know, which boy is it? You know, I don't know. Which young man has will it will it be?
Speaker 3:You know? So I don't I don't I don't know. But that's that's been I can't believe I didn't tell you that the first interview we had.
Speaker 2:That's powerful, man. And Yep. And I I like how you just casually said, well, I healed from from this injury. I mean, a horse fell on you and crushed your pelvis, and you just well and so now I ended up at a children's home, and I'm throwing baseball or football with a kid.
Speaker 3:Right. Right.
Speaker 2:You're crazy, lieutenant Whelan. Come on.
Speaker 3:There was a stuntman in me somewhere. Yeah. Back there. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm I'm actually from Oklahoma, so I've seen some horses in my day, but I would not wanna be thrown off of 1 nor have it be caught underneath 1. So that's that's crazy, man.
Speaker 3:It was terrible. It it was terrible.
Speaker 2:Have you done have you done any more horseback riding since then?
Speaker 3:Listen. I had decided after healing from that that I was done with horses. But because in Oklahoma because in Oklahoma, you have to come across them from time to time, And that fear was not going to the dump. I mean, I would just be scared and I went, I am not going to be scared of horse. So I got back on a horse to ride a horse just to say it didn't defeat me.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, yeah, I'm not I'm not terrified of them anymore, but I don't ride them. I don't really ride them. I I guess I would, but I don't need them for transportation or anything. So we're good.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that's in right now. There's a lot of cops riding horses now. So I
Speaker 3:mean, I have a I have a new man that I mentor that is all into it. He is much into the horseback ride. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I always wondered, like, is is there just, like, a a horse stall at the police department, and you guys are just feeding those over there? Or what where do you keep
Speaker 3:Yeah. But I don't wanna have anything you're asking questions, Donna. I don't wanna anything about the horse. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Oh, man. I love it. Well, I want people to get to know you, lieutenant Whalen. So how about you fast forward into just what you're doing currently, with FACT Mentoring? I know you're you're kind of in charge of community engagement.
Speaker 2:And would you just let people know kinda your vision
Speaker 3:behind FACT Mentoring? Yeah. So the the police department years ago, when when we started this 2007 or so, they we we had had we had had an increase in drop by shooting and gang activity, particularly on a couple of sides of town. And so we had a incident where a a baby sleep in their crib was hit by a stray bullet. And it just sent it was just heartbreaking, obviously.
Speaker 3:And so the the police chief was like, man, there's no way the community wants to help. The community wants to volunteer, and there's no way to volunteer for the, for the police department. We don't have an avenue for you to do that other than to just call and tell us what you know. And around that time, the, the police chief recognized my off duty community involvement stuff that I was doing through my church. And I happened to be the youth director at my church.
Speaker 3:And I threw, I say, I threw the church through a teen summit. And so we gathered these, all of the teens at the church and in the neighborhood and, said, what do y'all wanna do? And they wanted to talk to community. They wanted to talk to city leaders and their main concern was youth violence and gangs. So they wanted to talk to city councils and mayors and police chiefs and senators and congressmen.
Speaker 3:And And so we just reached out to all of those people that we could and said, will you come to the Teen Summit and let these these teams ask you questions? And I reached out to the police chief and he came and he said, you know, what time are you doing it? Well, it's a it's a teen thing. So we can get you on about midnight because we're going all night long. And so he comes at midnight, and there's probably a 150 kids and parents out there.
Speaker 3:And he was impressed by that and began to watch. Now here's where I was working at the time. I was working undercover policing at the time. I was an undercover police officer. And so after that event, he called me and he says, you have a way with kids, you have a way with community.
Speaker 3:You're respected at the police department. What can you do to help us with this gang problem? And what would you do? And I said, well, I would probably do this and I'd probably do that. And and he said, okay, you're reassigned.
Speaker 3:Go go create a go create a unit, our program. And I went, what? I don't know how to do that. And so he supported me. I went I traveled a few places, looked at some other police department to see, and I took a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a whole lot of prayer, put some stuff together, and he put the resources behind me and and and and that's where we are now.
Speaker 3:So it started out as a gang prevention program. And I guess you could still call it that, but I do not refer to it as a gang prevention program. In fact, we changed the name to youth outreach program because we don't want kids being labeled because they're hanging out with police officers in this program, label as gang members or trouble kids. And so we might have some all of the kids maybe come from inner city or certain or poverty or some ZIP codes or something like that, but they're not. They just wanna be mentored.
Speaker 3:Right? They just want wisdom, positive caring adults in their in their life. And so it's a youth outreach program that we do here. And we have 2 community centers in our in in those two parts of town, in low income areas that is accessible to a couple of schools and accessible to a couple of apartment complexes. The kids can access us anytime they want to by walking over here.
Speaker 3:And that's that's that's what we do.
Speaker 2:Come on, man. Well, I I mean, undercover cop to, okay, run a mentoring program for for kids who want guidance, who want mentorship, who maybe not don't have it or would look for it in the wrong place. I mean, I think everybody's looking for for direction, but who are you gonna get it from?
Speaker 3:Yep. Yep. And and we we we know, like, you know, this, that somebody is gonna take guidance from they're gonna everybody's gonna take guidance from somebody. And if you lose it, leave it to happenstance. There's no telling where they're gonna get it from.
Speaker 3:And so why should the police department be, or any police department who has the resources not be intentional about, I want you to be influenced by us.
Speaker 2:You're going
Speaker 3:to be influenced by somebody. And so we want you to, and so one of the, when I early on, there was the we had a high profile incident. We had a high profile incident where a young man in middle school and 2 young men in middle school went in to rob a pharmacy. And when they during the pharmacy, the robbery, the clerk, the end up taking a gun out and shooting one of the kids and killing one of the kids, and the other ran out. And as they investigated this, how did they get there?
Speaker 3:What is it? They were they were a 30 year old man drove these kids to this pharmacy to commit this robbery. Now whether we wanna admit it or not, that was mentorship. That was mentorship. And so I said no more.
Speaker 3:We're we're gonna, we're gonna mentor. If we're gonna mentor, we need to, we need to be intentional about making sure we drive them to school, the football practice, to the tutoring program in other places besides to do what would end up happening in that pharmacy that
Speaker 2:That that's a very visceral story to me because my my mentee, his his best friend was 18, was shot and killed this last year, and was was hanging out with a guy who was about 25, 26, who was just in the wrong group. And yeah. I mean, you never know where you're gonna end up because of the people that are influencing you. And and I wonder how much of that looked in a way. And it's like officers it's like you guys run toward the fire.
Speaker 2:You got when everyone's running away, y'all are running toward it. And I say fire. You're you're an officer. I mean I mean, like toward Yeah.
Speaker 3:You need to specify.
Speaker 2:Toward the situation.
Speaker 3:Gunfire. Gunfire. Don't say fire. Because you don't want people to think we're firing. Right?
Speaker 2:But but in a way, that that is a culture of responsibility that that mentors feel, that people that get into foster care feel. It's, I'm gonna be a part of the solution. I wanna run toward the issue, not away from it. And, I mean, obviously, your hope is is not, just for officers to solve all the problems, but really to be an example for the community of what does it look like to engage the issue, to give guidance to boys who don't have it, to to mentor. And and so that example, just as I mean, police officers, they keep the peace, but in a perfect world, they would set an example within a community of what that looks like of how to build relationships, how to to see ourselves as a community, neighbors, how to love one another and and create those connections.
Speaker 2:And so, I mean, I think it makes perfect sense in everything that you said about who you are that that mentorship would be the value that you're trying to incorporate within your police department. So I love it, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Ma'am, thank you so much. It it's I I and and I and I know you run a great mentoring program, and it's far more advanced than than than what we're doing. And there's other mentoring programs out there. And and and we get a lot of credit in our city for the work that we do.
Speaker 3:But but let me just be real honest. Your mentoring program and my mentoring program and their mentoring program and that program over there, programs are programs are programs are programs. I have I you rarely ever hear people say the transformation happened in my life because of a program. They usually point to a person. Right?
Speaker 3:And so that means mentoring is relational. And we have to know how to equip people for relationships. Like, we can build a program. So so we have a a platform for those relationships to to to to happen. So thank God for the programs because that's the onboard for the for the connections.
Speaker 3:But we have to do relationships. Right? And that horrible story that I just told you is a 30 year old man somehow had the opportunity to build a relationship without a program that that that influenced the behavior that rocked this community, that changed the family. 2 families. The pharmacist the pharmacist is in prison for what he did.
Speaker 3:The other kid that ran away is in prison. And then we had a funeral for the 1. The man that walked him in there is in look at all the lies that was changed because of relationship.
Speaker 2:Man.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. We have to do the value of relationships are are key. So I love programs. I'm gonna need to build programs.
Speaker 3:I need a bit of structure. So the relationships and I know you do some matching and and all that kind of stuff. That's fantastic. But I know you spend a lot of time training mentors. And and the whole purpose of this this podcast to say, do the relationship well.
Speaker 3:Do the relationship well because that ultimately is what where transformation happens.
Speaker 2:Amen. Amen. Come on. You can mentor.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's right.
Speaker 2:And I I do think that I'm encouraged you jumping on as a host to be an example to to our listeners and sharing about how you build relationships. But I also know you're gonna have people come on the podcast that you'll interview that have embodied that relational aspect in in the mentorship that they're doing that, I mean, really is honorable and worthy worthy to be followed. And so I'm excited about the people you're gonna bring on to the podcast, lieutenant Whelan, and would love for you to interview your staff, interview kids that have been impacted through through your mentoring program and and other volunteers and people that you know. Is is there anything that our listeners should know that you are passionate about that we haven't talked about yet? I mean, horseback riding and relationships.
Speaker 3:Horseback riding is probably last on the passion list. Right? But, you know, I really do I really do care about a lot of things, but mentoring, you know, is is right up there at the top. Yeah. But you probably hear me a lot of times talk about or it'll it'll leak out even though it's not necessarily the focus.
Speaker 3:But what we can do as good citizens to close the gap relationally when it comes to race. Right? I'm not gonna run away from those hard subjects. And and and I'm sure you will see or hear me talk about unity and equity and doing relationships cross culturally from time to time on this podcast because I believe that we can do it better, but we can't do it talking about race in silos. We have to talk about it together.
Speaker 3:And and and if we talk about it with our kids and introduce them, get them used to identifying the implicit unconscious things that they might be saying about gender, race, religion, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Then maybe one day, we plant the seed that eliminates race altogether. Right? I I I tell this story and this is and it's a good one to end on. Like, you'll you'll we'll close the door on this story.
Speaker 3:Bring it home. I went on a mission trip years ago, and I did not see any reason to leave the country for mission. When I'm looking at all the mission in my neighborhood and where I work and with these kids that I was serving, so I rejected the opportunity to go on it. I thought it was ridiculous. But my mentor was the one that was offering me the opportunity to go.
Speaker 3:Right? This is a guy I claimed as a mentor. And he said, don't worry about the cost. I'm gonna take care of it. And then I said, well, I will only go if you sponsor me and one of my mentees.
Speaker 3:He said done without hesitating. I thought doubling the costs would scare him off. And he said no. So I took, my one of my mentees, his name is Malcolm. Great young man now, father now, and and took him with me to just over the border into Mexico.
Speaker 3:And our job was going to be building a casita, a one room house where a family didn't have a house. And we were doing this with cinder blocks and hardly no equipment. It was all done by hand and and it was 15 or 20 of us that went down there. And me and this guy were doing it. And after end of day 1, me and my mentee were the the family we were helping was so thankful and gracious, and they expressed so much gratitude.
Speaker 3:It was just such a great feeling for what we were doing that we were like, we went to my mentor and we said, we're in you. We know that you lead groups like this every year and all over the place. We're in. Next year, call us up. We're we're I don't don't ever leave us again.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry. I didn't give you any resistance. And I said, what are we doing next year? Because I've heard that you dig wells. I've told you you do all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:What are we doing next year? He said, oh, no, I don't we don't do any of that stuff anymore. All I do is this. All we do is build Casitas. I said, well, we've done this.
Speaker 3:Let's do something else. I said, take us to go dig wells where you dig wells. He says, well, I don't do that anymore. And I go, why, why don't you dig wells anymore? He said, well, because we get these group of 15 to 20 people and we go and we go to dig the wells and our job would be to dig the trench.
Speaker 3:And at the end of 3 days, when we get done, all these 20 people can look back and all they have is a trench and it's, they work real hard. They do all the digging and they do all this kind of stuff. And we'll leave in another group of coming in and lays the pipe and they do all. And when they leave another group comes in and lays gravel and they do that kind kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:But it's several groups down the
Speaker 3:road usually before actually any water actually is flowing to the people that we came to serve. So they never ever get to see the finished product ever. And they're usually leave really dissatisfied. Right. They did a lot of work and didn't get anything out of it.
Speaker 3:So in Casitas at the end of 3 days, we will have a house. Right. We will get to sit and you all will feel so good and you got your finished product and all that kind of stuff. And, and so I think about that story all the time when I'm, when I'm talking to, new volunteer mentors, is do you wanna dig wells, or do you wanna build casitas? Right?
Speaker 3:You have to recognize that the work that you're doing with this kid right now, you may be laying the groundwork, digging the trench, but you may never ever, ever, ever drink the water from the well that you're digging. Right? That's just your job. Just do your job. Right?
Speaker 3:We will never we may never ever see the finished product. The finished product really is up to God. We just have to dig the well, the trench. And so if you're coming here to build Besitas, go somewhere else. We're digging wells in this program.
Speaker 2:Let's go. Come on.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Man,
Speaker 2:that's a good word. Lieutenant Waylon Cubitt, fact mentoring fact mentoring Oklahoma City Police Department. You are the man. How can people reach you? I mean, they're gonna hear from you.
Speaker 2:We're gonna tag you in every episode that you you host. But but just if anyone after listening to this wants to connect with you, how can they reach you?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I'm on Facebook, Wayland Qubit. On Facebook, I do a weekly live conversations with Qubit, highlighting great people here in Oklahoma City. Some great topics, some challenging topics, some just fun topics, but every it's live every Tuesday night. They can get me on Facebook, Instagram at fact mentoring 1235.
Speaker 3:No. No. It mentoring 1235. Not fact. That's mentoring 1235.
Speaker 3:That's there. I just kinda post all kinds of stuff and then WQ Bit on Twitter. Reach out. I love I love to connect.
Speaker 2:You're on Twitter. Gosh. You're so cool.
Speaker 3:No. I'm not good at Twitter. No. I think you can be good at Twitter. I've seen people good at Twitter.
Speaker 3:That that's not me. No. No. I'm just on there.
Speaker 2:Well, Lieutenant Whelan, welcome to the You Can Mentor host family. So glad to have you and look forward to hearing the interviews that you have pop up here every once in a while. So look forward to hearing lieutenant Whelan's voice and his stories and wisdom listeners. And and, I would encourage you to share this episode if it encouraged you, if the stories touched you and and maybe there's someone in your life who's a mentor who is is digging the trench and isn't seeing the the full story, hasn't hasn't drank, the water yet, and you could just encourage them by by sending them this this episode. So thanks for coming on, Lieutenant Whalen.
Speaker 2:You can mentor.