From Prison to Purpose: Restoring Hope for Incarcerated Youth in Central America

00:00:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the way God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christian's from becoming more like Christ. Now onto today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm joined today by Greg Harris. Greg is the executive director of Counteract International, and he's written a book called Counteract Walking alongside incarcerated youth in Central America From Prison to Purpose, and so we're going to be talking a little bit about the book today. We're also going to be talking about Counteract International and I'm just happy to welcome Greg here.

00:00:54
Speaker 2: Greg, how are you this morning?

00:00:56
Speaker 3: Hey, James, I'm fine. Thanks for the invitation, Glad to join you on your podcast.

00:01:00
Speaker 1: Asked absolutely. This is the second time we're meeting. Greg is part of a Bible study I run on Wednesday mornings and so we we spent the wee hours together this morning already.

00:01:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're leading us through Hebrews, which is a great study, so thanks for doing that as well.

00:01:16
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, Greg, tell us a little bit about Counteract International before we jump into the book, like, give us a sense of what this ministry is. And you know, we got the chance to talk at in our be convention and you told me a little bit about the history of Counteract when you came on. And I think that'd be helpful for viewer or for listeners and viewers just to understand what this is and where it emerged from.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely well.

00:01:40
Speaker 3: About twenty five years ago, a businessman from here in the Hampton Roads, Virginia area, one to serve orphans, and he was part of a international business network YPO if people know what that is, Young Entrepreneurs organization. He sent out a message to his international network asking where he could serve orphans because that had been on his heart. He got one response from somebody in El Salvador who said, Hey, we have some orphans down here that could use some help. Hop on a plane, come down, I'll show you around.

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Speaker 4: So he did.

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Speaker 3: He went down, he looked around and where he saw the greatest need was in the government run orphanages, so they were just in horrible conditions. So he came back, got his local network together to start raising money to go back on a trip to start doing infrastructure projects, repairing sewer lines and toilets and light fixtures and so forth, so these kids could have a better condition of living. And soon thereafter the government of l Salvador said, well, we also have these juvenile detention centers that we really could use help in, so he started working there as well, and that's how the mission grew, both in government run orphanages and government run juvenile detention centers. So that has been the niche over the last twenty five years is to partner with the governments of El Salvador, Honduras and now Guatemala to work in their juvenile detention centers. And about twelve years ago, soon after I came on board, the government started shutting down their orphanages, their public run orphanages, but God started opening more doors to additional juvenile detention centers. So we went all in on the juvenile detention centers and in a few months it went from about like I said, fifty to fifty orphanages juvenile detention centers to ninety percent juvenile detention centers, and now we're totally in juvenile detention centers and have built the ministry.

00:03:44
Speaker 4: Around that model.

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Speaker 3: And in the course of that we changed the name from Orphan Helpers to Counteract International because these youth have faced so many things and adversities and obstacles and challenges in their life. They just need help someone sind beside them to help guide them through those challenges.

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Speaker 2: And we didn't really get into those at an NRB.

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Speaker 1: But when I don't know that, I have a great context for juvenile detention centers. You know, I knew friends even in the States who went to JUVIE, but I never really understood what it was. You know, you just get the sense that this is a prison for youngsters. Is that really what it is? And if so, what sort of what sort of crimes are leading people there? Is it that same sort of span we might think of to something you know, relatively innocent like theft or something like that, up to more violent crimes?

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Speaker 2: Is that the range of it it is?

00:04:40
Speaker 3: And they find them in the detention centers from eleven twelve years old. There spoke, many of them supposed to be out when they turn eighteen. El Salvador has an intermediate center for youth who've reached eighteen but still have time left on their sentence. So it's in between the adult correctional centers and the juvenile detention centers, and a lot of times they'll keep them in there beyond eighteen, quite frankly, so that they don't go to the detention centers. So typically twelve to eighteen, but it can be a little younger, little older. And for your question about offenses, yes, it is everything from extortion extortion. Extortion is rampant in those communities, but it is also homicides and very violent crimes and a lot of gang crimes as well.

00:05:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, you talk a little bit about you know, in the book, you deal with the situation, and so I'm wondering if you can just help people get a sense of the context. Again, you know, living in the States, I think sometimes we don't have a good sense of what life is like in some of these other international areas where this would be a problem in need of a real solution.

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Speaker 2: So maybe paint that picture for us.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So you know, even stepping back further. You know, many times we hear of his kids as animals, as gangsters, and quick to label them without really taking a step back and looking at where they grew up, the environments that they encountered. And so yeah, there again the northern triangle of Central America's hunteras El Salvador and Guatemala, which has historically been a very violent place. In the last few years that has changed, particularly in El Salvador under the new president, crime has been brought to record lows. But again, historically all three countries were typically in the top ten of murder capitals nationwide homicides per capita. And so these kids grow up in this environment of crime and violence. There's lots of poverty, you know.

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Speaker 4: And also lack of education.

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Speaker 3: Education levels are on average just a little over six years of education for an adult, where in the US we have, you know, about thirteen years average education for an adult. And broken homes, so many single mom homes. You will find the male in the house has either left the family for someone else, has left and run to the US to seek work, has died, or is in prison, or is alcoholic.

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Speaker 4: And so these kids.

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Speaker 3: Grow up without strong home where they come from and so those are the things, the poverty, the crime and violence, the lack of education, the lack of opportunity, lack of opportunity that so many are in go into informal jobs. There are not a lot of formal job opportunities. So when you compile all that on top of each other, these kids are have a battle the time they're born and that they're facing these adversities.

00:08:21
Speaker 1: I don't know whether you know, but you talked about the government sort of shuddering a lot of the government run orphanages. It would seem that that would have an adverse effect on what's going on in the juvenile detention centers to some degree?

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Speaker 2: Was that the case?

00:08:35
Speaker 1: Did you see sort of an increase of kids that were essentially orphaned, but they end up in the juvenile detention center? So you are still working with a lot of folks who would have been orphans, you're just working with them in a different context.

00:08:50
Speaker 3: Well, well, that's right, and but that's also in the US too, right, Yeah, I mean kids who grew up in foster care. It's the crossover population from If they don't find a good stable foster home, they end up going in and out of foster homes, in and out of juvenile detention centers, and back and forth between the child welfare system and the juvenile justice system. So that's the reality when there's no one there guiding them.

00:09:18
Speaker 2: And so how much of that do you deal with?

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Speaker 1: I know when we talked previously, you talked a lot about the relationships that you've built and that being really central. Though a lot of the work you're doing, you work pretty closely with the government.

00:09:29
Speaker 2: Then in these scenarios, yes.

00:09:32
Speaker 3: Right, So it is our niche is partnering with the governments. They allow us to go into their detention centers and to provide faith based education, life skills, leadership mentoring. We're doing some computer skills, some English classes, trauma counseling. So they are open. They welcome our faith based model into their system. And because they know they can't do it all and they need to partner with other organizations to help provide these services.

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Speaker 4: So that's where we start.

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Speaker 3: We start by going in and sending in teachers full time, and we're in thirteen juvenile detention centers across all three countries, and the teachers go in every day to start working with the youth and really our focus is the juvenile because they're at their lowest and least at that point in time. They've been arrest they've built up through all these conditions. Now they find themselves locked up in these juvenile detention centers that are really frankly harsh places, and they are very vulnerable and open to seeing if there's a new path in life, and so our team mentors them and directs them to another way. And it's all built quite around the book when Helping Herbs and Helping Herts talks about restoring the four key relationships. We're not just in there to provide vocational training or purely mentoring, but connecting the kids to their creator, to themselves, helping them develop their self worse self dignity, to restoring relationships with their family and friends. Forgiveness is a huge issue that when you ask what's most impactful to them, they took about forgiveness because it has really been they've grown up an eye for an eye and revenge mentality. And then also the last relationship of contributing to the community at large, to be restoring their communities and using the gifts that God has given them to improve their neighborhoods instead of taking away and destroying those communities.

00:11:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's amazing that the governments don't have any problem bringing in a faith based organization like that. Sort of the desperation they're feeling is that they're going to take help from any sector they can find. And so because my understanding is, and I just did a little looking in some of the countries you all are in, they'd be primarily Catholic, if not more charismatic, just in composition. If we were going to name a Christian denomination, that is that your experience with it or do I have that right?

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Speaker 4: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, And you'll you'll go into the they're heavily Catholic countries, and you'll go into the government offices in the conference room, and you will have pictures of Mary and of the Lord's Supper and right there in the conference room. So it's it's a lot different than than here in the US.

00:12:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just sort of an openness to it that's that's not here. And the humanitarian aspect of what you're doing is certainly welcomed. But then also the gospel aspect is not opposed because it's it's sort of a country already steeped in a lot of that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, right, And a lot of these kids some have had exposure uh to faith, either a grandparent has taken them to mass.

00:13:12
Speaker 4: Or something that.

00:13:14
Speaker 3: But but it was never really uh in great you know, again without the man in the house, who who is really a band in the family, these kids let them grow up without direction, and then they turned to the streets, right they turn They turned to the streets looking for belonging, for safety.

00:13:36
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:13:36
Speaker 3: And that's that's the lure that really attracts them to join in the street games.

00:13:43
Speaker 1: Really interesting, I wondered if you talk, you know, the book is great. I think it gives a really clear picture of your ministry. Why don't we start with sort of why you felt now was a good time to write the book. You guys have obviously made a number of transitions. You've been there for twelve years, you've made this shift over to the gymnal detention centers.

00:14:03
Speaker 2: But why now? Why the book?

00:14:06
Speaker 3: Well, we've collected stories over the years and testimonies of these youths, and we just had they were sitting there and we really wanted to show God's amazing grace, how he is transforming in their lives, not to keep it hidden under a bushel and to ourselves, but to share, to testify, to provide a testimony of what God is doing, how he's taking some of these lives that people have written off and that they you know, society has said these kids are good for nothing, but to show no, they still have work. They are created by God, and that with some mentoring and some guidance education, that they can be productive members of society. So we said, let's let's put that down and describe the model and share what we are doing.

00:15:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, what, Uh, you talk a little bit about the battle within in chapter three? It was one of my I would say, it's one of my favorite chapters. I'm not exactly sure why it resonated, but it did. And so, I don't know, talk a little bit about what you mean by the battle within and uh, and then we can kind of have a little bit more of a conversation about it.

00:15:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:15:27
Speaker 3: So we talked about the the exterior battles, you know, what they are facing in the environment, but they're also facing the battle within. Okay, you you've encountered all this, all this challenge.

00:15:41
Speaker 4: What are you going to do with it.

00:15:43
Speaker 3: You know, are are you going to uh just continue to live in a in a life of poverty which you've seen all around you, or are you going to try to run to the US? You know before the aren't cracked down in the last year on border the you know, the boards wide open and welcoming of people who from Central America. So are you going to get on the beast the train and go with the coyotes and the cartels to try to get to the US which is a risky journey in itself and there are certainly no guarantees when you get here. Or are you going to follow a life of crime?

00:16:28
Speaker 4: Again?

00:16:29
Speaker 3: Are you the gangs that are offering you, uh, some income, some safety, some belonging, but you know where that leads as well? You know that's either going to lead to an early death or adult prison. There's really no in betweens there. It's not a successful life.

00:16:48
Speaker 4: And so what you know.

00:16:51
Speaker 3: What are you going to do?

00:16:52
Speaker 4: What are you going to do?

00:16:54
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:16:56
Speaker 1: Do you see them struggling? So again, this is just my impressions. Correct me if I'm wrong, But from some of the reading I did before the podcast, it really does seem like even though you have these sort of single parent homes. Even though you see fathers abandoning families and those kind of things, there's still sort of a more collective ethic within the countries you're in El Salvador, Guatemala, that they have a deeper sense of belonging together. And I'm wondering how that conflicts. You know, when you're talking about these alternatives that they have to essentially make a living, right, how do you go about even surviving this?

00:17:39
Speaker 2: That collective still has to be important.

00:17:41
Speaker 1: I mean, these are people with mothers and grandmothers who seem, again based on what I read, seem to have a deep respect for that family linkage, and yet are being drawn into these illegal and gang related activities. How much tension do you all experience? Is your sort of helping people navigate that? If that's a correct perception, well.

00:18:03
Speaker 3: That's right, and I should clarify also, So what we're talking about here have been painting a general brush across this, right, But we're really talking about these kids who end up in juvenile detention and why they end up there. It's not like one day they just wake up and say, you know, I think I just want to be a gang banger, you know, and choose that life. It's how they've grown up, how they nurture it. And so that is the population I've been talking about. But that's not to say that's the whole society, the whole community, because you're right, it is intergenerational. You do see three generations of family living together and very close knit families. But so when you're talking about how do you what's that tension between the family and seeing the youth end up in detention, that's one of the most touching that we see in the program because as the kids go through our academy, our success Academy behind Bars, and they graduate from that, we have graduation ceremonies in the detention centers and we invite the families in and this is oftentimes the first time they've ever heard anybody applaud for their kids. They've ever seen their kids receive a diploma, a certificate, And the emotion a lot between the mothers and the sons, and the hugs and the crying and the tears that happen at those graduations is amazing because you know, they have the parents have challenges of their own too, right while they're trying to raise these kids and then to see their kids end up in juvenile detentions there, So that is that's kind of one of those tensions where they love their kids and that they're behind bars and now seeing them actually get on a better path, you know.

00:20:01
Speaker 1: I mean, as I was reading through that battle within chapter what the passage that came to mind was when Jesus is welcoming the little children. The disciples try to stop them, but Jesus welcomes the little children in, and you know, it's juxtaposed with the conversation Jesus has with the rich young man who you know, Jesus is saying, hey, here's what you need to do. Give all your money away to the poor and come and follow me, and the rich home man goes away sad because he was very wealthy. And then the next narrative, you have these little kids, these vulnerable, dependent little children coming to Jesus and he says, unless you come to me like a little child, you went hot under the Kingdom of God. And so there's a deep sense in which I think that dependence and vulnerability, that sense of it opens people up.

00:20:46
Speaker 2: To the Gospel.

00:20:47
Speaker 1: And so I could also though see that how that deep sense of dependence and vulnerability would close people off that it would give them a sense of distrust of any sort of person who's holding out a hand, offering a solution, you know, providing some help. So how do you all deal with those kind of tensions within the juvenile centers where you're probably getting like really interesting responses and varied responses to the message you're bringing.

00:21:15
Speaker 4: That's a great question, because you're right.

00:21:17
Speaker 3: I mean, they have become distrustful of many of the adults in life who've already abandoned them, and so how do they know they can trust you. That's why our teachers go in every day, you know, it's not once a month. It's to build that relationship. You know, we do have a program, we do have our academy. We do help them develop a life plan and a scholarship program for when they get out, But the relationship is.

00:21:48
Speaker 4: At the heart of it.

00:21:49
Speaker 3: That's really our secret sauce. One time we had another organization come to us and say, we really like what you do, we'd like to learn how to do that. Well, can you lay out your processes and your procedures and your policies. And so we did, but at the end of the meeting, it was like, you know, you can do this, you can if you can go, but it's probably not going to work unless you have someone there who is showing the kids God's love and what that looks like on a regular basis, because you know, as it's saying goes, they don't care how much you know, and they until they know how much you care.

00:22:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. Do you use This was a question I had, I just forgot to ask it. But your teachers are they indigenous? So there these are people from the general area or the specific community that you're working in.

00:22:43
Speaker 4: That's right.

00:22:43
Speaker 3: We have our organization is fifty eight right now and we have three of us in the US and the other fifty five employees of Counteract or all durham Salvadorans and Guatemalans. They all come from the communities that they serve and have a heart for these kids and they see it as they're calling, you know, something that they just really want to see not only their culture's changed, but these individual kids' lives changed for the glory of God.

00:23:26
Speaker 1: So you're working in the juvenile detention centers, you know that some of these kids are eventually going to be released, how do they interface with you or maybe they're not released. Maybe that's just an assumption I have, you know, like I guess that's the question. When a person is in these juvenile detention centers, how long do you get to work with them? In general, it does it very person to person, So like somebody is in for a year and then they're released, they go home or what have you, Maybe you see them again or do you have them for a much longer period of time both.

00:24:02
Speaker 3: You know, we can see them for six months, a year, two years, but then some sometimes they're there for six, seven.

00:24:10
Speaker 4: Eight years that we've seen them.

00:24:13
Speaker 3: So but that's another aspect of the ministry that has grown over time. Before we were just behind bars, we were just meeting them at their point of despair and not knowing what to do and working with them until that time when they left the detention centers. But we realized that it's so important to help them during the reintegration process back into the community so that you know.

00:24:46
Speaker 4: To know where they're going to live.

00:24:47
Speaker 3: Many of them can't go back to the old neighborhoods at crime infested neighborhoods that they can't go back to the you know a lot of unresolved conflicts with gangs that they can't step put back in those neighborhoods, and some don't know how to get back into.

00:25:02
Speaker 4: School or how to apply for a job. So we have success coaches.

00:25:05
Speaker 3: On the outside who are who walk with them through that process. You know, they have developed a success plan, a life plan behind bars what they're going to do, and so when they get out, that success coach helps them implement that plan and connect them to those opportunities, to churches, to schools, to jobs.

00:25:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're looking at these, you know, these areas seem like number one, it's nice that the government is allowing you in and that this is a great ministry for you all to have in these impoverished areas, in these more difficult spaces, with these kids who are really are just having a rough life. And so I think that's really cool. Do you see yourself expanding beyond these areas or do you take it more opportunistically as a ministry, you know, sort of are you planning, here's our next move? Are you trying to build those relationships? Are you kind of saying we're good with where we are. If another opportunity opened up. We'd walked through that door when we got there.

00:26:08
Speaker 3: So Guatemala was the next phase. And we've been to Guatemala for three years now. It had been you know, we were in El Salvador and Honduras from the get go, from the very early beginning of the ministry, and Guatemala had been on our radar because it has some of the same characteristics of the other countries. But we were just for other various reasons, weren't able to get there until the last few years. And we're working on developing that still, those relationships with the government and with other stakeholders.

00:26:50
Speaker 4: So what we're doing now is going deeper than wider.

00:26:56
Speaker 3: Right where we're building out the model. Our vision is to be the world's best juvenile justice ministry internationally, so that we have a model that whether you know we go there or others take it and run with it. That here's here's the plan, here's here's how you can make it work in your country.

00:27:20
Speaker 2: That's great.

00:27:22
Speaker 1: Your chapter on the cost of inaction, I thought was really important to talk through.

00:27:26
Speaker 2: So let's let's switch to there.

00:27:29
Speaker 1: So you've got this ministry, you're seeing these kids, you're you're developing your system, you're going deeper.

00:27:35
Speaker 2: What really is the cost of inaction here? Greg?

00:27:39
Speaker 3: So, one of the stories we share in the book is this young woman who we were working with in Guatemala last year, a year ago, and she had two she was seventeen and she had two young children, and we worked with her behind bars and then she got out and we were working with her and trying to help her get set up. She was living with her father and other siblings along with her two children, and she had taken one of her kids to school that morning and was on the way back and a motorcycle pulled up and shot her and killed her. And so she leaves two young kids behind who'll never know their mother. And the.

00:28:37
Speaker 4: It is just a heart wrenching.

00:28:39
Speaker 3: You know, there wasn't enough time to help her either, you know, whether that was a retaliation to find another place to live. We had just been able to visit her one or two times as she had settled back into there, and so we didn't really dive deeper into Okay, what are the needs? Can we really okay, what are the challenges you're facing? But if we don't act, if we don't act, then there would be more of these situations, like I said, because that's the pivot time. We can teach teach it behind bars, but the you know, the rubber doesn't hit the road until you're outliving it, right, and so to have someone to mentor you and guide you through that time. So, like I said, the cost of inaction is either gonna flee the country, continue in life of crime, end up in adult prison, or in early death. That those are the costs along with along with and we talk about it in the book as well, the spiritual tragedy. It's not just the human tragedy and the national tragedy. These are the next generation for these countries, and if they're killing each other, that's not good for the future the country. So we talk about those in the human tragedy, spiritual tragedy, and the National Tragedy.

00:30:06
Speaker 2: It's always amazed as me.

00:30:08
Speaker 1: You know, obviously I don't think prisons are even juvenile prisons or you know, juvenile detention centers are fun places, but they do offer structure, and they do offer a degree of safety, you know, as opposed to what these kids have been growing up in. And so when you lose that structure, having those success coaches on the outside to help you rebuild. It would seem to me just to be so crucial, and the story you just shared it obviously illustrates it. You've got to pull people back into society in ways that are going to make their choices broader, as opposed to putting them back in situations where we already know what their choices are and without that sort of structured approach to sort of pulling them back into society. I mean, I suppose you know the I don't even think it's like biblical or theological, but you could see people saying, well, they should just make a better choices, they should make choices in conforming to Christ or whatever. And it's like, well, if you've never been in that completely unstructured situation where you're not sure where your next meal is coming from, where you're concerned that people are going to come into your house and kill you or what have you, you have no idea how hard that would be. And I think there's just something to that success Goes strategy you all are implementing. That's really crucial there.

00:31:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that touches on another issue too, about a chapter in the book called a Gospel that goes there. Like you said, you know, people say, why do you go, why do you go to Central America? Don't we have enough problems in America, you know? And a response to that is that, you know, in the US, it's not perfect, but there are safety nets, right there are after school programs, boys and girls clubs, big brothers, big sisters, you know, the list goes on there. It's not perfect, but that there are some safety nets. And in America there is no net right and there there's nowhere for them to go to. And so that's the importance of providing an opportunity. And the other part about that, about a gospel that goes there.

00:32:33
Speaker 4: I mean, these are.

00:32:34
Speaker 3: The kids and the people that Jesus told us about.

00:32:38
Speaker 4: They are the fatherless, they are the poor, they are the prodigal, you know, they.

00:32:47
Speaker 3: Are the despondent and those in despair that we're we're called to minister too and to help. And there are neighbors, you know there.

00:32:58
Speaker 4: Right out of our back door.

00:32:59
Speaker 3: It's you know, I can get to I can get to under Sel Salvador faster, I can get to California. So I mean there are neighbors.

00:33:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we shouldn't let our national boundaries sort of preclude us from recognizing that these are folks that are in our proximity and need care.

00:33:23
Speaker 2: Why I so appreciate the book.

00:33:25
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if maybe you have one more story that you could share with us, Just give us maybe one of your favorites, a story that really illustrates, I think the impact of your ministry.

00:33:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, talk about this one young lady in El Salvador, and she we met her in the detention center, and quite frankly, I don't even know what she was there for. I don't know what she was arrested. I do know that she was involved in crime, obviously because of a home environ that was broken and that wasn't good, And so she went out onto the streets and seeking belonging and got in trouble and got incarcerated.

00:34:10
Speaker 4: And at first she wasn't.

00:34:15
Speaker 3: Inclined to participate in the academy, but our teachers kept providing devotionals, kept building that relationship, kept talking to her, and then kept inviting her into the academy, and she attended. She joined, and she began to open up and receive their love. And then when it came time for her to go out.

00:34:35
Speaker 4: She didn't know where she was going to go to.

00:34:37
Speaker 3: So we helped establish a small I've been to her place with her team. It's a small place, a small place, and get her set up there, bought her a sewing machine. She started making t shirts and clothes and selling them and earning a little money. And we saw her grit and her determination, and so we provided her a scholarship because she wanted to be a lawyer, and so she started attending night school. And then we also had the opportunity to talk to some judges and told her about her attending law school, and they invited her in for an interview and she got hired. So now she is working a day job working for one of the top courts in El Salvador. She is attending night school, a law school. She on the weekends. Her small sewing business has grown into a storefront operation that her brother manages, so she continues to make clothes on the weekends. We visited her church and she is an organist at her church. And so to see this girl come in who was so broken and now is just flourishing because of the opportunity, tunity and the love that was given to her.

00:36:03
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing to think about how many people are willing to help when they are presented with just a specific opportunity. I just think, I guess my question is when you know when you're working, when the success coaches are working, the experience you had that you just narrated with the judges. I'm sure the judges are aware this is a widespread problem, right, and it's not like they're unaware that this stuff is going on. But to give them a specific opportunity and say this girl is now doing this, and for them to offer that aid to that specific person, it just speaks to the necessity of being of giving people the opportunity to help particular individuals. I think that's that's something I'm taking away from that story. You know, sort of amazing that they hired her and brought her in for an interview and you know, all that kind of good stuff.

00:36:58
Speaker 4: Right.

00:36:58
Speaker 3: So that goes back to we were talking about at the very beginning. It's about peeling back those labels and those preconceptions of who you think this young lady, this young man are and looking at them for their human dignity. And that's the same way we in the last year, we've started a mentoring project in El Salvador, and for years we've wanted to really get volunteer mentors to participate because we only have so many coaches and their caseloads are high, and so we need more of that one on one mentorship. And so we brought on board a guy who really had But the point is that what we had heard the resistance is my family's business has been extorted, my family member has been a victim of crime. We don't want anything to do with that. We don't want any association. But but we brought on this guy who had a network of churches and he was a very relational guy, and he was able to convince fifty churches representatives to come in for informational session and over the course of last year, out of that came more than twenty individual mentors. So we have now today twenty plus Christian mentors matched up with twenty released youth. To add on to that level of accountability, of mentorship, of growth and discipleship, of course, so that these people have learned to see the kids as human beings, as children of God and people who are worth investing in.

00:38:53
Speaker 1: So just to clarify the extortion piece. What I understood you to say was whenever people have gotten involved previously with some of the people who are out of the juvenile detention centers, that has turned out poorly for them because the people from the juvenile detention centers have been trying to extort them. Would that I misunderstand that?

00:39:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, so clarify that.

00:39:17
Speaker 3: You know, people have many small Latinda's stores or taxicab companies, but there's a gang tax in many of the neighborhoods that you know. It's like the mafia, right you you need to pay me in order for you to operate in this area. So their businesses are being extorted by the gangs. So they project that onto the youth. Why would I want to mentor this type of person because of what I have experienced.

00:39:54
Speaker 2: That that clarifies it. Yeah, thank you for clarifying that. That's helpful. Well, Greg.

00:39:58
Speaker 1: I enjoyed reading the book. I thought it was fantastic. I think you did a fantastic job on it. I'd encourage people to go get it again. The title of the book is Counteract, Walking Alongside incursrated youth in Central America from prison to purpose and I just thought one of the things I'll just say, I thought you did a great job of interweaving your mission throughout and really making it clear why you're there, why it's important to be there, and then how other people could be there. And so in that spirit, why don't you tell people how they could get involved with Counteract, how they could support what you're doing, and where they can find you.

00:40:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I appreciate you're reading the book, but yeah, those are the points to try to make that no youth is beyond God's grace and redimnition, that personal connection and mentorship and discipleship is key key, and that there are opportunities for people to get involved to for churches, for social civic organizations, for individuals, for donors to play a part in the work and see the transformations that God creates through their generosity. So we are at Counteract dot org and our social media is Counteract org on the social media networks, and so that's where you can find us. And yeah, thanks for asking about the book. It is available on all major online retailers Amazon, Walmart, Arnes, and Noble.

00:41:36
Speaker 4: Well established by Westboat Press. It's on their site as well.

00:41:40
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll have links to all of that in the show description, and I would just encourage you to check out Counteracts website. I got on there and kind of looked around. They do have other opportunities for people to plug in. There's always ways to help, and so get the book, read through it. If you're compelled by the mission of Counteract, I just encourage you to get that and help them do what they're already doing better add to their capacity, because I really do think that what they're doing is compelling. And so Greg, thanks for being here. Thanks for the work you do and really appreciate it be on the show today.

00:42:14
Speaker 4: Thanks for the opportunity.

00:42:15
Speaker 1: James, all right, everyone will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian.

00:42:21
Speaker 2: Take Care.

00:42:22
Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.