A Message from

Patience Quinn
Reach One Youth Mentoring Program Coordinator

September 9, 2007

Mentoring: What’s in it for you?

People often wonder what kind of a commitment they need to make to be a mentor and what are the potential results for the young person under the mentor’s wing.  The following interview took place earlier this summer when I had the opportunity to visit Mentor, Gordon Howes and his Mentee, DaJaun Hardie.  My questions are italicized.

I think in the world of Reach One Youth Mentoring it is quite unusual that a Mentor & Mentee would go off on a mission as you two gentleman have done.  Tell me Gordon, how did this trip come about?

I was asked by the Youth Minister at my church, First Church of Christ Simsbury, to be an advisor on a mission trip to Atlanta, GA with 40 teenagers to work with the homeless.  While acknowledging the worthiness of this mission, some of my family and friends wondered about my sanity! 

Over the course of my life I’ve had opportunities to work in other parts of the world and it opened my eyes to poverty.  It was a life changing experience and I felt like the teens we took to Atlanta might have that same eye-opening experience.

DaJaun, why did you want to go with your Mentor to Atlanta to do this service?  It’s not like you guys were going to Disney World for fun!

Well, because Gordon asked me to and I really didn’t have anything else to do.  But after I went on this mission, I figured out it was something worth doing!

Da Jaun, were you nervous about leaving your home and parents to travel out of state?  Why not?

No, I wasn’t nervous because I trust Gordon [my Mentor].

Da Jaun, were your parents supportive of this trip with your Mentor?

Yes they were.  They heard about this and thought of it as an opportunity and encouraged me to go for it!

Gordon, sadly, in this day and age, taking a young man (that you are not related to) on a church mission – out of state – for more than 24 hours, some would suggest, is highly risky.  How did you come about inviting DaJaun and trusting that he would work & benefit from the mission?  

Because it was a church mission – the focus wasn’t on fun but work.  DaJuan’s Christian background made this seem like it would work.  I am always aware of our relationship – that ours would be about mechanics, rebuilding tractors and experiencing new things that DaJuan may not have had the chance to do before.  (If it hadn’t been pouring rain the day of this interview the guys had planned to go kayaking).

Gordon, what was the best part of this mission trip for you?

Boy, we were moved by this experience and proud to have been a part of it.  Forty young people and ten adults camped on the floor of a church gymnasium.  The kids prepared their lunch each morning before we left the church; peanut butter and jelly sandwich, 3 oatmeal cookies and a bottle of water.

One day our worksite was Café “458” where we helped prepare the noon meal for about 40 people.  The lunch that day was a part of the deal as we all ate what we prepared.  Then we finished washing the dishes and a general clean up of the kitchen.  When we headed back to the church I passed a man in a wheelchair with no legs.  The kids were ahead of me and I was straggling behind.  I stopped and asked the man “how’s it going buddy?”  He said “it’s rough.”  I asked him if $5 would help and handed it over to him. The kids stopped moving forward and came to join me around the man.  They asked the man if some food would help him, he replied that “food was as good as money” to him.  With that, the five teens passed their sandwiches, cookies and drinks to the man in the wheel chair. 

Nobody instructed them to do that – they just did it.

DaJaun, what was the best part of this mission trip for you?

I was in another group with a different advisor; we went to one lady’s house to scrape old paint off the exterior [in preparation for a new paint job].  When we were finished scraping the whole house, everyone, adults and kids, chipped in to buy paint.  We just decided as a group to do this without the lady knowing it.  She couldn’t believe it!

Is there anything that you learned about each other (as a result of this mission trip) that you didn’t know before?

DaJuan answers first: I knew this before but this trip confirmed it, “Gordon likes to help people out.

Gordon said: “I was always confident of DaJuan and wanted to be aware of his comfort, traveling away from home and staying with a lot of folks he didn’t know, and checked with him about that [comfort level] regularly.

Is there anything that either of you gentlemen wants to add about this trip or mentoring in general? 

Gordon feels that “as long as this works, DaJuan and I will participate in mentoring.  DaJuan is a well balanced young man with good values and a good home life and he’s walking the straight line.”  Gordon doesn’t think he’s helped make DaJuan the young man he is.  He thinks that DaJuan was a good guy to begin with!  DaJuan just smiles.

Gordon and DaJuan have been matched in the Reach One Youth Mentoring Program for two years as of August 14, 2007.