Quick stories from Cherokee

I just went to Cherokee, North Carolina for two days. I've been up there working (with my church from PTC) with the Cherokee teens for each of the past 3 summers. This blog is no place for long-winded stories. So here's some quick one liners.

I used to be really indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

No, not those one kind of one liners. Although feel free to use that line on adults over 70. They'll think you're hilarious. And it's possibly a good pick-up line if they're single. Anwways, back to the short one line stories about Cherokee.

They have child care facilities at the high schools because almost every attractive 14 year old has a baby.

The male teenagers are either bullies or socially abused boys who never talk.

Many of them drop out of high school and the Cherokee school system is among the state's worst.

Very few there know how to be a good parent, raise their kids, discipline them, or show they love them. (they've never had an example of a good parent because for years white men would take their kids when the kids were 3 and didn't return them to the parents until they were 18. Then those 18yr olds have kids and the cycle continues.)

A good majority of the kids live in Children homes, or with their grandmother or aunt.

Yes, this community is only 2.5 hours from Athens.

The churches in Cherokee are very legalistic.

So when we don't condemn or judge the teens for smoking, they're like "are you serious?...you're church people...you're supposed to get mad at us for this stuff."

There's a 15yr old girl who cries every time we leave because she says "we are her only friends."


Fortunately there's always good news when the Gospel enters in. They all know what Jesus did, but it doesn't mean anything coming from white people. That is, white people like us who come from comfortable, wealthy homes and cannot identify with what these kids go through. The Cherokee kids think "Alright these guys are nice, and pretend to care about our lives, but we doubt they really care...they're just trying to fulfill a relgious requirement." But every year, we keep coming back. They see the same faces that were there with them last year and the year before that. And we keep getting down into the cruddiness of their lives with them. And we keep up with them through the year via letters. Hopefully their response to all their skepticism will someday be "Yes...I guess they do care. Yes, they are for real. And it's because Jesus is real."


It hit me last night: this is no longer a mission trip that's great to go on once every summer. This is now a ministry.