Hello. I feel like I never get to truly introduce myself on here so I'm going to first introduce myself. My name is Rebekah Lee but that's not my legal name. People can't pronounce my Korean name so I go by Rebekah.
So obviously by the title of this entire book I have going on, you can guess that I am Christian. I've been going to church ever since I could remember. My parents were originally Catholic but moving to America we became Christians. Now I've lived in the good parts of the U.S. where we have great school education (one of the best in the nation) and clean houses and Asian food markets to satisfy our Asian side. I was very fortunate to have met God early in my life and to live in a place that where education is so highly sought out and a priority to children. I didn't need to think about making money or having clothes on my back or having food at the table (during my early childhood) so I can say I'm blessed.
So why am I telling you this? Because I want to explain that I came from a totally different background and life than probably everyone who is reading this. It doesn't mean that you don't have nice things or worse things as me - I'm saying that we've lived different lives. So going to Pittsburgh, I didn't understand the difference culturally and systematically on how the city worked. I first went in there knowing basically: they love Steelers and it's a city, how bad can it be!
Little did I know that we stayed in the South Side which is kind of run down and has extreme hills that seems impossible for vehicles to even drive up in that angle. For them that is life, for me, it's a different world.
I first went to Pittsburgh in the year of 2012 with my youth ministry and served in a program called YWAM (Youth With A Mission). They have people living in this mansion looking house and helping the community of Pittsburgh by holding VBS (Vacation Bible School), spreading the Word of God, and helping other ministries in the area.
I was going into my 10th grade year and I was excited to get out of the house and going with my church. However, I didn't know just how different Pittsburgh was. There's a bridge that, in my head, seems to separate the rich part and the poor part of Pittsburgh. We stayed on the poor/"ghetto" areas and helped with one community center called McKees to do VBS. I remember us all entering and the first thing they said was "Dang, they brought the whole Chinatown!" No, we are not Chinese but still remembering it to this day, I laugh.
Those kids definitely had a different background than us. They come from a fatherless generation where most of them live with single mothers or absent fathers. Their lives consist of everyday street gang violence and cop cars posted at the end of every street. They live in neighborhoods where you can easily see people smoking weed and doing - well things people don't do where I'm from.
So coming from a different background, it was hard for me to connect with the kids first but once you show them that you just want to love them, they accept you with hugs and jump on top of you without you knowing. It's great and each and every single one of those kids are just so beautiful.
I had a great time at McKees and also at a refugee community called Prospect Park where there are apartment complexes filled with refugees from different countries who escaped because of religious persecution and other reasons. We also did a similar VBS with them and in the same way they accepted us and we had such a great time putting on skits for them and sharing about God's love.
Now dealing with kids I can do because I always volunteered at VBS at my church. However, it was the street evangelizing that really made me stumble. We only did one day of street evangelizing at the city of Pittsburgh where people in business suits and expensive clothing walked the sidewalk. To draw in a crowd or anyone on the street, we had this activity set up called Soularium (which you can find at Campus Crusade) where there are lots of pictures on this table and you ask questions like "Pick three pictures that represents your life right now, pick three that represents what you want your life to be like, and three that represents what you think God is." This is just a way for us to get a conversation starting and kind of seeing what kind of person this was and slowly implementing Christ into the conversation.
