Earlier this month, I brought my junior high class to the Portland Root Cellar to perform for their after school program. This inner city ministry has gotten national recognition for its service to Portland’s poorest neighborhood. In fact, when the Root Cellar was founded in the 1980’s, Munjoy Hill was known to be the second most impoverished predominantly white ghetto in the nation. Since then there has been a huge shift in demographics, and the vast majority of the families in the neighborhood are African immigrants from Sudan, Rwanda, Kenya and other sun-Saharan countries.
The real highlight of the show is before the show, when pour kids and their kids interacted together in their game room. Quickly the students were interacting over games of Uno, ping pong, and foosball. Anna, one of our youngest, was among the best at making sure she was inviting Root Cellar kids to join her and her friends. I even got in the action with a quick game of ping pong with a 13 year old boy. He was pretty good, but I still won!
LOL did a great performance, and the response from their new friends was enthusiastic to say the least. In one of our audience participation routines, we met a kid with the coolest name ever: Lazarus. Besides being the first Lazarus I’d ever met, he was a nice kid. The rabbit and the chicken, of course, big hits for kids who rarely see farm animals up close like that. Everyone who wanted to meet the animals after the show had plenty of time to do so.
After we left, Noah, one of our 8th graders, said to me, “It’s so cool, Mr. H. There were at least two Muslim kids there! I could tell by the way they were dressed!” Noah, not one known to be emotional, was clearly moved and excited to have had the chance to minister in such a cross-cultural venue.
I agree with Noah.