Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Suzanne serves as Co-founder and Director of Loving People at Behind Every Door in Dallas, TX. Suzanne shares stories from decades of experience mentoring kids from hard places through incarnational inner city ministry.
Show Notes
_______________
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.
_______________
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:Welcome back to the You Can Mentor podcast. My name is Steven, and I have a very special sweet guest today. Her name is Suzanne Wallace. How are you, Suzanne?
Speaker 3:I'm good.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you're here. You are amazing. You have amazing stories. Zach thinks the world of you. I think the world of you, honestly, and I barely even know you.
Speaker 2:So, I'm really excited mentors. As you listen to today's episode, you're gonna hear inspiring stories that are going to encourage you in your own mentor relationship. And so, Suzanne, just to start out, who is Suzanne Wallace? Can you paint a picture for our listeners who you are?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm a wife. I have an amazing husband. When I married him, he was in dental school. So we've gone through a little bit of change in our lives with that. I'm a mom.
Speaker 3:I have 3 children, 2 boys and a girl. And I have 8 grandchildren. So I'm a Gigi.
Speaker 2:Grandchildren. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. It's awesome.
Speaker 2:Now did he give you free dental work while you were dating? Or
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. That was the park.
Speaker 2:Okay. That's good. That's awesome. My my wife's mother is a dental hygienist, so I got the hookup on that. So that's great.
Speaker 2:Well, tell us about your grandchildren, your children. What's who's your favorite?
Speaker 3:Oh, who's that? That's not fair. That's not fair. But they're they're all amazing, of course. I just love watch I think my one of my favorite things in life is watching my children parent.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:I think they're amazing parents, so there's a great joy in that.
Speaker 2:Well, I wonder if the the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So well, Suzanne, you're the cofounder, and I love your title. You're the director of loving people at behind every door, the most amazing title I've ever heard. Can you share with our listeners how you co founded this organization and what what led to that, you guys starting that in Dallas?
Speaker 3:Yeah. There was a man named Dean Wilson that, came from California that had a vision, and his vision was to come into low income apartment complexes and to just be Jesus with skin on and to, love the residents well and to see what we could do to make life better. And when he came, he there was a lunch where he shared this with some friends. My husband was invited to that that lunch table. And when he came home and told me about it, I said, alright, if if this thing happens, I'm in.
Speaker 3:And so what happened after that was there was about 5 couples that just began to get together and just pray. None of us had the ability to put anything together, but we did have the ability to pray. And so we just prayed over, I don't know, maybe 6 months, maybe longer. And God began to do some amazing things that was just totally outside of our capability. And he began to put put this together.
Speaker 3:And so I became the 1st community director in one of these apartment complexes, Willowpond Apartments. It was a little bit like jumping into the deep end of the pool and trying to figure out how to swim to the side because none of us had a template. None of us knew how to do this. And my partner that was there with me and I were the only 2 white people in a an apartment complex of African Americans, which I really knew nothing about. And so it was a steep learning curve for sure.
Speaker 2:It's awesome. Well, I'm excited to hear more stories from Willow Pond. Mhmm. And I know I spent some time over at Willow Pond, but now it's it's not Willow Pond anymore.
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 2:I guess that happens with apartment complexes. Mhmm. Someone buys them, and they develop them. And section 8 housing becomes something else, and housing is probably not something we're gonna talk about much on this episode, but working in apartment complex communities is a very challenging and rewarding place to invest your life, and so I'm excited to hear more stories about that. Before we get into all of your stories, I wanna ask you, what is your favorite mentoring scripture and why?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it would be Psalm 1037. And what it says is that he, God made his his ways. He made known his ways to Moses, but his acts to the sons of Israel. And, you know, when you think about that, what is the difference between somebody knowing somebody's acts or deeds and knowing their ways? If you looked on our behind every door website, you would probably be able to learn a lot about what I do.
Speaker 3:I oversee, our core components, which is literacy and social emotional learning, discipleship, and discovery. So you could look on there and say, well, you know, she helps develop strategies for those areas. She, probably meets with those people that oversee those areas. She probably makes sure that they get training, that they have what they need, the resources that they need. You could find out a lot about what I just do, but you wouldn't know me.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And that's the difference is that, the difference between Israel knowing God's deeds and Moses knowing his ways is that he actually made himself known to to Moses. And my husband has, helped me understand that that Hebrew word ways actually means a long slow walk. So that's what Moses and God had. And to me, that's just the definition of mentoring is a long slow walk.
Speaker 2:I love the picture you shared of being Jesus with skin on in a community as well. In a way we're not just wanting to help people ascent to an understanding of what god's done, but who he is. And I think that that's something that you've been faithful to do. I I don't know how long you've been in Dallas, but I imagine you've been here for decades serving in these communities, serving this community and mentoring. And so I'm excited for our listeners to not just know your deeds, but to know your ways, Suzanne.
Speaker 2:So could you tell our listeners your testimony? Mhmm. How the Lord moved in your life and led you to love kids so well in Dallas.
Speaker 3:Well, I was saved in college, then John and I married. And as I said, he was in dental school at the time, so that's what brought us from Oklahoma to, Dallas was Baylor Dental School. We then were a part of a group of people, that had a desire to really come into a low income neighborhood, love people and to make and have an impact in their life for the gospel. But we wanted to do that by actually living in the, in the neighborhood ourselves. And so, 1979, probably 25, 30, I don't know, of us all just left where we were living and moved into a low income neighborhood in East Dallas because that that was really the desire of our heart.
Speaker 3:Now I will say at the day when we moved in, I had a 3 year old, a 2 year old, and a 3 day old baby. Wow. We moved into a triplex that we were going to convert into a single family dwelling. So I remember standing there in the upstairs hall with my 3 year old, 2 year old, and my newborn baby in my arms and my husband with an ax. And he's taking that ax to the wall and he goes, just a minute, boys, I'm gonna show you your bedroom.
Speaker 3:And he axes through the the wall to show them their new bedroom. They thought it was great. We also moved in next door to a family that was represented generational poverty. I think I had a very, all of us had a very idealistic goal that we're gonna come and impact this neighborhood. And really, I feel like over the next 10 years that probably I had very little impact on the neighborhood.
Speaker 3:The impact the neighborhood had a huge impact on me and primarily was this family next door. You know, I really feel like poverty isn't an issue of how much change is in your pocket. Primarily, poverty is an issue of mindsets. You have to be mentored into what those mindsets are, and that's what my neighbor did for me. She mentored me.
Speaker 3:She was my mentor over the next 10 years to really help me understand the mindsets that really compile poverty. Mhmm. We were there. Life happened with 3 small children. I think we got more involved with just trying to make life work with kids than impacting the neighborhood.
Speaker 3:10 years later, I was minding my own business, standing in the Safeway grocery store line. And I saw a magazine, it was D Magazine, and it had a picture of a Hispanic, a young Hispanic gangster. And at this point, this was the time in Dallas when the gang activity was at a high pitch, and it was very true in our neighborhood. So much so that we were hearing gunfire all the time on the weekends, and a lot of times just during the week, I would, If somebody came to visit us on the weekends I would kind of tell them to stand away from the windows because we had had a number of our friends that had bullets go through their houses during that time period. But here on this D Magazine was a picture of a junior high guy that had joined a gang, and that was a common gang that I knew, the East Side Locos.
Speaker 3:When I read the article, it absolutely pierced my heart. This was a story about a young boy that had dropped out of middle school, long middle school, because he was dyslexic. He couldn't read. At that time, I was employed by a a private school for kids with learning disabilities and that's what I did was remediate dyslexia. And I just thought what in the world am I doing?
Speaker 3:I'm in a school where lots of people could replace me, but here is this boy in my neighborhood. His parents don't have the money to send him to a private school, and and I have the skill set that he needs. So I go to my husband and I said, John, I want I know what I wanna do. I wanna teach gangsters to read. And he goes, long silence.
Speaker 3:Well, what am I supposed to do, buy you a bulletproof vest? And I said, well, I don't know. I just know that's really, you know, what I wanna do. So I could tell he was not big on this idea, but I thought, you know what? I'm in a great situation because if this is God, I know my husband hears the Lord.
Speaker 3:If this is really God, he'll move his heart. And if it's not God, if this is just a crazy idea, well then this is my protection. So I thought, alright, God, you take it from here. You know, I'm in a good place. Well, a number of things happened over the next 5 months, probably 5 events.
Speaker 3:I'll share one of them. One of them was I had a dream that looking back on it, I would say changed the trajectory of my life. And in this dream, I was walking with a man. I looked up and I saw 3 children. Now, as I mentioned, I have 3 children.
Speaker 3:These were not my children, but they were 3 children. And they were in a house and I knew that the house was getting ready to explode. And my first impulse was, oh, no. I've got to go get these kids out of the house. But then I had a thought, and the thought was, oh, wait.
Speaker 3:If I go try to get these children out of this house, that's gonna explode. I might get hurt in the process. So selfishly, I thought, oh, wait a minute. And then I turned to this man and I said to this man, and anyway, those aren't my children. Well, the man turned to me and he whispered something in my ear.
Speaker 3:Now, I can't tell you what he said to me. I don't know what he said to me. But I will tell you that this man had it was like a sweatshirt and it was like blood all over his sweatshirt. And I really believe that this man was Jesus, and I don't know what he said to me, but I do know that it totally changed my heart. And when I looked back at these children, all of a sudden, every feeling of wanting to protect my own children, every desire for, like, no, I don't want just what's okay for my children.
Speaker 3:I want the best thing for my children. Everything that I had for my own 3 children was suddenly attached to these 3 children. And I just thought, oh, I'm going. And so at the end of the dream, I was on my way to get them out. And what really had happened, I think, was I think I got an impartation.
Speaker 3:I think that suddenly that that and I knew that these children were the were poverty's children. I knew that they were the children in my neighborhood. And suddenly, those children were my children. Wow. I won't go into the other things that happened over those months, but, please, please.
Speaker 3:October of of that year, I just knew that that this had to do with my, somehow I knew that this had to do with the elementary school that was in my neighborhood and with the, the special ed classroom because that's where the kids with dyslexia would would be sent. Well, in October of that year, I received a call from one of my friends and she said, oh, you won't believe what's happened. I know it's October when you usually don't get a job with DISD, but I've just gotten a job with DISD. And they've asked me to come to Lipscomb Elementary School and the special ed depart the special ed department there has been shut down, but they've asked me to open it back up and open up the room. And I said, so I have been praying over this room for 6 months.
Speaker 3:And when I told her what was in my heart to do, I said, if you have any sort of opportunity to just share that at school, you know, we'll do. Well, to my surprise, by that afternoon, I got a call and it was from the assistant principal. And she said, you know, miss Shepherd has told me about what you your desire. Why don't you come up here and talk to me about it? So on the way up there, I thought, okay, I don't know how to exactly say what I need to say.
Speaker 3:How do I put in code the the God part of this whole message? So I get up there and she, says so. Her first thing she says is miss Shepherd has told me that God spoken to you and told you to come to our school. I thought, well, my cover has been blown. So I just said, yes, that's that's right.
Speaker 3:So by the end of that conversation, she had said, well, what do you what would you like? And I said, I said, well, what I'd like is I'd like you to set up a couple of reading classes with kids that you know that are in gang families because I knew that this was always a matter of family, that the older kids really were mentors to those younger children to bring them into the men the gang lifestyle. And what I felt clarity that was coming to the to the really younger brothers. So I said, if you would find those kids that you know are in gang families and that are delighted in reading, what I'd love to do is is, pull them out and do a special reading class with them. Now let me pause to say that what had happened before me approaching this principle was I went back to my husband.
Speaker 3:And I told them, I said, okay, you remember that conversation we had last spring? Here's all these things that have happened over the summer. And Zoe's just called me, and here's what she said. And he was quiet for a moment. He said, this is God and you need to do it.
Speaker 3:So that really cleared the way for that conversation with this assistant principal. So what happened after that was we, by the end of a week or so, I found myself with a couple of classrooms of 4th 5th graders that were these younger brothers of the families, the gang families who were delighted in reading. And I was using the skill that I had had in terms of teaching reading on a phonetic basis with these kids. The next thing that took place was I I was sharing this with everybody I knew. I carried that magazine around in my purse for weeks because I was so obsessed with it and nobody paid much attention to what I had to share except one friend that was Lynelle Armstrong.
Speaker 3:And when she heard the whole thing that had happened, she said, this is big, this is God, and I want to do it with you. The principal, after a few weeks gave us, and he gave us access to the gym. And so we began what we call good news gang. And we would
Speaker 2:Good news gang.
Speaker 3:Good news gang. And so because I had contact with these kids in the school and the teachers then we began to invite these kids to come on Saturdays in the gym. We just did bible stories, worship, prayer, games, kool aid, and cookies. And these little boys and mostly little boys at that time we were single visioned on boys. They started coming to the Lord.
Speaker 3:So that happened and fast forward a lot of years my heart is still for the kids of the inner city, for the kids of poverty. Currently I'm working with for the last 10 years it's been behind every door. I learned a lot with the Hispanic population, with Crossfire, what is now Crossfire Ministries, and then I just learned a great deal about the African American community as well with Behind Every Door.
Speaker 2:The good news gang. That is an amazing name.
Speaker 3:Do you
Speaker 2:have a do you have a trademark for that?
Speaker 3:Oh, we don't.
Speaker 2:Okay. Gotta work on that. I I just love even, yeah, just hearing the Lord give you a dream, adjust a mindset that you had that led you to love kids as your own and see your community as that this is my community and how the Lord made it really easy for you to convince John that this was the lord. Good. I I have a few questions.
Speaker 2:Even even what you you mentioned that you wanted the the schools to identify the kids that were in the gangs or for families of the gangs. How did you even come to recognize that this is a family issue? And, like, what what were the steps where you were just like were you doing research on gangs at this time back in the day? Like, or were you just throwing things out there? Like, well, I guess, I guess we'll just go find them in the schools.
Speaker 3:Well, I think one event was sort of a picture of of solidifying that understanding in my mind. I was sitting on my front steps one day and I there remember there's all these people that have moved in to this neighborhood together. And so this family that I mentioned that lived next door to me that was represented a family in generational poverty, on the other side of that family was one of these families that had moved in with us. So she was sandwiched in on both sides by, these 2 families that had moved into the neighborhood together to want to really reflect the gospel to the neighborhood. So I was sitting on on my French steps, and I looked 2 doors down to to this other family, and I saw, a gang of these Hispanic kids coming down the driveway.
Speaker 3:They had been behind my friend's house, and it made me kind of pause and wonder what was happening there. They came down this the driveway and they turned in the street starting to come in in front of my house. I looked at these kids. My first thought was, oh, is was my friend's house okay? Were they doing something?
Speaker 3:But then my second thought was, oh my goodness. How could I make connection with these kids? How could a middle class, middle aged white housewife possibly make a connection with these Hispanic gang kids? So my mind was churning and in my mind I pushed the pause button. I ran into my house.
Speaker 3:I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Of course you did. I got a pitcher of milk. I put it all on a tray and I brought it back up to the steps and I unpushed the pause button. That's what all was happening in my mind.
Speaker 3:And so one of these kids must have been watching me. And as they went past my house, one of them turned to me and said, don't worry, miss. We didn't do nothing to your friend's house. But what I was really thinking by then is I just wish I knew how to connect with you. It was perfect discipleship.
Speaker 3:The front of the pack was the 16 year olds. The back of the pack was the 8 year olds. Mhmm. And so what I was observing was perfect mentorship, perfect discipleship into the gangs. And so that was one of the thing one of the pictures that I saw.
Speaker 3:And then just as well as just living in the neighborhood, I was just very aware that the the the young kids were just wanting to follow their elder brothers.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I wonder do you know what the Nextdoor app is? Have you heard of that?
Speaker 3:I don't. It's
Speaker 2:where neighborhoods have their own Facebook group kinda deal, and they talk about things that are going on. So you have a stray dog, and everyone knows about it in the neighborhood or someone sees a coyote. A lot of the times, it's you see a kid that's not supposed to be there. I wonder what the Nextdoor app in the 19 eighties was like, and the conversation going on in your head on the stoop and how the Lord transitions that to how can I connect rather than how can I make sure my neighbor's okay and and yada yada? I really love you don't see that on the Nextdoor app.
Speaker 2:People are like, oh, look. There's a stranger in in our neighborhood. I'd love to become his friend, like, who can bake cookies for him. Like, that's not that's not happening. But it sounds like it was happening in in someone's heart.
Speaker 3:And, you know, this is kind of a funny, part of that story, but, fast forwarding a lot of years, one of the the young men that I became very connected to with the Crossfire Ministries, who one of the ones that came to the Lord in those 4th great years, ended up having a little bit of a trip up in his journey, ended up in prison for a lot of years. I might talk about that a little bit later, but he told me when he got out of prison that the way that one of the ways he would escape was he would lay on his bed and pull back memories, happy memories. And interestingly enough, he said one of the memories that I have is sitting around your dining room table, eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking milk. And he said that's one of the memories that I would pull back up in my mind
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:To escape my bed in prison.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:The power of chocolate chip cookies.
Speaker 2:Come on. Amen. I always love when someone in your church has the spiritual gift of hospitality and they just, they use it. So bacon, muffins, cookies, come on, Jesus be used in those people.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Obviously, god is faithful in the life of kids, and he imparts this heart to his people. Like, the the heart that you're living is the heart of the church that that god wants in these communities, to be willing to have a 3 day year old baby and move into an apartment complex because God told you to.
Speaker 3:Well, it's actually a house, but, yeah, into a neighborhood.
Speaker 2:You're still crazy, Suzanne, and I love it. You mentioned that you were there for 10 years, and you didn't feel like you made an impact, but you were impacted. And I'm sure, obviously, in hearing the story of a guy who was in prison remembering sitting at your table eating cookies and having these fond memories of your impact of making him feel safe and loved and valued. Can you I'd I'd love if you just shared some more stories of you seeing God's faithfulness over the years
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In in the things that you've done and and how he's shown up. Yeah. Just unpack some more stories.
Speaker 3:Well, I think for us just coming to that to grips with that, that it takes time. Yeah. It takes time. And the impact of generational poverty came over a lot of time. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so it takes time to begin to peck away at that. One of the things that early on that I just learned was from parenting, having raised kids. I remember a a moment with my teenage daughter when she was 16, and she had put her little toes over the line of what was acceptable and was not making real good decisions in her life. And I remember sitting down with her, I'm sort of a diagram person. I remember I sat down with her and I drew her these concentric circles.
Speaker 3:And I said, okay, right here in the center of this circle, that's you and God. Alright. This next circle out, these are your closest friends. These are the friends that you spend the most time with, that have the most influence on your life. Okay.
Speaker 3:This next circle out, these are the friends that are just marginally in your life. They're in your life just a little bit of time. They don't have a very big impact on your life. So the goal is that this first circle out are these friends that when you're with them, it just makes you wanna get to know God better. It just makes you wanna walk in a way.
Speaker 3:But I said, here's your problem. You have those circles reversed. You have pulled in. Your closest circle in are these people that don't know God and that aren't really walking with him. And the people that could have the best influence on your life, you're pushing to the outside of your life.
Speaker 3:Well, when I looked up at her from drawing my diagram, her eyes are rolling, her arms are crossed, her foot is wagging, and she is huffing. And I am thinking she is hearing nothing that I'm saying. Well, fast forward 5 or 6 years, now she has radically given her life back to Jesus. She has decided to go to a discipleship internship after high school. And after that, experience, she was invited by the church that hosted the internship to to do an internship with the youth group.
Speaker 3:And so now she's got responsibilities with high schoolers. Mhmm. And I got a call one evening and she's tearful. And she's talking about Julie that she just dearly loves. And and Julie is not an 18 year old that's not making good decisions right now and not experiencing what she was hoping that she could experience in life.
Speaker 3:And she says, and mom, I sat with her and I drew those circles and blah blah blah. And I could have about dropped the phone.
Speaker 2:Oh, man.
Speaker 3:So it was a first lesson to me that it takes time
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And that they're hearing more than you think they're hearing. I think another moment for me was, and this this was just not so long ago that this is maybe a couple of years ago. I'm still connect. I'm still on the board with, Crossfire Ministries that began all those years ago at Lipscomb Elementary with those reading classes and with our Good News gang. We were holding a fundraiser.
Speaker 3:And so I was sitting there in the room and actually the young man that was speaking, I'm going to change the names to protect the guilty, not the innocent but the guilty. So the young man that was speaking was Juan, and he was sharing his testimony. He can't talk about his testimony or the gospel without tears. So it's a tender story. And keep in mind now, this is 30 years later
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:After we started. Juan, I'm re and so let me just stop and pause for a minute. Where the context was, I was coming to this meeting in a, in a place that I was about 8 and a half years down the road with somebody that I was, my husband and I was, were mentoring. This gal was somebody I had met at Willow Pond 8 and a half years before. Had been very involved with her for all those years.
Speaker 3:And then the last the last 3 years, she had actually lived with my husband and I. Her last 3 years of high school, she'd actually lived lived with us. Well, at this point, eight and a half years into this relationship, she had made some decisions that just broke my heart. She was on a path in a lot of ways that was very disappointing to me and making me ask the question, gosh, have our lives really made any impact on her? So that's how I'm coming to this this particular evening.
Speaker 3:So I'm sitting there and I'm listening to Juan tell a story, and I'm remembering about where Juan was at 8 and a half years. At 8 and a half years out in the relationship that Lynell and I had with him, he was not only dealing drugs, he was in upper level management.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And his life Of
Speaker 2:the drugs, not
Speaker 3:Of the drugs. KPMG or something. No. Of the of the drugs. And his life was a mess.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. That's where he was at 8, 8 and a half years. So then I'm looking around the room, and I'm looking at Joe, and I'm remembering where Joe was at 8 and a half years. And where Joe was at 8 and a half years was he was in prison. But where he is now, Joe is 2 years ago, he had been contracted by the Mavericks to do a mural on the side of their new practice facility and he loves Jesus.
Speaker 3:By the way where Juan was at that point was he was a banker and he was pursuing getting his MBA. Then I continue looking around the room and I look at Adrian. Where Adrian is today is he has his own business and he loves Jesus. But I'm remembering where he was at 8 and a half years out and he was one of Juan's business dealers. He was one of the drug dealers in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3:And I'm looking at Sergio where he is today is he's a real estate broker in Lakewood. He loves Jesus. But where he was at 8 and a half years out was he was also one of one of Juan's business men in the neighborhood selling drugs. So I'm thinking about that Lonelle has done an amazing job of committing herself to a long, slow walk with these boys, and where they are today isn't even where they were at 8 years out. No.
Speaker 3:So I'm encouraged. It's a long, slow walk. Yeah. So good. I think some of the things that I feel like I have extracted about mentoring and and that night with looking at the room full of the boys really kind of pulled it all together.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So if I could just kind of mention a few of those. I think some of the conviction I convictions that I have about mentoring is that you can't be what you can't see. And another conviction I have about mentoring is that I think, you know, we have programs behind every door, and they're they're good. They really have a lot of benefit.
Speaker 3:But I think programs can bring formation, but it's really only relationships that can bring transformation. Mentoring really equals access. And I feel like all of those things, that's what that long slow walk really can bring. And when I look at those boys in the room, the reason why Juan is a banker today is because, Lynelle gave him access to one of her business friends. And he sat down with that businessman 10 years ago, and he, got a vision for what it would be like to be a businessman.
Speaker 3:That's access. Our city is full of resources. We have plenty of resources in our city. But for me, coming to understand what it's like for a person in poverty to look at those resources, it's like being on one side of a raging river and looking at all those resources on the other side of that river. And it's great they're there, but you can't get to them.
Speaker 3:But if you're in a relationship with somebody, it's like putting stepping stones across that river so that you can actually access those resources. And that's what I see with those boys in those rooms. The that walk with Lynelle has brought access to the people that were in her life, and therefore now they were in their lives and it made a difference. I think that's the substance of transformation is that you see something and you say, you know what? I can access that.
Speaker 3:I can be that and I wanna be that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, it it's helpful when you have 4 or 5 families that commit to do that, to be the stepping stones across the river as you said. And I'm I wonder even if you could share what creates that river between between the the resources and, I guess, generational poverty. And, obviously, our our hope is to become a stepping stone in in the middle to to bridge relationships to resources and and all those things, but what's the root of the river? What where did where did that come from?
Speaker 2:And I I don't know if you have thoughts, but I I just love that image that you're bringing up.
Speaker 3:Well, I think when, and again, I'm, I feel like I'm on the learning curve. I'm just learning on this, but having walked now for these years with with people that are in generational poverty and generational poverty being a very different thing than just situational poverty. When my husband and I were in dental school, we were we were broke, but we would never be poor.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:We were just middle class people who were broke. But we had grown up seeing something different and knowing that we could be something different. Whereas when somebody is in generational poverty, they they don't see anything else. They don't feel like that they can be anything else. And so I feel like it's pretty simple.
Speaker 3:It's just that relationship. It's forging that relationship. And I'm thinking about just one one example of that, and then just life happens. And if you're just committed to a relationship, if you're just committed to loving somebody through thick and thin Mhmm. Then life just happens and they began to just see things and you're not even know you're not even aware of what's happening.
Speaker 3:But I remember one day, and this was before my gal that I was talking about that lived with us our last 3 years. This is before she'd moved in with us, but she spent a lot of time at my house. My husband and I have 2 rental properties, and one of those, tenants would always pay us in cash. Well, she walked in one day and she saw in my bedroom table, on my bedroom table there, she saw this huge stack of cash. He was a bartender and he'd pay me in 1.
Speaker 3:So it was a big stack of cash for his rent. And her eyes got big as saucers and she goes, oh my gosh, is that yours? And I said, well, yes, it is. And she goes, is all that yours? And I said, well, let me explain it to you.
Speaker 3:So I took this big stack of cash and I said, so this is the money that my renter pays to me, and I counted out the amount that would go to the mortgage to the bank. And I put that in one stack and I said, now this stack right here, this just goes straight to the bank because I have to pay the bank for the house. So that stack goes to him. And then I made another stack and I said, now, the rest of that money I could spend if I wanted to, but I don't. Do you know why?
Speaker 3:She goes, no. Why? So I made another big stack and I said, so the thing is is if the heating unit or the air conditioning unit goes out tomorrow, it's gonna cost a lot of money. And if I don't have enough money in my bank account to pay for that, I'm in trouble. So see this big stack right here, that's saved.
Speaker 3:That's for emergencies. That's for things the house needs. And then I kinda took the rest of the money, which there wasn't a lot left, but this last stack, I said, see this last last stack? Yeah. I can spend that anyway.
Speaker 3:I wanna spend it. Well, she looked at that and she said, maybe I'll do that someday. So I think when you're in relationship, it's just life happens and things are caught more than they're taught.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, the potential of a mentor, the little conversation like that can change an entire trajectory of of a person's life. It's just the little tools and lessons that are learned that seem very normative to a portion of our community that could be completely foreign. It's like learning a new language, an economic language, a even a relational language of what what is a relationship? What is a person that loves me, and how much our definitions can change because of someone who loves Jesus being in your life?
Speaker 2:I'd I'd love for you to share your strategy on how to make good news gang more attractive than the east side locos. If you could, if you could give us some tips on how to attract kids away from from the other gangs.
Speaker 3:Well, it may have started with Kool Aid and cookies. I mean, food always food works.
Speaker 2:Food works.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Food works. So it may have started that, but I think what we've learned over the years is that, it might get them in the door, but the thing that will keep them as relationships or even just, I'm thinking of a conversation with some, some teenagers now with behind every door. 1 of the 8th graders just straight up, we were just interviewing them and just asking them about some of the things that they'd like to see us do in terms of maybe cooking classes or mentoring, you know, one, they just say, just teach us how to be adults. So we have adulting classes.
Speaker 3:Just we were just talking about just what would you like to see us spend our time doing. And one of the 8th graders said, yeah, we like all that. I mean, that's good. We like all that. But she just said, but that's not the reason why we come.
Speaker 3:The reason why we come is y'all. It's it's the relationships. That's really why we we stick around, and that's what I've really just found over the years. We can attract them with cookies and Kool Aid and fun activities and fun things to do, but the reason why they'll stay is because they actually get into a love relationship. That's the glue.
Speaker 2:In my conversation at Waffle House last night, I was asking Zimari, the kid I mentor, what else he needs to know to become a man, like, as he's, I mean, he's gonna graduate next year. I taught him how to drive. He got his first job this last week. And so I'm like, what else do you need to learn? And he was like, I don't know.
Speaker 2:And it just it just makes me think about kids don't know what they need to know, and that's that's why they need a mentor. It's like, you don't know what you don't know. And, like, what you're saying is you can't become what you can't see. You can't be what you can't see. I love that.
Speaker 2:And and how a mentor plays a vital role in giving a giving a picture of what's possible, informing more belief in self and understanding of what is life about and what am I responsible for and what can I do? And
Speaker 3:And I think so much of that is utmost. You know, it is caught. Yeah. And you don't even know it's happening. You know, I just even just coming over here today, I had a thought that I hadn't put together before, and I was just sort of thinking about what we would talk about.
Speaker 3:And I was thinking about, you know, you remember the family that was next door to me? It was really just a what the family consisted of actually was a a grandmother that was raising her granddaughter. Now, this grandmother had already raised 7 children and, because the mother was a drug addict, then she was raising her her granddaughter, which is a very common occurrence in the the worlds where I've walked in the last number of years. And I was thinking about that. The the granddaughter and I have been in conversation this week.
Speaker 3:We're trying to figure out a time we can get together. So this is I met this child in 1979 and she's still in my life. And I was thinking about her and realizing that all 7 of the other children are still in poverty. All 7 of the other children are in a drug culture. There's a lot of mental illness that's in those among those children.
Speaker 3:Lot of broken marriages, mostly all, not even marriages, but the ones that were were broken. And I was thinking about her and I was thinking about she's still married to the same man. They have a very productive lifestyle. They have a house. They have sort of a middle class, you know, lifestyle.
Speaker 3:She loves the Lord. She wants her kids and grandkids to love the Lord. And I thought, wow, I had not ever really put it together that she's the only one of those 8 that has a a really pretty dramatically different looking life. And I don't know whether it was that there was one family on one side of her and there was another family on the other side of her that from the time that she can remember or praying for them and being involved in their lives. I don't know what was caught.
Speaker 3:I don't know what was seen over those years. I didn't know when it happened, if it did, but the thought occurred to me. I think it did. I think that's I think that's what happened.
Speaker 2:We always ask our guests to share failures. So if you have anything that you you feel like you messed up
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:That our mentors could avoid.
Speaker 3:Well, lots and lots, over a lot of years. I think, just having to debunk sort of the savior complex and that, you know, I'm not the one to swoop down. And number 1, you know, inform this person what they need and how to do it and show them how to do it. But, you know, 2, that that I've got a better way. I I, you know, I think over the years, I've just come to really appreciate that there are things about the poverty culture that are good and bad.
Speaker 3:There are things about the middle class culture that are good and they're bad. I wanna grow from the richness that comes from my friends that have lived in poverty. If you looked in my phone, the and you looked at my text this week, some of those would be friends that I've developed over the last 10, 20 years that are from the communities where we've gone to serve, and yet I feel like they've served me in an equal way. You know, I've seen them really teach me what friendship is. I've seen them really teach me what it means to just, you know, in the poverty culture, my money is your money, which can have a downside to it.
Speaker 3:But a lot of times, they're a lot more generous.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful.
Speaker 3:It is a beautiful thing. And, you know, I've seen my friends in poverty, not blink twice. If one of their friends was evicted, they open their front door and that whole family moves into their living room. I've watched that more times than I can remember. And yet I feel like for me, for us in a in more of a middle class setting that if somebody's on our doorstep that's been evicted it might be a lot slower process or it might not happen at all to invite that whole family to bunk up in our living room.
Speaker 3:So I've learned some precious and valuable things from my friends in poverty and I wouldn't trade
Speaker 2:it. Suzanne, thank you so much for sharing your life, your testimony, God's faithfulness and making you the director of loving people could not think of a better title for you. And yes, God uses those little relationships over a long period of time. What did you say? The long
Speaker 3:The long, slow walk.
Speaker 2:Come on. So good. Well, Suzanne, if any of our listeners want to connect with you after listening to this episode, how could they do that?
Speaker 3:You could find us online, behind every door.com, and you could see what we're about and contact me from there.
Speaker 2:It's awesome. Well, please check out Suzanne's work behind every door. They are an amazing organization in Dallas that you need to know about, and we will hopefully have every single person on their staff on this podcast someday soon. So check them out. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2:If you enjoy today's episode, please share it with a friend. Maybe encourage someone to become a mentor or move in to an apartment complex after you have a child like Suzanne Wallace did to change people's lives. So love you guys. Thanks for listening. And if there's one thing you picked up from today's episode, let it be this.
Speaker 2:You can mentor.