November 6, 2024 • 58 mins
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What sparks a couple to leave behind their familiar life in Wisconsin and immerse themselves in the heart of Mound Bayou, Mississippi? Take a journey with us as we sit down with Phil Shaik, executive director of C2K Ministries. Phil shares how volunteer trips transformed into a life-altering commitment, and how living authentically can bridge divides and engender true understanding across racial lines.
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Nissan, St. Dominic's Hospital, Atmos Energy, Regions Foundation, Mississippi College, Anderson United Methodist Church, Grace Temple Church, Mississippi State University, Real Christian Foundation, Brown Missionary Baptist Church, Christian Life Church, Ms. Doris Powell, Mr. Robert Ward, and Ms. Ann Winters
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
This is Living Reconciled, a podcast dedicated
to giving our communitiespractical evidence of the gospel
message by helping Christianslearn how to live in the
reconciliation that Jesus hasalready secured for us by living
with grace across racial lines.
Hey, thanks so much for joiningus on this episode of Living
Reconciled.
My name is Brian Crawford, I amyour host and I am with some
(00:37):
really good friends of mineLetty Winters and Austin Hoyle.
Gentlemen, how are you doingtoday?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'm great man, you got it right.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Oh, I'm good man, I'm good.
I'm just sitting up here at thechurch doing ministry all day.
I get to tune in to y'all to dothis podcast.
Man, I couldn't be spending mytime this morning in a better
way.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Awesome, awesome man and I couldn't be spending my
time in a better way either.
In fact, it's about to get evenbetter because we got a great
guest.
But before we introduce thatguest, I want to give a quick
shout out to some of oursponsors who make this podcast
and the work of MissionMississippi possible.
Folks like Mississippi College,anderson United Methodist
Church, grace Temple Church,mississippi State University,
(01:26):
real Christian Foundation,nissan, st Dominic's Hospital,
atmos Energy, regents Foundation, brown Missionary Baptist
Church, christian Life Church,ms Doris Powell, mr Robert Ward,
ms Anne Winters.
Thank you so much foreverything that you do.
It's because of what you dothat we're able to do what we do
, and what we are doing today ishaving a conversation with none
(01:47):
other than Mr Phil Shaik.
Mr Phil Shaik is the executivedirector of C2K Ministries and
he is also the husband of him.
Shaik, they reside in MoundBayou, mississippi.
Shape, they reside in MoundBayou, mississippi, and God is
doing an incredible work intheir life and we can't wait to
(02:09):
have Phil tell you all about it.
Phil, how you doing, brother.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Good, I'm glad to be with y'all this morning.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself.
Yeah, my wife and I reside inMound Bayou, mississippi,
originally from Wisconsin, whichis where I am at right now, and
, yeah, we moved down thereabout 12 years ago.
(02:34):
We felt a fairly strong call onour life to move to Mount Bayou
Mississippi.
On her life, um, to move toMount Bayou Mississippi, and um,
kim had been just a little bitof background to that.
Kim actually started tovolunteer in Mount Bayou
probably 26, 27 years ago.
(02:57):
Um, her brother, uh, was partof the Christian brothers
program and he got put in MountBayou, mississippi and Kim kind
of made a comment to him andsaid you know, you aren't going
to last six months and uh, andhe ended up staying an extra
year.
And so Kim, being, uh, the nosysister that she is, she decided
(03:22):
to head South and figure outwhat he was doing.
So she did that for um, sheactually started to volunteer
through saint gabriel mercycenter and it was back when they
had a preschool.
So she would bring down umeaster baskets, um, you know, do
an easter egg hunt and then inthe fall she would help out with
(03:44):
harvest festival, and so shedid that for several years.
Then I started to come with her.
Uh, we started to bring youthgroups down for spring break
trips and then, probably about14 years ago or so, my dad had
passed unexpectedly.
I became the power of attorneyfor my grandmother my
(04:04):
grandmother about a year and ahalf, almost two years later.
Then she had passed and Kim hadsaid why don't we just go to
Mumbai?
You get away.
So that's what we did and wespent two weeks down there and
when we were pulling out of townI looked over at her and I said
do you feel like we should movehere?
Looked over at her and I saiddo you feel like we should move
(04:27):
here?
And she said you feel that too.
And I went well, here we go.
So we had some people prayingfor us down in mississippi.
We had people praying for us upin, uh, wisconsin, and
everybody came back and was likeyeah, I can't see any reason
why you wouldn't.
So we packed everything up andmoved to Mumbai and historical
(04:51):
for those that are tuning inhistorical context is Mumbai is
the oldest all African-Americancommunity, founded by ex-slaves
in 1887.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
And that makes us the only white couple in our small,
all, all black community, yourlives.
That would cause you to pack upand move to a historically
(05:27):
predominantly black context.
Coming from Wisconsin and whatI know of your community, a
historically predominantly whitecontext in terms of the
neighborhoods and the spacesthat you guys frequent and that
you guys frequent, um, and thatyou and that you are around,
what, what was moving in yourheart and what was stirring in
(05:47):
your heart where you you feltcompelled by God to make this,
make this transition and makethis move.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Yeah, kim and I, so we, we don't have any kids of
our own.
Um, the joke has always beenwe've had everybody else's kids
and so, um which in a lot ofrespects is very true when we
lived in Wisconsin, we wouldhave kids, you know, live with
(06:15):
us for six months at a time, um,because of parent issues, or
you know, just anyway.
So we've always been involvedwith kids, with kids in some way
, shape or form, and even whenwe were taking groups down to
Mumbai, stirring was what couldwe do?
(06:35):
What?
How could we get involved inthe community to, you know, help
, better things?
Um, I think one of the thingswe saw and still see is
(07:00):
inequality and trying to levelthe the playing field when it
comes to education, and so whenwe moved there, we did nothing
the first year.
We didn't start anything, wedidn't do anything.
All we did was get involvedwith the booster club.
(07:23):
We're at every sporting eventselling chips and cheese and
candy and this, and that, justso we were, you know, exposing
ourselves in the community.
Um, and I got, uh, I gotinvolved with coaching, um, so I
could be there with, you know,a lot of the young men that I
knew and, um, and so I, I I justthink there was a prompting to
(07:47):
just help kids.
I mean, we love kids.
We've, you know, we've alwaysbeen involved with kids in their
lives, um, you know, and Ithink, uh, I think that was
probably the, probably theprompting, uh, that we both felt
so and, and you know, it wasn'tthat we were trying to move to
(08:11):
a completely different contextto.
I think the misnomer is oh, youmove there to change people or
change something, and I'm likethat's not the case.
The case was we moved into acommunity.
Granted, probably, you know.
To most it looks very odd thatsomebody would do that, but to
(08:37):
us it just seemed natural and itseemed normal.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Um, and it didn't seem.
It didn't seem like as big of adeal as it is to a lot of other
people.
I said so.
You know, phil, you know whatdid it feel like for the people
in the community to receive you.
How did that work?
In them receiving you, did theysee you as a savior or
something?
How did that work?
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Savior?
I don't think so.
I think a word that I wouldmaybe use is an asset, um,
because I could probably saythings that others would say and
(09:39):
it may not be heard as well asit it would if I said it.
Um, or you know, one of thethings that we've tried to be is
, um, you know, it's not that Idon't think people are voiceless
.
I think that term has been used, uh, before.
(09:59):
You know, a voice for thevoiceless.
I don't think you know peopleare voiceless.
I just think that some peopleare, um, extremely hard of
hearing, and when I like, when Ilike that part thanks, you know
, and I just it's not that stuffisn't being said, it's just
(10:24):
that it's not being heard.
And when it comes from somebodyelse, sometimes all of a sudden,
oh well, I didn't know that orI didn't know this, and it's
like, well, pretty sure, theperson that's standing next to
me just said the same thing andI just regurgitated it and now
(10:46):
all of a sudden you hear it.
So I would just say I'm, Iwouldn't, I, it'd probably be
pretty naive to say that when wemoved there, everybody was
excited.
You know, I think there was.
There could have been someapprehension like why, you know,
I think that would have been aquestion that a lot of people
asked, um, even in our community, uh.
(11:08):
But after we were there for awhile, um, that all subsided and
and we're just like anybodyelse in our community, just
happen to be white I thinkyou're speaking to something
really and really importantfield in terms of the longevity
right.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
You mentioned early on that you could imagine and
maybe even experience some earlycuriosity in one sense, I guess
, to put it positively, and thensuspicion in another sense, to
put it negatively.
But regardless of whether itwas just simply curiosity or
suspicion, there was probablyearly on questions like okay,
(11:52):
why are they here and what is itthat they want from us?
And being here and being here,but longevity allows us to
establish a sense of clarity anda sense of comfort and trust
(12:13):
where you begin to see, okay,they're here not to take from us
, they're here to give back tous without, without some sort of
and not in a transactional sortof way.
Could you speak to us a littlebit about the power of longevity
(12:33):
and just being present and justkeeping hand to the plow and
how that has given you greater,greater influence, how that is
cultivated, strongerrelationships just by being
present.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Well, tom, I'll share a quick story.
So, a friend of mine from MountBayou, al Morton, he and I I
become friends over the lastprobably year or two.
Uh, we ran into each other atthe golf course, a golf course
(13:11):
up in Clarksdale, and hehappened to be walking out on
the course and I, I said to uh,the guy that works at the car, I
said who is that?
Did you catch his name?
He goes yeah, he's from, he'sfrom your town.
And I said what's his name?
And he said Al Morton.
And I said, oh, I'm going to go, I'll go catch up with him.
So I go catch up with him and Isaid, hey, uh, are you related
(13:35):
to, uh, orlando?
And uh, he's like, oh, that'smy brother, you know.
And I I went, oh, okay.
Like, oh, that's my brother,you know.
And I I went, oh, okay, cool, I, you know, I'm phil.
And he goes wait a minute, hegoes.
You're, he goes, you're the guywho was coaching the little
league team.
Now, I haven't coached littleleague in probably four or five
(13:57):
years and he goes.
I was wondering why is there awhite guy out there coaching our
kids?
And he goes.
Do we have that much of ashortage of black baseball
coaches.
So he made light of it andjoked around about it.
But to your question aboutlongevity, when you keep pouring
(14:22):
yourself in, keep pouringyourself in, keep pouring
yourself in the baseball fieldbutts up to the horseshoe it's
kind of a horseshoe driveway,big horseshoe driveway, and
everybody calls it the projects,and so our outfield is
literally the backyard of someof these uh apartments.
(14:45):
A lot of our kids played for me.
That played for me came out ofthe projects because I'm working
with the kids and they're thereand parents are seeing it, moms
are seeing it and so on.
Um, it automatically starts to,I think, lend credibility,
specifically when you, you justdon't do it one year, you do it
(15:07):
two years, you do it three years, you do it for you know you're
taking the kids, um, you know uh, to Rosedale.
And then you know, I told ourboys one time I said, listen,
because we're pretty good.
And uh, I told him I said wemake quick light of this game,
(15:30):
I'll take you to lost pizza.
Well, we got to the bottom ofthe second inning.
It's 33 to two and the kids arelooking at me going when are
you going to call the game?
And I finally walked over thecoach.
I said we got to go, we goingfor pizza, we going for pizza.
I said, yes, we're going forpizza, I'll take you out for
pizza.
So it's things like that.
(15:52):
You know, in our, in our, ourafterschool program, starting in
Mount Bayou, it startedliterally with seven students
and they were the students a lotof them were the students that
when we would come down with ourgroups from Wisconsin we would
do youth group at this church,at Walk of Faith.
(16:14):
And then, when we moved here,we took over the youth group and
so Kim and I became the youthgroup leaders at that church.
And so those kids, when westarted the afterschool program,
then many of them startedcoming to our afterschool
program in, you know, in Mumbai,and that would have been the
second year that we were there.
So we moved to Mumbai.
(16:35):
Um, the idea was not oh well,this is some sort of quick fix,
something.
It was.
Now we're going to be here, youknow 15, 20, you know some odd
(16:59):
years, who knows and um, and sosettle in, you know, get used,
used to it, not only from ourperspective but from others'
perspective, and I think thatjust lends a lot of credibility.
I think the other thing too,that we made up our mind early
(17:20):
on and we saw this with a coupleof programs in Lafayette,
louisiana.
You need to live, in my opinion, in this context, you need to
live where you're doing ministry.
That's a John Perkins R manrelocation saw there was one
(17:41):
family and it was a white familythat lived on one side of town
and then they would drive tothis other side of town and to
do an after-school program withpredominantly all black kids.
But they didn't want to move tothat side of town, they wanted
(18:02):
to live on this side of town.
And I told Kim early on.
I said you know, we're notdoing that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Share with our listening audience the benefit
of investing your entire life ina community, in a sense, where
you would move into thecommunity and not just work
there but live and work and playin that same community.
What, what benefits have youseen through the years as a
(18:31):
result of doing that?
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Just a large amount of credibility.
People I think a lot of peoplein our community.
You know, for instance, our uhmayor is a good friend of ours.
He's a neighbor.
He's lives pretty much acrossthe street from us.
Um, he has been on me for nowtwo years to run for alderman
(18:58):
now remind us again how longyou've been in my 12 years.
Okay, and you know, I said tohim, I said you kind of
understand what you're asking,right?
Something like that could beextremely historic if I was to
get elected for alderman um youknow or not, a joke on you it
(19:22):
would be a tad bit historic.
But anyway, um, and he kind oflooks at me and he goes, yeah,
he goes.
But so what he's like?
Do you live in the community?
Are you part of the community?
Have you been here a long time,you know?
Do you breathe into the life ofkids?
Do you breathe into the life ofour community, all of that?
(19:43):
He's like I, he goes, I don't,he goes.
I see it differently than you doand I went.
Well, that's interesting.
But I also think that's thecredibility piece.
When you park yourself in acommunity, you're basically
saying I'm not, I'm not betterthan, I'm not worse than, I'm
(20:04):
equal to and I'm equal with.
And I think when you, you knowand I'm not saying it's a bad
thing to drive from you know wecould go into cleveland and then
could drive to Mount Bayou, dosomething and then drive back.
I'm not saying there's anythingkind of completely wrong with
that, but you never really get achance to become part of the
(20:29):
community when you're doingthings like that, things like
that.
And I think, personally, itlooks more like I'm trying to
just come in and changesomething and then I leave and I
go back to my own contextversus how do you integrate into
that context.
(20:50):
Which means in a lot of cases,you have to change.
You have to change, not thecommunity has to change to you.
You have to change to thecommunity and to that new
context.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know, phil, I think the mayor's different look
at it from that perspective isexactly what you just said, is
that they're looking at it basedon what you just said and not
so much as being historic.
You know, let's and I know I'mgoing to get in trouble here
with our host, my co-host butlet's look at it from this
(21:28):
perspective.
When a black person moves intoan all-white community and
become part of the, as all thethings you talked about, it's a
celebration of a lot of things.
When that historic momenthappened that they get selected
to the I'm trying they evencelebrate the fact that they get
(21:50):
elected to the NeighborhoodAssociation not Altamont, you
know, just the local communityneighborhood association or they
get on the parents' teachersassociation thing, or become a
band booster club member orprovide leadership to those and
(22:13):
those I'm not making fun Ithought those are really more
important from my perspective,more important than being as a
direct hit on the kids, andthat's what you're after.
But at the same time, you know,we move into those
circumstances and that become acelebrated thing both for the
neighborhood and for thefamilies and other things in
there.
So you might want to rethinkhow you look at that in terms of
(22:35):
that.
I know that you come from thebackground of, of, of.
You know all white context andas a lot of that stuff about
being the hero and you know, uh,things that would go right now
we've got a white guy in there,that kind of stuff.
I know that I've heard all ofthose comments, but you know you
are adding a contribution.
I think you said up front youwere not there to save or to do
(22:58):
you.
You come in to make acontribution or using your
skills and talent to do that.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
No, I think there's.
There's something to you knowobviously be said about that,
and I've I've thought about it,you know I'm still thinking
about it.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
We'll see Awesome.
I appreciate, feel even you,your We'll see stay out of the
(23:32):
context and don't bring anything.
And I love the fact that you'resaying no, no, no.
Even though there may be agreater involvement, a deeper
involvement, a deepercredibility that can be earned,
it doesn't mean that those thatare not willing or those that,
for whatever reason, cannot moveinto the context, should
(23:54):
completely divest themselvesfrom the opportunity to be
involved in this community, andso those that are angry won't be
criticized for not doing that.
Absolutely.
There's an opportunity for youstill to provide an incredible
amount of good, even if you'reon the outskirts, and at the
same time, there's a deeperlevel of involvement and a
(24:16):
deeper level of credibility thatcan be established as well, and
I really appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, because the success of the ministry, even if
your success of buildingrelationships with people,
doesn't necessarily require youto move to new homes, there's
people who have been living in aplace for 30 years in their
lives and even if God placessomething on their hearts of
people to engage, that they'renot being necessarily called to
(24:45):
move homes, and I think that's agood point.
And I guess the question I haveis you know what are some of
the things that you see aroundyour community that that you
feel, if you were able to kindof gather the, the full council
of the significant leaders inMount Bayou, that you guys can
(25:06):
kind of come together and andmake some, make some good
roadway and helping to solvesome of the problems roadway and
helping to solve some of theproblems.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
I think there's a good bit of that that is
happening right now.
I also think there's still agood bit of the silo mentality
in our community If my name'snot going to be on it, if I'm
not going to get the recognition, I'm not doing it.
But I don't think that's anydifferent from a lot of other
(25:41):
communities.
But no, I think that you knowour mayor's doing a good job,
but the mayor can only do somuch because he is strapped by,
you know, alderman decisions,that kind of a thing.
That kind of a thing, um, forme, I mean my, you know, my
thing is more education based,um, and not necessarily, um,
(26:06):
alderman driven.
That's that's why I've had a uh, just a has a hesitancy.
Um, you know, school boardmight be a better setting.
You know, that would besomething that I could get.
I could not that I wouldn't getfired up about being an
alderman, but I'd, I'd getprobably a little bit more fired
up being on the school board.
(26:27):
That might be something that Ilook more into than than
becoming a trying to become analderman, just because of our
context, um, our, um, you know,our context is primarily kids.
That's who we're dealing with,that's who we're working with,
and if we can change policy, youknow we can change something
for the positive.
It'd be a good thing.
Um, specific to education.
(26:49):
So we just see, we see there'sjust so much inequality that we
see in, specifically, our schooldistrict and really the
surrounding areas as well.
It's just that, you know, kimand I, when we went to school
here in wisconsin, um, the highschool that we went to was a
(27:11):
ranked top five high schools inthe state.
I mean we had everything weneeded.
Teaching was great, blah, blah,blah, all of it.
And then we just see reallystark difference to what we grew
up with versus what ourstudents have.
So I mean, one of the thingsthat we've tried to do with
Redirect is provide the toolsand resources that are necessary
(27:34):
for our kids to becomesuccessful future leaders, and
that means both educationally,that also means socially, that
also means spiritually, thatwe're providing resources in
different aspects to reallycultivate the whole individual,
(27:57):
versus just we're going to workon your brain here.
Let me teach you what two plustwo is.
Well, we want to take it beyondthat and I think we've done a
pretty good job of that.
Going from seven kids our firstyear to doubling it 15.
And then, by the third year, Ithink, we doubled it again to
about 30.
And now we're not even inMumbai.
(28:19):
We're still living there, butthe program isn't there.
It's actually in Cleveland now,and so we bus with our vans, we
take our Mumbai kids and wetake them, and you know, we put
them down into Cleveland and wego pick up the Cleveland kids
and bring them, you know.
So we're serving all of BolivarCounty except for two grade
(28:44):
schools, and that's just becauseof distance issues.
So we've got one student fromevery grade school in Bolivar
County.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Hey, phil man you mentioned this earlier and I
want to see if we can peel thelayers back a little bit on it.
But you mentioned part of yourpassion and your burden is to
see these inequities, so tospeak, in terms of access, in
terms of resourcing for thechildren of your community.
(29:13):
I would love, if you don't mind, to take a little bit of time
and just again peel the layersback on what do you see as being
some of those chief and primaryways in which there is a lack
of access for some, or animbalance in access for some
children in the community versusother children in the community
(29:35):
, or there's an imbalance inopportunities for some children
in the community versus otherchildren in the community.
And how are you and Kim and C2Jinvolved in right-sizing or
bringing some balance, by God'sgrace, to some of those
inequities?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
You know.
Before you ask that, phil, letme just add this Bolivar County
is one of the largest geographiclocations, lengthwise and
otherwise in Mississippi, so totalk about they served the
entire county of Bolivar Countyis a great feat within itself,
right?
I just want the audience torealize that you know when I
(30:18):
worked for USDA, bolivar andSunflower counties are the two
largest counties in Mississippiand they cover a lot of ground,
or a lot of schools and a lot ofchildren.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
Yeah, and that's, you know, like Rosedale, rosedale
to get to Cleveland is about 24miles or so.
There's just no way we can getto Rosedale, get the kids when
we're getting all the other kids.
And then same thing with Duncan.
You know Duncan's all the wayat the top of Bolivar County and
so there's just that would be a30 minute, you know, drive one
(30:47):
way.
So there's just no way we canwe can get those kids.
I think one of the one of theprobably primary reasons it
exists certainly in ourcommunity, because of poverty.
Our mission is to developprograms to help kids fight
intergenerational poverty.
Cycle after cycle after cycleafter cycle, mom has a daughter,
(31:19):
daughter grows up, daughterbecomes like mom does the same
thing.
Mom does has a daughter.
Daughter grows up, looks at mom, grandma does the same thing,
and it's this perpetual, um,perpetual cycle that takes place
.
Um, and what we want to do iswe want to present.
I don't know if it's analternate reality, but I think
(31:41):
one of the things that Kim and Ihave done a fairly good job of
is just modeling.
What does it look like to bemarried?
What does it look like to bemarried for coming up on 28
years?
Now, I've had kids say to me.
I had a kid say to me this wasyears ago, he's an older kid.
(32:02):
I call him a kid because he'swould have been half my age, but
anyway, um, he said so you'vebeen married to kim this whole
time.
You've been married to Kim thiswhole time, yep, so no
girlfriends on the side oranything, no, no, just one wife.
(32:28):
Try to love her.
Well, and that was a foreignconcept.
Yeah, but you know, he didn'tgrow up with a father, so he had
examples of what it meant to bea guy.
(32:48):
However, those examples wereobviously misguided and
misdirected, which caused somesort of confusion, you know,
because then he, he believeswell, this is, this is what a
guy looks like, this is how itgoes.
So, um, as far as you know,inequities it, when you're
(33:08):
dealing with poverty and you'redealing in impoverished
situations with you know which alot of the students that we are
working with um are coming fromthat context.
It adds a whole differentdimension, um, to inequality,
you know, let me say it this way.
(33:30):
So, covid, I'll say, I'll giveyou an example, covid.
Covid hit right and we're goingto go virtual.
Okay, so we're going to dovirtual school and all our kids
are going to get laptopcomputers right, our laptop
computers.
We started school in August.
(33:52):
Those laptop computers didn'tshow up until like January.
Now I know there were otherschools that had laptop
computers and they came a wholelot quicker Like they they.
They had them in August.
You know Now why did it take ustill January to get laptop
computers?
I mean it shouldn't have takenthat long.
(34:13):
So kids are getting likepackets you know of of you know
thick packet of paper, whichthen you think about all the
printing costs, toner costs.
You get what I'm saying, like Idon't why, why didn't?
Why did it take so long whenother schools you know had their
(34:35):
computers right away on On theflip side of that, other school
districts that are maybe alittle bit more well-off, they
have a computer at home, theyhave access to internet.
You get what I'm saying.
So whether they got a computerthrough the school or not didn't
really matter because theycould do it from home.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So you have machines that are coming in later to a
group of kids that don't haveaccess at home to be able to do
the work, versus machines comingin quicker to a group of kids
that have access, whether themachines came in or not.
Correct, correct, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Correct, you know.
So you wrap your mind aroundthat a little bit, and then, and
then we're giving devices,we're giving computers to kids,
and a lot of the kids don't haveinternet access.
So now we got to get, you know,little wifi things.
For you get what I'm saying.
And one of the things that wedid during that time is we were
(35:42):
finding out, okay, kids don'thave Wi-Fi access.
So I went to Verizon and boughtup a bunch of I think we bought
eight, nine those those, um,wi-fi things, and you know, we
just started giving them to kidsand I'm like here, you know,
(36:03):
you can use this while this isgoing on.
I want it back when you go backto school, but in the meantime,
just use it, you know, and so wetry to do that with the kids
that are we're, we're in ourprogram, um, just to help, you
know, help out, because it, Imean, obviously it was a crazy
time just in and of itself, but,um, then you just start to
(36:25):
stack on these layers of stuff.
I mean there's, they're,they're, they're finding out now
, um, a lot of our kids areanywhere from one to two years
behind in academics, um, becauseof COVID, in what happened, and
so in our context it hurt awhole lot more than it did in a
(36:51):
lot of other contexts where theresources were there.
Um, you know you don't skip abeat.
Well, we skipped probably a lotof beats, and now they're
starting to see that, and I knowother communities.
It was the same thing.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Talk to us a little bit, gil, about to transition a
little bit.
Change a little bit ofdirection here.
Bit change a little bit ofdirection here.
We're talking about ways inwhich you and C2K in many ways
have had impact on the communityin terms of trying to close the
gap as it relates to access andequity and things of that
(37:30):
nature.
But one of the things I heardyou mention I would love for you
to kind of speak to a littlebit more is that you've changed
in this journey, that Kim'schanged in this journey.
How has your full lifeinvestment over the last decade
plus in Mount Bayou, with thiscommunity, with these children,
(37:54):
how has the Lord used that tochange you for the better?
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Uh, boy, uh, probably quite a few ways.
Um, I, I'm going to take youback to the very first trip and
I'll be extremely vulnerablewith what I'm going to say.
Um, extremely vulnerable withwhat I'm going to say.
Um, the first trip I took withKim down, um, I remember driving
(38:23):
.
We got to a community and Ican't remember exactly where it
was, Um, but it was predominant,and it was before we had gotten
to Mumbai.
Now, this is before.
61 was a four lane, so 61 was atwo lane and it took you
through every community possible.
So your trip going Southincreased by probably two hours
(38:50):
from where we were once he gotinto Mississippi, because they
wind you through every smalltown.
Now, 61 just goes around all ofthem, but at any rate, Now 61
just goes around all of them.
But, at any rate, I remembergoing through a town and there
were a bunch of African-Americanpeople outside hanging out and
I remember looking around, goingmy gosh.
(39:11):
I can't, I cannot believe, andthis was the thought that went
through my mind.
I can't believe.
I let Kim drive, you know, byherself down here and I had this
thought of, um, not eventhought, but I think, uh, uh,
like fear for some reason, and Idon't know why.
Um, the next day we were, westayed at, uh, a trailer house
(39:34):
with a friend of of Kim's, Katie, and uh, and so we stayed there
and I was going to cook out inthe front yard.
So I'm outside and these guyscome around you know the corner
and they come right into theyard and I'm like, oh boy, here
we go.
But all they wanted to do wasfigure out what I was cooking
and hang out and talk for aminute and that was it, and walk
(39:55):
by.
There was this, over the courseof time, this?
Why do I feel the way I feel?
Why am I reacting the way I'mreacting?
Um, where did I learn this?
You know where?
(40:16):
Where did this?
You know where's this comingfrom?
And so there was a lot ofunpacking.
Um, that happened, and this wasthis was well, before we even
considered moving down there.
But as we continued to go, as wecontinued to meet with, spend
(40:40):
time with, have lunch with, havedinner with, have people come
over to the house where we werestaying at, um, all of a sudden,
you know, like, man, we're,we're all pretty much the same,
you know, is kind of what I cameto and uh, not that I should,
(41:02):
you know, not that I shouldn'thave thought that the first time
, but it was.
It was just that weird.
Why, you know, why am I feelinglike this?
Like where is this come?
How did I learn this?
Where is this come, how did Ilearn this?
And so, over the course of time, um, unpacking a lot of that
(41:23):
and continuing to unpack, youknow, certain, certain
tendencies or or whatever.
I think that's something thatwe all go through, but I know
I'm not saying comfortable, uh,but I will say not uncomfortable
.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
And you know it was weird because I said to somebody
, I said man, I said we're inthis room with all these people
and stuff and I was like thereis not one black person in this
room and it almost makes me feeluncomfortable in that context,
(42:06):
because I've become morecomfortable in our context.
Um, yeah, so I mean it's been alot of, a lot of unpacking and,
(42:34):
um, you know, just letting Godyour question, I think, seeing
things from a differentperspective.
You know it's easy to watch thenews, whatever your news outlet
is.
That's going to tell youeverything that you want to hear
(42:55):
and then you can side with itand you can believe you're right
and everybody else is wrong.
That's going to tell youchanges your reactions to things
(43:23):
that may be portrayed on newsand so on and so forth, and so I
think there's been a good bitof that, I think having a
different outlook towards thingsthat I may not have had had we
never done this.
You know, I may still be.
I may still be Phil living inWisconsin, whose parents told
(43:43):
him never drive down thiscertain street in Milwaukee,
because this is the street,that's the bad street and this
is where all the bad stuffhappens Right which, by the way,
when I turned 16, got mydriver's license, it was one of
the first streets I drove downbecause I wanted to see.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Don't stick your hand in that liquor club man and he
shot you.
That's right.
That's right.
One is just like man don't.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
So some mothers out there, don't don't give your
children ideas.
All right, that's the moral ofthe story, right?
Don't give them ideas that'sright, that's right you know, my
parents freaked out too.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
They were like, wait, you did what?
And I said yeah.
I said I don't know.
And I said I even stopped at agas station, went inside, yeah,
yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Well, I mean, that's how people talk about you know
where I used to live now, whereI have a house set up in Jackson
, people used to talk.
People talk about Jackson thatway sometimes.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
You know and it's not to say that bad stuff doesn't
happen.
But you know quite honestly,bad stuff happens out in the
suburbs.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
It just gets swept under the rug and nobody ever
hears about it because peoplebuy, you know, their high-priced
attorneys to take care of thatand keep it hush-hush you know
when I hear you say, I feel morethan anything is that the only
way really, uh, to getcomfortable with the unfamiliar
is to just continue to engage ituntil it becomes familiar.
I mean, you, you know that it's.
(45:11):
It's easy to kind of stay onthe outside of that which is
unfamiliar, whether it becontext, whether it be people
groups, um, and just continue tokind of hold that suspicion and
distrust and fear and let thegaps get filled in with
misinformation about that, aboutthat people group, about those
neighborhoods and contexts.
(45:31):
And the only way that you canactually have that transformed
in your life is actually to bein the space and just continue
to be around the unfamiliaruntil it becomes familiar.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Yeah, I saw something the other day on Facebook, you
know, it showed in this littleline, and well, two little lines
, the difference between whatmotivation and discipline is, uh
.
So motivation started off with,like you know, huge humps and
the humps got smaller andsmaller until they just
dissipated.
Discipline showed it startedoff with, like you know, huge
humps and the humps got smallerand smaller until they just
dissipated.
Discipline showed it startedout with small little humps, you
(46:03):
know, small effort, but it wasconsistent, it stayed true over
time.
So so what I'm seeing you feeldoing is, I'm sure there's
probably motivation in whatyou're doing, obviously, but,
like you're, you're, you'rereally applying discipline to,
to your work and in you know, Ithink, if we were to to look to
(46:24):
a quality that we need, uh, whenwe're looking to reconciliation
, when we're looking toinoculate ourselves to, uh, to
foreign outside elements, towhat we grew up with or what we
understand, um, it seems thatwhen we are able to discern
particular patterns and uh, thatwould, that would lead us to
(46:45):
that inoculation, um, then webegin to walk a path towards, um
, discipline and that thatenables us then to eventually,
over time, to transformourselves, transform our hearts,
transform our thoughts, to thecapacity that we can then um
walk that walk of reconciliationwith people.
(47:06):
So I think, I think, uh thatthat that dedication to, to
discipline for you it's been 12years of a dedication to
discipline which is more or lessunheard of, and a lot of uh and
a lot of uh, ministerial umvocations and and and and
ventures.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
So one of the uh, one of the one of your stories was
uh, when we first had movedthere, we were at a basketball
game.
Mr Wallace who was our garbageman for years in town, he was
sitting in front of us and wewere sitting with some friends
and obviously Kim and I were theonly white people in the gym
(48:00):
something and he knew who wewere.
But he had.
He had said something jokinglyand one of our friends goes
wallace, you need to get over it.
You know they're living in town, white people, and there's
probably going to be more whitepeople living in town.
So you, just, you better getover it.
You know something like that.
He turns around.
Well, it gets funnier.
He turns around and he grabs myhand and he takes his arm and
(48:22):
he goes like this, and he helooked at who's who said
something to him and he goes, heain't white anymore.
So and there was quite, quitefunny I was like all right, well
, I guess I'm in.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
So there we go literally as as as, as the young
folks would say, you're invitedto all the barbecues.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Now, phil, there you are, barbecue even if you're out
, even if you are the host ofthe barbecue.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
It's time well, time times.
That happens from time to time.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Hey, let's wrap this up, phil, with a quick question.
If someone's on the sidelineshere and they're listening to
this podcast and saying tothemselves man, I would love to
take a step in this directionand be more intentional,
engaging in spaces that rightnow feel very unfamiliar to me,
in order that I might be thehands and feet of Jesus and be
(49:24):
the light of Christ and shinelight in dark spaces and engage
and not just simply come in,like to our earlier point, not
just simply come in with asavior mentality, but to come in
wanting to be one of manythat's plugged in, serving the
community, connecting in waysthat I have yet to do.
So what would be a first stepthat you would encourage them to
(49:46):
take?
Speaker 4 (49:47):
Well, I think one you got to pray and I would also
have some people that know youwell, pray as well.
And for us it was know you well, pray as well.
And you know, for us it was.
We had some folks down, like Isaid, in Mount Bayou, up in
(50:09):
Wisconsin, pray for us to helpus discern what we should do,
and I think that was extremely,extremely helpful.
The second thing that I wouldsay, especially in our like for
me, I think I have all theanswers, and when you said, save
your mentality, it can verymuch so come off like that.
If you're not careful, like youknow, for instance, I'll give
(50:29):
you a.
For instance, um, we took acouple of trips to in the
background.
Here you see these jerseyshanging up.
Those are two of I don't knowhow many jerseys he's got down
here and stuff, but Doug Henryplayed Major League Baseball and
(50:50):
then he became a coach and hewas coaching for the Royals.
At the time it was right around2013, 14, somewhere in there.
They won the world series, butanyway, he said, if you can ever
get kids to Kansas city, we'lltake care of everything, and
there's a point to this story.
So through our afterschoolprogram, we let kids earn a trip
(51:11):
to Kansas city, so we rent avehicle, drive nine hours, we go
up there.
We would stay two nights.
Well, devin goes to use thebathroom and he's going to take
shower and get ready.
So it gets done.
I go into the bathroom and thetoilet has like literally no
(51:35):
more toilet paper and there'sall this toilet paper in the
toilet, has like literally nomore toilet paper and there's
all this toilet paper in thetoilet and then the actual
shower is stopped up so it's gotwater standing in it.
I said what is going on?
You know what's happening goingon, you know what's happening.
(52:02):
And he said well, you know, atour house we got to put like a
bunch of toilet paper in thereto get it to flush down.
So I just I thought that was.
I said okay.
I said what is the deal withthe, the?
You know the tub and he goes.
Well, at my house, you know,the water always backs up and
the water wasn't backing up.
So I just I stuck like a, stucklike a hand towel on top of the
drain to like clog it up to himthat's normal to me, that's not
(52:28):
normal to you.
It may be abnormal to him.
It's very normal, you know, andwe're talking about on that
trip.
When we first got there, we tookthe kids to the mall because
they had a food court and sowe're like, let's get some food.
Our kids are staring in adirection and I'm like, what are
(52:55):
they staring at?
Like, hey, phil, what's that?
I said, uh, that's an escalator.
What Can we?
Can we go on it?
I'm like, yeah, you can go onit.
They had never seen an escalatorand so they got on that thing.
(53:16):
They were on that thing for 45minutes.
They thought it was a carnivalride up and down and up and down
.
I'm like, come on, we gotta eat.
No, we want to.
Yeah, I'm like, oh my gosh, anescalator.
You know, normal to me not, um.
And so I think you're in answerto your question what your
(53:40):
normal is may not be somebodyelse's normal and you can't go
into that situation and go.
I'm right, you're wrong.
This is normal.
That's abnormal.
It may seem like that, but youknow you got to approach it the
right way.
(54:01):
I never once said to the kids Ican't believe you've never seen
an escalator before.
In my mind I felt that, but Inever verbalized it.
I just let them have fun.
They probably went home andtold their whole family about
this thing they did at the mall,with this ride up and down
(54:22):
thing and you know that kind ofthing.
And with Devin I, I just said,well, I said, bud, we don't need
to plug anything up, we canjust use it as it is and it'll,
it'll be okay.
Okay, well, I didn't know,cause it wasn't doing you know,
and I said, I know it's allright, our normal may not be
somebody else's normal, and Icould tell you story after story
(54:48):
after story, just like that,different things that have
happened over the course of time, to where I sit there and I go.
How blessed was I in a lot ofregards, and how do I take that
opportunity to be able to sharewith others in a loving,
(55:08):
christ-filled way, versus an I'mright, you're wrong kind of
mentality, and unfortunatelyI've seen people do that.
That's destructive.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Madfield, this has been incredibly fruitful.
You mentioned that you gotseveral hundred stories that you
could share.
Maybe we need to invite youback so that you can have an
opportunity to share some ofthose stories, because it's been
fruitful just to hear all thestories that you've told on this
episode and pick your brain andlearn from you.
For those of you all who arelooking to learn more about Phil
(55:40):
and his work, you can reach outto Phil at C2K Ministries.
That's a quick Google search.
You can find all sorts ofdetails about what him and Kim,
his beautiful bride, are doingin the great community of
Mountain Bayou and all aroundBolivar and Simpson County.
So please feel free to reachout to them via C2K Ministries
(56:02):
Also not just a website, butsocial media channels.
You can search on C2KMinistries and you can find out
some of the things that arehappening in Phil and Kim's
world.
For us.
You can reach us atMissionMississippiorg world.
For us.
You can reach us atmissionmississippiorg.
You can also search on LivingReconciled on any podcast app
that you may be using and youwill find this podcast.
(56:25):
So please like, share andsubscribe to the Living
Reconciled podcast.
We got plenty more episodes tocome, lord willing.
We would love for you to tunein and listen On behalf of my
friends Nettie Winters, austinHoyle and our guest Phil Shank.
My name is Brian Crawford,signing off saying God bless,
(56:47):
god bless.
Thanks for joining LivingReconciled.
If you would like moreinformation on how you can be a
part of the ongoing work ofhelping Christians learn how to
live in the reconciliation thatJesus has already secured,
please visit us online atmissionmississippiorg or call us
at 601-353-6477.
(57:08):
Thanks again for listening.
This is Living Reconciled, a podcast dedicated
to giving our communitiespractical evidence of the gospel
message by helping Christianslearn how to live in the
reconciliation that Jesus hasalready secured for us by living
with grace across racial lines.
Hey, thanks so much for joiningus on this episode of Living
Reconciled.
My name is Brian Crawford, I amyour host and I am with some
(00:37):
really good friends of mineLetty Winters and Austin Hoyle.
Gentlemen, how are you doingtoday?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I'm great man, you got it right.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Oh, I'm good man, I'm good.
I'm just sitting up here at thechurch doing ministry all day.
I get to tune in to y'all to dothis podcast.
Man, I couldn't be spending mytime this morning in a better
way.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Awesome, awesome man and I couldn't be spending my
time in a better way either.
In fact, it's about to get evenbetter because we got a great
guest.
But before we introduce thatguest, I want to give a quick
shout out to some of oursponsors who make this podcast
and the work of MissionMississippi possible.
Folks like Mississippi College,anderson United Methodist
Church, grace Temple Church,mississippi State University,
(01:26):
real Christian Foundation,nissan, st Dominic's Hospital,
atmos Energy, regents Foundation, brown Missionary Baptist
Church, christian Life Church,ms Doris Powell, mr Robert Ward,
ms Anne Winters.
Thank you so much foreverything that you do.
It's because of what you dothat we're able to do what we do
, and what we are doing today ishaving a conversation with none
(01:47):
other than Mr Phil Shaik.
Mr Phil Shaik is the executivedirector of C2K Ministries and
he is also the husband of him.
Shaik, they reside in MoundBayou, mississippi.
Shape, they reside in MoundBayou, mississippi, and God is
doing an incredible work intheir life and we can't wait to
(02:09):
have Phil tell you all about it.
Phil, how you doing, brother.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Good, I'm glad to be with y'all this morning.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself.
Yeah, my wife and I reside inMound Bayou, mississippi,
originally from Wisconsin, whichis where I am at right now, and
, yeah, we moved down thereabout 12 years ago.
(02:34):
We felt a fairly strong call onour life to move to Mount Bayou
Mississippi.
On her life, um, to move toMount Bayou Mississippi, and um,
kim had been just a little bitof background to that.
Kim actually started tovolunteer in Mount Bayou
probably 26, 27 years ago.
(02:57):
Um, her brother, uh, was partof the Christian brothers
program and he got put in MountBayou, mississippi and Kim kind
of made a comment to him andsaid you know, you aren't going
to last six months and uh, andhe ended up staying an extra
year.
And so Kim, being, uh, the nosysister that she is, she decided
(03:22):
to head South and figure outwhat he was doing.
So she did that for um, sheactually started to volunteer
through saint gabriel mercycenter and it was back when they
had a preschool.
So she would bring down umeaster baskets, um, you know, do
an easter egg hunt and then inthe fall she would help out with
(03:44):
harvest festival, and so shedid that for several years.
Then I started to come with her.
Uh, we started to bring youthgroups down for spring break
trips and then, probably about14 years ago or so, my dad had
passed unexpectedly.
I became the power of attorneyfor my grandmother my
(04:04):
grandmother about a year and ahalf, almost two years later.
Then she had passed and Kim hadsaid why don't we just go to
Mumbai?
You get away.
So that's what we did and wespent two weeks down there and
when we were pulling out of townI looked over at her and I said
do you feel like we should movehere?
Looked over at her and I saiddo you feel like we should move
(04:27):
here?
And she said you feel that too.
And I went well, here we go.
So we had some people prayingfor us down in mississippi.
We had people praying for us upin, uh, wisconsin, and
everybody came back and was likeyeah, I can't see any reason
why you wouldn't.
So we packed everything up andmoved to Mumbai and historical
(04:51):
for those that are tuning inhistorical context is Mumbai is
the oldest all African-Americancommunity, founded by ex-slaves
in 1887.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
And that makes us the only white couple in our small,
all, all black community, yourlives.
That would cause you to pack upand move to a historically
(05:27):
predominantly black context.
Coming from Wisconsin and whatI know of your community, a
historically predominantly whitecontext in terms of the
neighborhoods and the spacesthat you guys frequent and that
you guys frequent, um, and thatyou and that you are around,
what, what was moving in yourheart and what was stirring in
(05:47):
your heart where you you feltcompelled by God to make this,
make this transition and makethis move.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Yeah, kim and I, so we, we don't have any kids of
our own.
Um, the joke has always beenwe've had everybody else's kids
and so, um which in a lot ofrespects is very true when we
lived in Wisconsin, we wouldhave kids, you know, live with
(06:15):
us for six months at a time, um,because of parent issues, or
you know, just anyway.
So we've always been involvedwith kids, with kids in some way
, shape or form, and even whenwe were taking groups down to
Mumbai, stirring was what couldwe do?
(06:35):
What?
How could we get involved inthe community to, you know, help
, better things?
Um, I think one of the thingswe saw and still see is
(07:00):
inequality and trying to levelthe the playing field when it
comes to education, and so whenwe moved there, we did nothing
the first year.
We didn't start anything, wedidn't do anything.
All we did was get involvedwith the booster club.
(07:23):
We're at every sporting eventselling chips and cheese and
candy and this, and that, justso we were, you know, exposing
ourselves in the community.
Um, and I got, uh, I gotinvolved with coaching, um, so I
could be there with, you know,a lot of the young men that I
knew and, um, and so I, I I justthink there was a prompting to
(07:47):
just help kids.
I mean, we love kids.
We've, you know, we've alwaysbeen involved with kids in their
lives, um, you know, and Ithink, uh, I think that was
probably the, probably theprompting, uh, that we both felt
so and, and you know, it wasn'tthat we were trying to move to
(08:11):
a completely different contextto.
I think the misnomer is oh, youmove there to change people or
change something, and I'm likethat's not the case.
The case was we moved into acommunity.
Granted, probably, you know.
To most it looks very odd thatsomebody would do that, but to
(08:37):
us it just seemed natural and itseemed normal.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Um, and it didn't seem.
It didn't seem like as big of adeal as it is to a lot of other
people.
I said so.
You know, phil, you know whatdid it feel like for the people
in the community to receive you.
How did that work?
In them receiving you, did theysee you as a savior or
something?
How did that work?
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Savior?
I don't think so.
I think a word that I wouldmaybe use is an asset, um,
because I could probably saythings that others would say and
(09:39):
it may not be heard as well asit it would if I said it.
Um, or you know, one of thethings that we've tried to be is
, um, you know, it's not that Idon't think people are voiceless
.
I think that term has been used, uh, before.
(09:59):
You know, a voice for thevoiceless.
I don't think you know peopleare voiceless.
I just think that some peopleare, um, extremely hard of
hearing, and when I like, when Ilike that part thanks, you know
, and I just it's not that stuffisn't being said, it's just
(10:24):
that it's not being heard.
And when it comes from somebodyelse, sometimes all of a sudden,
oh well, I didn't know that orI didn't know this, and it's
like, well, pretty sure, theperson that's standing next to
me just said the same thing andI just regurgitated it and now
(10:46):
all of a sudden you hear it.
So I would just say I'm, Iwouldn't, I, it'd probably be
pretty naive to say that when wemoved there, everybody was
excited.
You know, I think there was.
There could have been someapprehension like why, you know,
I think that would have been aquestion that a lot of people
asked, um, even in our community, uh.
(11:08):
But after we were there for awhile, um, that all subsided and
and we're just like anybodyelse in our community, just
happen to be white I thinkyou're speaking to something
really and really importantfield in terms of the longevity
right.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
You mentioned early on that you could imagine and
maybe even experience some earlycuriosity in one sense, I guess
, to put it positively, and thensuspicion in another sense, to
put it negatively.
But regardless of whether itwas just simply curiosity or
suspicion, there was probablyearly on questions like okay,
(11:52):
why are they here and what is itthat they want from us?
And being here and being here,but longevity allows us to
establish a sense of clarity anda sense of comfort and trust
(12:13):
where you begin to see, okay,they're here not to take from us
, they're here to give back tous without, without some sort of
and not in a transactional sortof way.
Could you speak to us a littlebit about the power of longevity
(12:33):
and just being present and justkeeping hand to the plow and
how that has given you greater,greater influence, how that is
cultivated, strongerrelationships just by being
present.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Well, tom, I'll share a quick story.
So, a friend of mine from MountBayou, al Morton, he and I I
become friends over the lastprobably year or two.
Uh, we ran into each other atthe golf course, a golf course
(13:11):
up in Clarksdale, and hehappened to be walking out on
the course and I, I said to uh,the guy that works at the car, I
said who is that?
Did you catch his name?
He goes yeah, he's from, he'sfrom your town.
And I said what's his name?
And he said Al Morton.
And I said, oh, I'm going to go, I'll go catch up with him.
So I go catch up with him and Isaid, hey, uh, are you related
(13:35):
to, uh, orlando?
And uh, he's like, oh, that'smy brother, you know.
And I I went, oh, okay.
Like, oh, that's my brother,you know.
And I I went, oh, okay, cool, I, you know, I'm phil.
And he goes wait a minute, hegoes.
You're, he goes, you're the guywho was coaching the little
league team.
Now, I haven't coached littleleague in probably four or five
(13:57):
years and he goes.
I was wondering why is there awhite guy out there coaching our
kids?
And he goes.
Do we have that much of ashortage of black baseball
coaches.
So he made light of it andjoked around about it.
But to your question aboutlongevity, when you keep pouring
(14:22):
yourself in, keep pouringyourself in, keep pouring
yourself in the baseball fieldbutts up to the horseshoe it's
kind of a horseshoe driveway,big horseshoe driveway, and
everybody calls it the projects,and so our outfield is
literally the backyard of someof these uh apartments.
(14:45):
A lot of our kids played for me.
That played for me came out ofthe projects because I'm working
with the kids and they're thereand parents are seeing it, moms
are seeing it and so on.
Um, it automatically starts to,I think, lend credibility,
specifically when you, you justdon't do it one year, you do it
(15:07):
two years, you do it three years, you do it for you know you're
taking the kids, um, you know uh, to Rosedale.
And then you know, I told ourboys one time I said, listen,
because we're pretty good.
And uh, I told him I said wemake quick light of this game,
(15:30):
I'll take you to lost pizza.
Well, we got to the bottom ofthe second inning.
It's 33 to two and the kids arelooking at me going when are
you going to call the game?
And I finally walked over thecoach.
I said we got to go, we goingfor pizza, we going for pizza.
I said, yes, we're going forpizza, I'll take you out for
pizza.
So it's things like that.
(15:52):
You know, in our, in our, ourafterschool program, starting in
Mount Bayou, it startedliterally with seven students
and they were the students a lotof them were the students that
when we would come down with ourgroups from Wisconsin we would
do youth group at this church,at Walk of Faith.
(16:14):
And then, when we moved here,we took over the youth group and
so Kim and I became the youthgroup leaders at that church.
And so those kids, when westarted the afterschool program,
then many of them startedcoming to our afterschool
program in, you know, in Mumbai,and that would have been the
second year that we were there.
So we moved to Mumbai.
(16:35):
Um, the idea was not oh well,this is some sort of quick fix,
something.
It was.
Now we're going to be here, youknow 15, 20, you know some odd
(16:59):
years, who knows and um, and sosettle in, you know, get used,
used to it, not only from ourperspective but from others'
perspective, and I think thatjust lends a lot of credibility.
I think the other thing too,that we made up our mind early
(17:20):
on and we saw this with a coupleof programs in Lafayette,
louisiana.
You need to live, in my opinion, in this context, you need to
live where you're doing ministry.
That's a John Perkins R manrelocation saw there was one
(17:41):
family and it was a white familythat lived on one side of town
and then they would drive tothis other side of town and to
do an after-school program withpredominantly all black kids.
But they didn't want to move tothat side of town, they wanted
(18:02):
to live on this side of town.
And I told Kim early on.
I said you know, we're notdoing that.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Share with our listening audience the benefit
of investing your entire life ina community, in a sense, where
you would move into thecommunity and not just work
there but live and work and playin that same community.
What, what benefits have youseen through the years as a
(18:31):
result of doing that?
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Just a large amount of credibility.
People I think a lot of peoplein our community.
You know, for instance, our uhmayor is a good friend of ours.
He's a neighbor.
He's lives pretty much acrossthe street from us.
Um, he has been on me for nowtwo years to run for alderman
(18:58):
now remind us again how longyou've been in my 12 years.
Okay, and you know, I said tohim, I said you kind of
understand what you're asking,right?
Something like that could beextremely historic if I was to
get elected for alderman um youknow or not, a joke on you it
(19:22):
would be a tad bit historic.
But anyway, um, and he kind oflooks at me and he goes, yeah,
he goes.
But so what he's like?
Do you live in the community?
Are you part of the community?
Have you been here a long time,you know?
Do you breathe into the life ofkids?
Do you breathe into the life ofour community, all of that?
(19:43):
He's like I, he goes, I don't,he goes.
I see it differently than you doand I went.
Well, that's interesting.
But I also think that's thecredibility piece.
When you park yourself in acommunity, you're basically
saying I'm not, I'm not betterthan, I'm not worse than, I'm
(20:04):
equal to and I'm equal with.
And I think when you, you knowand I'm not saying it's a bad
thing to drive from you know wecould go into cleveland and then
could drive to Mount Bayou, dosomething and then drive back.
I'm not saying there's anythingkind of completely wrong with
that, but you never really get achance to become part of the
(20:29):
community when you're doingthings like that, things like
that.
And I think, personally, itlooks more like I'm trying to
just come in and changesomething and then I leave and I
go back to my own contextversus how do you integrate into
that context.
(20:50):
Which means in a lot of cases,you have to change.
You have to change, not thecommunity has to change to you.
You have to change to thecommunity and to that new
context.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know, phil, I think the mayor's different look
at it from that perspective isexactly what you just said, is
that they're looking at it basedon what you just said and not
so much as being historic.
You know, let's and I know I'mgoing to get in trouble here
with our host, my co-host butlet's look at it from this
(21:28):
perspective.
When a black person moves intoan all-white community and
become part of the, as all thethings you talked about, it's a
celebration of a lot of things.
When that historic momenthappened that they get selected
to the I'm trying they evencelebrate the fact that they get
(21:50):
elected to the NeighborhoodAssociation not Altamont, you
know, just the local communityneighborhood association or they
get on the parents' teachersassociation thing, or become a
band booster club member orprovide leadership to those and
(22:13):
those I'm not making fun Ithought those are really more
important from my perspective,more important than being as a
direct hit on the kids, andthat's what you're after.
But at the same time, you know,we move into those
circumstances and that become acelebrated thing both for the
neighborhood and for thefamilies and other things in
there.
So you might want to rethinkhow you look at that in terms of
(22:35):
that.
I know that you come from thebackground of, of, of.
You know all white context andas a lot of that stuff about
being the hero and you know, uh,things that would go right now
we've got a white guy in there,that kind of stuff.
I know that I've heard all ofthose comments, but you know you
are adding a contribution.
I think you said up front youwere not there to save or to do
(22:58):
you.
You come in to make acontribution or using your
skills and talent to do that.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
No, I think there's.
There's something to you knowobviously be said about that,
and I've I've thought about it,you know I'm still thinking
about it.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
We'll see Awesome.
I appreciate, feel even you,your We'll see stay out of the
(23:32):
context and don't bring anything.
And I love the fact that you'resaying no, no, no.
Even though there may be agreater involvement, a deeper
involvement, a deepercredibility that can be earned,
it doesn't mean that those thatare not willing or those that,
for whatever reason, cannot moveinto the context, should
(23:54):
completely divest themselvesfrom the opportunity to be
involved in this community, andso those that are angry won't be
criticized for not doing that.
Absolutely.
There's an opportunity for youstill to provide an incredible
amount of good, even if you'reon the outskirts, and at the
same time, there's a deeperlevel of involvement and a
(24:16):
deeper level of credibility thatcan be established as well, and
I really appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, because the success of the ministry, even if
your success of buildingrelationships with people,
doesn't necessarily require youto move to new homes, there's
people who have been living in aplace for 30 years in their
lives and even if God placessomething on their hearts of
people to engage, that they'renot being necessarily called to
(24:45):
move homes, and I think that's agood point.
And I guess the question I haveis you know what are some of
the things that you see aroundyour community that that you
feel, if you were able to kindof gather the, the full council
of the significant leaders inMount Bayou, that you guys can
(25:06):
kind of come together and andmake some, make some good
roadway and helping to solvesome of the problems roadway and
helping to solve some of theproblems.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
I think there's a good bit of that that is
happening right now.
I also think there's still agood bit of the silo mentality
in our community If my name'snot going to be on it, if I'm
not going to get the recognition, I'm not doing it.
But I don't think that's anydifferent from a lot of other
(25:41):
communities.
But no, I think that you knowour mayor's doing a good job,
but the mayor can only do somuch because he is strapped by,
you know, alderman decisions,that kind of a thing.
That kind of a thing, um, forme, I mean my, you know, my
thing is more education based,um, and not necessarily, um,
(26:06):
alderman driven.
That's that's why I've had a uh, just a has a hesitancy.
Um, you know, school boardmight be a better setting.
You know, that would besomething that I could get.
I could not that I wouldn't getfired up about being an
alderman, but I'd, I'd getprobably a little bit more fired
up being on the school board.
(26:27):
That might be something that Ilook more into than than
becoming a trying to become analderman, just because of our
context, um, our, um, you know,our context is primarily kids.
That's who we're dealing with,that's who we're working with,
and if we can change policy, youknow we can change something
for the positive.
It'd be a good thing.
Um, specific to education.
(26:49):
So we just see, we see there'sjust so much inequality that we
see in, specifically, our schooldistrict and really the
surrounding areas as well.
It's just that, you know, kimand I, when we went to school
here in wisconsin, um, the highschool that we went to was a
(27:11):
ranked top five high schools inthe state.
I mean we had everything weneeded.
Teaching was great, blah, blah,blah, all of it.
And then we just see reallystark difference to what we grew
up with versus what ourstudents have.
So I mean, one of the thingsthat we've tried to do with
Redirect is provide the toolsand resources that are necessary
(27:34):
for our kids to becomesuccessful future leaders, and
that means both educationally,that also means socially, that
also means spiritually, thatwe're providing resources in
different aspects to reallycultivate the whole individual,
(27:57):
versus just we're going to workon your brain here.
Let me teach you what two plustwo is.
Well, we want to take it beyondthat and I think we've done a
pretty good job of that.
Going from seven kids our firstyear to doubling it 15.
And then, by the third year, Ithink, we doubled it again to
about 30.
And now we're not even inMumbai.
(28:19):
We're still living there, butthe program isn't there.
It's actually in Cleveland now,and so we bus with our vans, we
take our Mumbai kids and wetake them, and you know, we put
them down into Cleveland and wego pick up the Cleveland kids
and bring them, you know.
So we're serving all of BolivarCounty except for two grade
(28:44):
schools, and that's just becauseof distance issues.
So we've got one student fromevery grade school in Bolivar
County.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Hey, phil man you mentioned this earlier and I
want to see if we can peel thelayers back a little bit on it.
But you mentioned part of yourpassion and your burden is to
see these inequities, so tospeak, in terms of access, in
terms of resourcing for thechildren of your community.
(29:13):
I would love, if you don't mind, to take a little bit of time
and just again peel the layersback on what do you see as being
some of those chief and primaryways in which there is a lack
of access for some, or animbalance in access for some
children in the community versusother children in the community
(29:35):
, or there's an imbalance inopportunities for some children
in the community versus otherchildren in the community.
And how are you and Kim and C2Jinvolved in right-sizing or
bringing some balance, by God'sgrace, to some of those
inequities?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
You know.
Before you ask that, phil, letme just add this Bolivar County
is one of the largest geographiclocations, lengthwise and
otherwise in Mississippi, so totalk about they served the
entire county of Bolivar Countyis a great feat within itself,
right?
I just want the audience torealize that you know when I
(30:18):
worked for USDA, bolivar andSunflower counties are the two
largest counties in Mississippiand they cover a lot of ground,
or a lot of schools and a lot ofchildren.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
Yeah, and that's, you know, like Rosedale, rosedale
to get to Cleveland is about 24miles or so.
There's just no way we can getto Rosedale, get the kids when
we're getting all the other kids.
And then same thing with Duncan.
You know Duncan's all the wayat the top of Bolivar County and
so there's just that would be a30 minute, you know, drive one
(30:47):
way.
So there's just no way we canwe can get those kids.
I think one of the one of theprobably primary reasons it
exists certainly in ourcommunity, because of poverty.
Our mission is to developprograms to help kids fight
intergenerational poverty.
Cycle after cycle after cycleafter cycle, mom has a daughter,
(31:19):
daughter grows up, daughterbecomes like mom does the same
thing.
Mom does has a daughter.
Daughter grows up, looks at mom, grandma does the same thing,
and it's this perpetual, um,perpetual cycle that takes place
.
Um, and what we want to do iswe want to present.
I don't know if it's analternate reality, but I think
(31:41):
one of the things that Kim and Ihave done a fairly good job of
is just modeling.
What does it look like to bemarried?
What does it look like to bemarried for coming up on 28
years?
Now, I've had kids say to me.
I had a kid say to me this wasyears ago, he's an older kid.
(32:02):
I call him a kid because he'swould have been half my age, but
anyway, um, he said so you'vebeen married to kim this whole
time.
You've been married to Kim thiswhole time, yep, so no
girlfriends on the side oranything, no, no, just one wife.
(32:28):
Try to love her.
Well, and that was a foreignconcept.
Yeah, but you know, he didn'tgrow up with a father, so he had
examples of what it meant to bea guy.
(32:48):
However, those examples wereobviously misguided and
misdirected, which caused somesort of confusion, you know,
because then he, he believeswell, this is, this is what a
guy looks like, this is how itgoes.
So, um, as far as you know,inequities it, when you're
(33:08):
dealing with poverty and you'redealing in impoverished
situations with you know which alot of the students that we are
working with um are coming fromthat context.
It adds a whole differentdimension, um, to inequality,
you know, let me say it this way.
(33:30):
So, covid, I'll say, I'll giveyou an example, covid.
Covid hit right and we're goingto go virtual.
Okay, so we're going to dovirtual school and all our kids
are going to get laptopcomputers right, our laptop
computers.
We started school in August.
(33:52):
Those laptop computers didn'tshow up until like January.
Now I know there were otherschools that had laptop
computers and they came a wholelot quicker Like they they.
They had them in August.
You know Now why did it take ustill January to get laptop
computers?
I mean it shouldn't have takenthat long.
(34:13):
So kids are getting likepackets you know of of you know
thick packet of paper, whichthen you think about all the
printing costs, toner costs.
You get what I'm saying, like Idon't why, why didn't?
Why did it take so long whenother schools you know had their
(34:35):
computers right away on On theflip side of that, other school
districts that are maybe alittle bit more well-off, they
have a computer at home, theyhave access to internet.
You get what I'm saying.
So whether they got a computerthrough the school or not didn't
really matter because theycould do it from home.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So you have machines that are coming in later to a
group of kids that don't haveaccess at home to be able to do
the work, versus machines comingin quicker to a group of kids
that have access, whether themachines came in or not.
Correct, correct, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
Correct, you know.
So you wrap your mind aroundthat a little bit, and then, and
then we're giving devices,we're giving computers to kids,
and a lot of the kids don't haveinternet access.
So now we got to get, you know,little wifi things.
For you get what I'm saying.
And one of the things that wedid during that time is we were
(35:42):
finding out, okay, kids don'thave Wi-Fi access.
So I went to Verizon and boughtup a bunch of I think we bought
eight, nine those those, um,wi-fi things, and you know, we
just started giving them to kidsand I'm like here, you know,
(36:03):
you can use this while this isgoing on.
I want it back when you go backto school, but in the meantime,
just use it, you know, and so wetry to do that with the kids
that are we're, we're in ourprogram, um, just to help, you
know, help out, because it, Imean, obviously it was a crazy
time just in and of itself, but,um, then you just start to
(36:25):
stack on these layers of stuff.
I mean there's, they're,they're, they're finding out now
, um, a lot of our kids areanywhere from one to two years
behind in academics, um, becauseof COVID, in what happened, and
so in our context it hurt awhole lot more than it did in a
(36:51):
lot of other contexts where theresources were there.
Um, you know you don't skip abeat.
Well, we skipped probably a lotof beats, and now they're
starting to see that, and I knowother communities.
It was the same thing.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Talk to us a little bit, gil, about to transition a
little bit.
Change a little bit ofdirection here.
Bit change a little bit ofdirection here.
We're talking about ways inwhich you and C2K in many ways
have had impact on the communityin terms of trying to close the
gap as it relates to access andequity and things of that
(37:30):
nature.
But one of the things I heardyou mention I would love for you
to kind of speak to a littlebit more is that you've changed
in this journey, that Kim'schanged in this journey.
How has your full lifeinvestment over the last decade
plus in Mount Bayou, with thiscommunity, with these children,
(37:54):
how has the Lord used that tochange you for the better?
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Uh, boy, uh, probably quite a few ways.
Um, I, I'm going to take youback to the very first trip and
I'll be extremely vulnerablewith what I'm going to say.
Um, extremely vulnerable withwhat I'm going to say.
Um, the first trip I took withKim down, um, I remember driving
(38:23):
.
We got to a community and Ican't remember exactly where it
was, Um, but it was predominant,and it was before we had gotten
to Mumbai.
Now, this is before.
61 was a four lane, so 61 was atwo lane and it took you
through every community possible.
So your trip going Southincreased by probably two hours
(38:50):
from where we were once he gotinto Mississippi, because they
wind you through every smalltown.
Now, 61 just goes around all ofthem, but at any rate, Now 61
just goes around all of them.
But, at any rate, I remembergoing through a town and there
were a bunch of African-Americanpeople outside hanging out and
I remember looking around, goingmy gosh.
(39:11):
I can't, I cannot believe, andthis was the thought that went
through my mind.
I can't believe.
I let Kim drive, you know, byherself down here and I had this
thought of, um, not eventhought, but I think, uh, uh,
like fear for some reason, and Idon't know why.
Um, the next day we were, westayed at, uh, a trailer house
(39:34):
with a friend of of Kim's, Katie, and uh, and so we stayed there
and I was going to cook out inthe front yard.
So I'm outside and these guyscome around you know the corner
and they come right into theyard and I'm like, oh boy, here
we go.
But all they wanted to do wasfigure out what I was cooking
and hang out and talk for aminute and that was it, and walk
(39:55):
by.
There was this, over the courseof time, this?
Why do I feel the way I feel?
Why am I reacting the way I'mreacting?
Um, where did I learn this?
You know where?
(40:16):
Where did this?
You know where's this comingfrom?
And so there was a lot ofunpacking.
Um, that happened, and this wasthis was well, before we even
considered moving down there.
But as we continued to go, as wecontinued to meet with, spend
(40:40):
time with, have lunch with, havedinner with, have people come
over to the house where we werestaying at, um, all of a sudden,
you know, like, man, we're,we're all pretty much the same,
you know, is kind of what I cameto and uh, not that I should,
(41:02):
you know, not that I shouldn'thave thought that the first time
, but it was.
It was just that weird.
Why, you know, why am I feelinglike this?
Like where is this come?
How did I learn this?
Where is this come, how did Ilearn this?
And so, over the course of time, um, unpacking a lot of that
(41:23):
and continuing to unpack, youknow, certain, certain
tendencies or or whatever.
I think that's something thatwe all go through, but I know
I'm not saying comfortable, uh,but I will say not uncomfortable
.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:42):
And you know it was weird because I said to somebody
, I said man, I said we're inthis room with all these people
and stuff and I was like thereis not one black person in this
room and it almost makes me feeluncomfortable in that context,
(42:06):
because I've become morecomfortable in our context.
Um, yeah, so I mean it's been alot of, a lot of unpacking and,
(42:34):
um, you know, just letting Godyour question, I think, seeing
things from a differentperspective.
You know it's easy to watch thenews, whatever your news outlet
is.
That's going to tell youeverything that you want to hear
(42:55):
and then you can side with itand you can believe you're right
and everybody else is wrong.
That's going to tell youchanges your reactions to things
(43:23):
that may be portrayed on newsand so on and so forth, and so I
think there's been a good bitof that, I think having a
different outlook towards thingsthat I may not have had had we
never done this.
You know, I may still be.
I may still be Phil living inWisconsin, whose parents told
(43:43):
him never drive down thiscertain street in Milwaukee,
because this is the street,that's the bad street and this
is where all the bad stuffhappens Right which, by the way,
when I turned 16, got mydriver's license, it was one of
the first streets I drove downbecause I wanted to see.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Don't stick your hand in that liquor club man and he
shot you.
That's right.
That's right.
One is just like man don't.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
So some mothers out there, don't don't give your
children ideas.
All right, that's the moral ofthe story, right?
Don't give them ideas that'sright, that's right you know, my
parents freaked out too.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
They were like, wait, you did what?
And I said yeah.
I said I don't know.
And I said I even stopped at agas station, went inside, yeah,
yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Well, I mean, that's how people talk about you know
where I used to live now, whereI have a house set up in Jackson
, people used to talk.
People talk about Jackson thatway sometimes.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
You know and it's not to say that bad stuff doesn't
happen.
But you know quite honestly,bad stuff happens out in the
suburbs.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
It just gets swept under the rug and nobody ever
hears about it because peoplebuy, you know, their high-priced
attorneys to take care of thatand keep it hush-hush you know
when I hear you say, I feel morethan anything is that the only
way really, uh, to getcomfortable with the unfamiliar
is to just continue to engage ituntil it becomes familiar.
I mean, you, you know that it's.
(45:11):
It's easy to kind of stay onthe outside of that which is
unfamiliar, whether it becontext, whether it be people
groups, um, and just continue tokind of hold that suspicion and
distrust and fear and let thegaps get filled in with
misinformation about that, aboutthat people group, about those
neighborhoods and contexts.
(45:31):
And the only way that you canactually have that transformed
in your life is actually to bein the space and just continue
to be around the unfamiliaruntil it becomes familiar.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Yeah, I saw something the other day on Facebook, you
know, it showed in this littleline, and well, two little lines
, the difference between whatmotivation and discipline is, uh
.
So motivation started off with,like you know, huge humps and
the humps got smaller andsmaller until they just
dissipated.
Discipline showed it startedoff with, like you know, huge
humps and the humps got smallerand smaller until they just
dissipated.
Discipline showed it startedout with small little humps, you
(46:03):
know, small effort, but it wasconsistent, it stayed true over
time.
So so what I'm seeing you feeldoing is, I'm sure there's
probably motivation in whatyou're doing, obviously, but,
like you're, you're, you'rereally applying discipline to,
to your work and in you know, Ithink, if we were to to look to
(46:24):
a quality that we need, uh, whenwe're looking to reconciliation
, when we're looking toinoculate ourselves to, uh, to
foreign outside elements, towhat we grew up with or what we
understand, um, it seems thatwhen we are able to discern
particular patterns and uh, thatwould, that would lead us to
(46:45):
that inoculation, um, then webegin to walk a path towards, um
, discipline and that thatenables us then to eventually,
over time, to transformourselves, transform our hearts,
transform our thoughts, to thecapacity that we can then um
walk that walk of reconciliationwith people.
(47:06):
So I think, I think, uh thatthat that dedication to, to
discipline for you it's been 12years of a dedication to
discipline which is more or lessunheard of, and a lot of uh and
a lot of uh, ministerial umvocations and and and and
ventures.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
So one of the uh, one of the one of your stories was
uh, when we first had movedthere, we were at a basketball
game.
Mr Wallace who was our garbageman for years in town, he was
sitting in front of us and wewere sitting with some friends
and obviously Kim and I were theonly white people in the gym
(48:00):
something and he knew who wewere.
But he had.
He had said something jokinglyand one of our friends goes
wallace, you need to get over it.
You know they're living in town, white people, and there's
probably going to be more whitepeople living in town.
So you, just, you better getover it.
You know something like that.
He turns around.
Well, it gets funnier.
He turns around and he grabs myhand and he takes his arm and
(48:22):
he goes like this, and he helooked at who's who said
something to him and he goes, heain't white anymore.
So and there was quite, quitefunny I was like all right, well
, I guess I'm in.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
So there we go literally as as as, as the young
folks would say, you're invitedto all the barbecues.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Now, phil, there you are, barbecue even if you're out
, even if you are the host ofthe barbecue.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
It's time well, time times.
That happens from time to time.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Hey, let's wrap this up, phil, with a quick question.
If someone's on the sidelineshere and they're listening to
this podcast and saying tothemselves man, I would love to
take a step in this directionand be more intentional,
engaging in spaces that rightnow feel very unfamiliar to me,
in order that I might be thehands and feet of Jesus and be
(49:24):
the light of Christ and shinelight in dark spaces and engage
and not just simply come in,like to our earlier point, not
just simply come in with asavior mentality, but to come in
wanting to be one of manythat's plugged in, serving the
community, connecting in waysthat I have yet to do.
So what would be a first stepthat you would encourage them to
(49:46):
take?
Speaker 4 (49:47):
Well, I think one you got to pray and I would also
have some people that know youwell, pray as well.
And for us it was know you well, pray as well.
And you know, for us it was.
We had some folks down, like Isaid, in Mount Bayou, up in
(50:09):
Wisconsin, pray for us to helpus discern what we should do,
and I think that was extremely,extremely helpful.
The second thing that I wouldsay, especially in our like for
me, I think I have all theanswers, and when you said, save
your mentality, it can verymuch so come off like that.
If you're not careful, like youknow, for instance, I'll give
(50:29):
you a.
For instance, um, we took acouple of trips to in the
background.
Here you see these jerseyshanging up.
Those are two of I don't knowhow many jerseys he's got down
here and stuff, but Doug Henryplayed Major League Baseball and
(50:50):
then he became a coach and hewas coaching for the Royals.
At the time it was right around2013, 14, somewhere in there.
They won the world series, butanyway, he said, if you can ever
get kids to Kansas city, we'lltake care of everything, and
there's a point to this story.
So through our afterschoolprogram, we let kids earn a trip
(51:11):
to Kansas city, so we rent avehicle, drive nine hours, we go
up there.
We would stay two nights.
Well, devin goes to use thebathroom and he's going to take
shower and get ready.
So it gets done.
I go into the bathroom and thetoilet has like literally no
(51:35):
more toilet paper and there'sall this toilet paper in the
toilet, has like literally nomore toilet paper and there's
all this toilet paper in thetoilet and then the actual
shower is stopped up so it's gotwater standing in it.
I said what is going on?
You know what's happening goingon, you know what's happening.
(52:02):
And he said well, you know, atour house we got to put like a
bunch of toilet paper in thereto get it to flush down.
So I just I thought that was.
I said okay.
I said what is the deal withthe, the?
You know the tub and he goes.
Well, at my house, you know,the water always backs up and
the water wasn't backing up.
So I just I stuck like a, stucklike a hand towel on top of the
drain to like clog it up to himthat's normal to me, that's not
(52:28):
normal to you.
It may be abnormal to him.
It's very normal, you know, andwe're talking about on that
trip.
When we first got there, we tookthe kids to the mall because
they had a food court and sowe're like, let's get some food.
Our kids are staring in adirection and I'm like, what are
(52:55):
they staring at?
Like, hey, phil, what's that?
I said, uh, that's an escalator.
What Can we?
Can we go on it?
I'm like, yeah, you can go onit.
They had never seen an escalatorand so they got on that thing.
(53:16):
They were on that thing for 45minutes.
They thought it was a carnivalride up and down and up and down
.
I'm like, come on, we gotta eat.
No, we want to.
Yeah, I'm like, oh my gosh, anescalator.
You know, normal to me not, um.
And so I think you're in answerto your question what your
(53:40):
normal is may not be somebodyelse's normal and you can't go
into that situation and go.
I'm right, you're wrong.
This is normal.
That's abnormal.
It may seem like that, but youknow you got to approach it the
right way.
(54:01):
I never once said to the kids Ican't believe you've never seen
an escalator before.
In my mind I felt that, but Inever verbalized it.
I just let them have fun.
They probably went home andtold their whole family about
this thing they did at the mall,with this ride up and down
(54:22):
thing and you know that kind ofthing.
And with Devin I, I just said,well, I said, bud, we don't need
to plug anything up, we canjust use it as it is and it'll,
it'll be okay.
Okay, well, I didn't know,cause it wasn't doing you know,
and I said, I know it's allright, our normal may not be
somebody else's normal, and Icould tell you story after story
(54:48):
after story, just like that,different things that have
happened over the course of time, to where I sit there and I go.
How blessed was I in a lot ofregards, and how do I take that
opportunity to be able to sharewith others in a loving,
(55:08):
christ-filled way, versus an I'mright, you're wrong kind of
mentality, and unfortunatelyI've seen people do that.
That's destructive.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Madfield, this has been incredibly fruitful.
You mentioned that you gotseveral hundred stories that you
could share.
Maybe we need to invite youback so that you can have an
opportunity to share some ofthose stories, because it's been
fruitful just to hear all thestories that you've told on this
episode and pick your brain andlearn from you.
For those of you all who arelooking to learn more about Phil
(55:40):
and his work, you can reach outto Phil at C2K Ministries.
That's a quick Google search.
You can find all sorts ofdetails about what him and Kim,
his beautiful bride, are doingin the great community of
Mountain Bayou and all aroundBolivar and Simpson County.
So please feel free to reachout to them via C2K Ministries
(56:02):
Also not just a website, butsocial media channels.
You can search on C2KMinistries and you can find out
some of the things that arehappening in Phil and Kim's
world.
For us.
You can reach us atMissionMississippiorg world.
For us.
You can reach us atmissionmississippiorg.
You can also search on LivingReconciled on any podcast app
that you may be using and youwill find this podcast.
(56:25):
So please like, share andsubscribe to the Living
Reconciled podcast.
We got plenty more episodes tocome, lord willing.
We would love for you to tunein and listen On behalf of my
friends Nettie Winters, austinHoyle and our guest Phil Shank.
My name is Brian Crawford,signing off saying God bless,
(56:47):
god bless.
Thanks for joining LivingReconciled.
If you would like moreinformation on how you can be a
part of the ongoing work ofhelping Christians learn how to
live in the reconciliation thatJesus has already secured,
please visit us online atmissionmississippiorg or call us
at 601-353-6477.
(57:08):
Thanks again for listening.
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