Buckner International: BT Extra

By Jenny Pope

There’s a fine line between home and homeless. The haves and the have nots.

Huey, 17, said it best after he spent an evening serving food to Beaumont’s homeless alongside his four roommates (brothers, really) at First Baptist Church’s Hands Up Inner City Ministry.

“I like helping people,” he said. “It makes me feel good because that could have been me in there.”

Huey, who now lives in a residential group home at Buckner Children’s Village in Beaumont, told me that he and his mother used to eat free meals at any church that offered it when he was a boy. “We didn’t have much money, so we’d go anywhere for free food.”

Like I said, fine line.

Every Wednesday night Huey and his roommates – Cole, Stephen and Keith – ride with executive director Greg Eubanks to serve dinner to the homeless. It’s not a privilege earned through merit, but a right they deserve, Eubanks said. And most of all, it’s fun.

“I look forward to this night all week,” he told me. “And I think they do, too. It’s the one night where these boys all feel like they have something worth giving.”

And as I watched Huey and his roommates – Cole, Stephen and Keith – eagerly plop red beans and rice on plastic plates, it struck me that these boys really could be on the other side of that serving line. But they’re not, because someone somewhere cared. And today, through Buckner, they’re able to show that they care, back.

“I feel like Buckner has given me so much, it’s only right to give back,” 16-year-old Stephen told me. And as I watched him hand out rolls to some of Beaumont’s hungry and helpless, the Bible verse on the back of his lime green shirt seemed all too appropriate. 1 John 2:6: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

Keith, 16, was the most eager to work. He was the first to dash into the kitchen and put on his rubber gloves. “I like helping people,” he told me. Keith hopes to join the Marines and serve as a nurse. His 6 foot plus frame, clean cut looks and good manners make it seem like he already belongs.

Cole, also 16, spent most of his time in the back of the kitchen, washing dishes. “It’s a lonely job,” he joked. “But I’m glad to do it.”

Then he said something I didn’t expect to hear.

“If this was a year ago, you wouldn’t recognize me. I was a different person. I couldn’t even remember what I did the day before.”

He continued to quietly scrub every last remnant from the pots and pans delivered to him. “I’m a lot more responsible now,” he said. I could tell.

I don’t know all the details of each boys’ past, but I know it’s unfair that they’ve had to struggle. It blessed me to see their courage and hope. And mostly, to see their desire to help others as they have been helped.

And judging from the variety of people who came up to me at the church, telling me what “good boys” these four are, I could tell that they had blessed many others, too.

After we left the church and the boys (once again) fought over who could sit in the van’s captain chairs, Stephen asked me what I was going to write. “Tell them we’re the awesomest,” he said. “That’s not even a word,” someone else shouted out.

Well, for this column – it is. Guys, you’re the “awesomest.” Thanks for showing me what it means to ‘walk as Jesus did.’