I don’t know if you have noticed the Kids Hope Bulletin Board around the corner from the Welcome Center but if you have you would have noticed it is full of kites. Each kite has one of our Kids Hope students’ name on it and there is also a Thank You to our mentors who “help them soar”. March has always made me think of kites as it is usually a windy month and we are so anxious to get outside that kite flying is one activity that March is perfect for. I not only carried this theme to the bulletin board here at church but also to my refrigerator at home which has articles and pictures on it held up by kite magnets. Yes, this is a monthly thing I do and believe it or not whenever I have guests over they are inevitably in the kitchen and reading whatever I have put up there. One of the items I attach every March is something by Erma Bombeck that my Mom wrote out on a piece of paper years ago with her aging handwriting and sent to me. If I remember right, she sent it to me when my oldest son Scott was heading off to college. You’ll see why the timing was perfect. Here it is:
Doing Your Job
I see children as kites, you spend a life time trying to get them
off the ground. You run with them until you are both breathless…
they crash…you add a longer tail. You patch and comfort,
adjust and teach – and also assure them that some day
they will fly.
Finally they are airborne but they need more string and you
keep letting it out. With each twist of the ball of twine
the kite becomes more distant. You know it won’t be too
long before the beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that
bound you together and soar free and alone.
Only then you know, you did your job well.
So what does this have to do with Kids Hope? Well. I believe that there is someone else helping hold that string when it comes to our Kids Hope kids. All of the kids that are in our program need more help than just a parent or teacher can give. So it is our mentors who run along side of them and encourage them with ‘you can do it!” Sometimes their student has some trouble going on in their family or an absent parent and their schoolwork suffers so our mentors are there to help them through their “crash” and give them comfort. Often times our mentors have to adjust what they do for the mentoring hour when their child just wants to talk and needs a friend. Our mentors are also like teachers when they help with homework, read them books and teach them new games. Sometimes our mentors see positive results but even if the going is slow I believe that when the child is an adult they will look back at all who helped them “soar” and their Kids Hope Mentor will be one of the persons they remember being there for them when they needed help ‘getting off the ground”.
So check out those kites on the bulletin board and send a prayer their way. Every bit of lift helps!
~Vicki Rumpsa, Kids Hope USA Director