{"id":767,"date":"2021-02-08T11:22:57","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T17:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/?p=767"},"modified":"2021-02-09T10:59:52","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T16:59:52","slug":"this-was-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/this-was-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"This was Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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This was Victory<\/h2>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t
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I had been\u00a0<\/span>with<\/span>\u00a0Uturn\u00a0about a month when I pulled my car in front of\u00a0Uturn\u00a01 that day. Jason was sitting on the front porch with\u00a0all of\u00a0his worldly belongings in two garbage bags beside him, taking a drag off a smoke he had bummed earlier.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I knew that things were obviously not going well for him. As part of the\u00a0Uturn\u00a0Personal Development Plan, he had to either go to school or work full time. Neither seemed to be happening. Jason was a\u00a0seventeen year old\u00a0who came from a difficult childhood but didn\u2019t fit within the child welfare system. He had been living at\u00a0Uturn\u00a0for about three months but hadn\u2019t paid any of his rent and was just in the process of giving up, moving to his grandma\u2019s and forgetting about a job or continuing with his education.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you want me to do?\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve dropped off resumes for two weeks and I can\u2019t even get an interview.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, maybe if you washed your\u00a0hair\u00a0you\u2019d get a better response,\u201d I quipped eloquently.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf they don\u2019t want me for who I am, they can\u2026\u201d You get the idea.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe his thought sums up\u00a0the majority of\u00a0our youth<\/span>s\u2019 perspective<\/span>s<\/span>. This is who I am, you don\u2019t know me, don\u2019t judge me, I must have value\u2026 right?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I knew some of Jason\u2019s dreams, one of which was to make movies. I asked him what he would do if he was shooting a scene where the actor was supposed to be a cop but showed up in a fireman\u2019s uniform. He said he would get him to change or get a different actor.<\/span><\/p>\n

We talked about how working at a job is similar to acting. You show up in character, on time, neatly dressed, good personal hygiene with a smile on your face. You look after the customer the way the script calls for it and you do that till the time clock says \u201cCut!\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I will never forget the look on his face when he brought me the last of his back rent and said, \u201cThere, I\u2019m all caught up.\u201d This was not just back rent, this was victory.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After our \u201cacting\u201d talk he said, \u201cI can do that!\u201d I gave him some of my \u2018old man clothes\u2019 to wear and got him an interview with a hotel here in town. He worked at that job till he moved to Winnipeg. He got a job in the movie business and took some directing classes. Last I heard, he had made four or five documentaries and two short films, one that had been nominated for an award.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I said anything out of the ordinary or particularly wise,\u00a0its\u00a0was that I knew him, who he was and how God had created him uniquely to be him. I knew that he was indeed valuable. That was when I realized that God had placed me in\u00a0Uturn\u00a0and that by doing the little things, it could add up to life, freedom and victory.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

-Dean Munchinsky, former Uturn Director<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\r\n<\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had been\u00a0with\u00a0Uturn\u00a0about a month when I pulled my car in front of\u00a0Uturn\u00a01 that day. Jason was sitting on the front porch…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-youth"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yfc.ca\/westman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}