Well, my van "the pirate ship Charred Monkey" is officially in the shop this weekend. Side note, busted radiator needs replacing from a friendly fender bender incident on Friday. So I talked to mom and she said she was excited about all the many posts I'd have time to write this weekend, being confined to the house and all. However, one must remember that I'm 23 and have mastered the art of wasting time. So Landon and I have spent the weekend playing music and killing virtual zombies by the hundreds.
But I did have a great experience this week that I wanted to share with all of you. Wednesday night, we held a graduation ceremony for one of our classes. A group of 16 guys who have gone through the whole 18 months of our program. These are men 30-60 years old, families waiting in the free world, potential jobs hesitent to hire, old buddies ready to pull them back into trouble when they get out. They were against the world, so now the world is against them. But as I sat in the back (I ran sound, of course) and watched these men receive certificates, and heard their testimonies, and saw them weep with the joy of accomplishment ... I witnessed integrity.
When the ceremony was over, I sat with particular graduate whom I'd come to know very well over the summer. He was beaming uncontrollably with joy as he told me what it meant to him to finally read those words "...has successfully completed..."
"I know it may sound cheesy," he said. But it was a beautiful thing because, as he went on to express, he had never completed anything in his 30+ year life. In fact, any one of those guys will tell you that. They were the losers, quitters and outcasts of society. But they took on this Innerchange Innitiative. And why? For Freedom. And for the past 18+ months have they wrestled with angels and demons within them, building bridges and tearing down walls in order to allow the Lord to do a mighty work of transformation in and through them. The class started with about 40 members and they slowly backed out (or were kicked out), but there were these in the end who stuck with it against all odds. They have become men of God and men of integrity ... and now they have something to show for it. They were challenged, they stepped up to the plate, and they have successfully completed.
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