Spring Break 2011

Garbage! Garbage! Everywhere, garbage! It was spilling on to my kitchen floor. It was all over the Mika office. Maple Learning Center and The Hope Center had piles of it. My car was starting to smell bad from the garbage in my trunk. I collected it. The Mika staff collected it. The students and the neighbors collected it…now what? What should we do with all this garbage?

Make art, of course! That was the reason we collected it in the first place. Over Spring Break we ran a three day program talking about Respect, Justice and Beautification – values that our neighbors have decided are important in our community. We talked about why we need to keep our community trash free. We talked about the importance of reusing, recycling, conservation and sustainability. Armed with paper bags and rubber gloves we all picked up trash and counted the large items that had been dumped in our neighborhood alleys. We made tall sculptures out of garbage – creations made of newspaper, milk jugs, tin foil, cereal boxes, bottle caps and toilet paper rolls. They were amazing! We also made useful boxes from egg cartons to hold our treasures. They were colorful and sparkly.

Finally, we set out with shovels, hoes, rakes and trowels and planted flats of flowers to brighten our centers. Thirty kids in dirt and water can be a challenge but in the end, it looked incredible! We did it for ourselves, we did it for our community, we did it for God. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to Him.” We wanted to please God by showing Him that we are grateful for His creation and that we can be responsible for caring for it too. If you ask our students, they would tell you that Spring Break 2011 was a success! If you stop by and see our gardens, you will probably agree!

Why I Volunteer by Janice Walker

Working at Maple Learning Center is the best part of my week. Recently, a new boy entered the program and I was fortunate enough to get to work with him. He was still learning English and he had a list of words he was working on. Lucy, the neighborhood volunteer mom, jumped in quickly to help me make him some flash cards with the words he was struggling with. We made it a game, and he quickly learned the words. It was fun when we both laughed at some of his mis-pronunciations and we both got excited as he did better and better. It was a joy to see him explain to his dad the progress he made in that hour.

Another great joy of mine is seeing my 14-year old son, David interacting with the kids and making connections. I would never have known that he could tutor or teach unless we had come to Maple. Volunteering gives people the opportunity to discover their God-given gifts, and what better place to do it than in your own community!

About 5 years ago, I was thinking to myself, “Some day I’m going to sink a bunch of money into Costa Mesa.” Well, then about 2 years later, I started attending The Crossing and heard about the Maple Learning Center. I quickly learned that developing relationships was more important than just sinking money into a project. I’m so excited to continue to get to know the Maple families, and if I ever come into money, well you can bet I’ll give some of that to Maple too!

Janice and her son David volunteer weekly at the Maple Learning Center

WHEN WINNING IS LOSING

Taken from Bob Lupton’s Theirs is the Kingdom

I’ve always been competitive. Growing up I used enormous amounts of energy trying to beat my older brother at arm wrestling, chess, arguments, and anything else I thought I had a chance of winning. My competitiveness during these developmental years prepared me well for the business world I entered as an adult. The name of the game was winning, and I thrived on it.

My competitiveness reached its peak one day in my twenty-sixth year. I was flying door-gunner on a helicopter in Vietnam, and we were on a search-and destroy- mission. Suddenly the ground beneath us came alive with enemy fire. The intense battle that followed demanded the ultimate in combat strategy, skill, and commitment. The stakes were never higher and victory was never more exhilarating. I accepted with pride a medal for heroism in aerial combat.

It was only later, while still in Vietnam, that I began to understand the implications of my competitiveness, as I flew back from another “successful” mission, I realized that the emotions I experienced were the same I once felt while wrestling or debating. They were more intense because the stakes were higher, but they were unmistakably the same emotions. I was taking human life and feeling the thrill of victory. This thrill was inversely proportional to the agony of defeat—in this case death and maiming.

I began to suspect there was something wrong with a system in which my winning was building upon the defeat of another human being. When I returned to the United States I was unable to put this new insight behind me. I began working with disadvantaged people who were losers in a competitive economy. I saw young men, broken men, crippled by too many years of defeat. They could not find the inner strength to try competing again for jobs in the marketplace. I saw their children compete for education and job training, and weaken in the heat of the struggle because their bodies were poorly nourished and their spirits short on dreams.  And although I felt unpatriotic for thinking such thoughts, I wondered if all was well with an economic system where winning meant defeating another human being. Could it be that among human beings cooperation was a better way than competition?

I pray that one day God will bring in a new order in which human beings will rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Perhaps on that day we will refuse the gains made at the expense of others and our success will be measured by the quality of our servanthood to humanity.