Leaving the house this morning there was a Sunday paper on the porch. We just moved into a new house and we still get the paper from the old tenants. Our new house is only about 6 blocks south of our old house, but 6 blocks makes a night and day difference in our neighborhood. We now live "South of Harding" or... on the other side of the tracks, so to speak. This is the neighborhood God has called us to minister in, it is the neighborhood for which our hearts broke when we first moved to Stockton, this is now reality, this is Stockton.
The article that covered most of the front page caught my eye. It was about the schools in Stockton. The front page article of The Record continued on to a two page centerfold. The centerfold featured stories of children that attend Stockton schools. My heart broke and I cried as I read on...
"Half a peeled orange, a snack from 16 hours earlier, rested on the floor. An empty cup of chocolate pudding sat upside down on a shelf looking like it had been there awhile.
The wallpaper in the bedroom was torn. Dirty dishes were stacked in the sink. A pair of old toilets stood out in the backyard, filled with dirt, accompanied by an old washer and an old dryer.
Roosevelt Elementary third-grader Dakota Christian, 9, arrived home.
It was early in the school year and his stepfather, recently released from jail, listened to music that included lyrics unprintable in a family newspaper. 'You're grounded,'he told Dakota. 'You didn't do your homework last night.'
A while later Dakota's mother, Jolene, walked through the front door. When she saw a couple of visitors in the living room, she said loudly, 'This house is a filthy freakin' mess. ...Sorry.'
In the coming weeks, the disorder in the house was the least of the family's issues. By late September, there had been a series of events that Dakota matter-of-factly recounted.
He said his stepfather had been sent back to jail for eight months because he'd arrived for a meeting with his parole officer " carrying a buck knife." Dakota said his biological father would soon be released from jail.
His grandmother, he said had moved in because her house had burned down.
And after someone tried to break in, Dakota said his mother had used extension cords to electrify the fence in the front of the house. When she was rigging it up, Dakota said Joelene tested the fence by tossing a bag of popcorn at it.
'The bag caught on fire,' Dakota recalled, laughing.
The house is a menagerie with snakes, dogs, chickens and rabbits among the residents.
Dakota sleeps in the upper bunk in a bedroom he shares with his older brother Aaron, an 11-year-old Roosevelt fifth-grader. Aaron was suspended four times in the opening months of School after altercations.
Dakota has chubby cheeks, wire-rimmed glasses, a blond brush cut and an innocent sweetness..." -Quoted from story "Dakota, 9"
The Record also showed these startling statistics about the Roosevelt neighborhood... API Scores 578, 97% of children receive subsidized school lunches, median household income $26, 953, 30% of families live below the federal poverty line, students learning English is 46%, and 20% of households have no car. This neighborhood is a stones throw from our home.
It also stated that one of Roosevelt's greatest challenges has been staff turnover. Half of the schools 20 teachers departed after last school year, due to budget cuts. and that some of the teachers experience culture shock when students come to them and say things like that they haven't eaten all weekend.
One thing I have noticed in our neighborhood is the children. My heart goes out for them and so do my prayers. I see children who look like they haven eaten in days, 6 year olds cussing out their parents, children running wild in the streets... It is chaos. Yesterday I saw a mother yell at her 18 month old to come back to the porch. When she didn't get her daughters attention she sprayed her with the water hose!!! I wanted to run across the street and.... I can't say. It was infuriating!!!!
The stories of abused and neglected children in today's paper is, as I believe, the norm here in Stockton. We are a city of mostly broken families... But aren't all our families broken? We are a truly broken people. I think that here in Stockton the only difference is that some of the things that mask our brokenness have been stripped away. Think of these things. Pray God continues to strip them away from all our lives so we recognize the need for him and respond to his call.
PRAY!!! PRAY!!! PRAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
