I called him stinky Jon at first. While we lived in some ghetto apartments in flat Lubbock, TX we met Jon. He stunk. So we called him Stinky Jon. That wasn’t very nice I guess. But despite our rude nickname (which eventually most of us stopped using) we took Jon in as one of our own.
I was in the AIM program (search my blog and you can find out more if you’d like) which meant that there was a whole group of us young people who were passionate and excited about helping people.
The details about Jon have faded in my mind. It makes me sad because he had some really funny one liners. I don’t remember the first time I met him and I don’t remember saying goodbye to him. I know that he was either kicked out of high school or dropped out. He was like 17 years old I think. He spent most of the day walking around the apartments looking for half smoked cigarettes to finish. He often had a wad of chew in his lip. I’ve got no idea what drugs he had done in the past, but it doesn’t really matter.
We never knew what was wrong with Jon. He had some sort of disability that made him just a step behind. Both his parents were slow to varying degrees. He always said “whats up homo…I mean homey” and he only called the Bible the “Good Book”. One time Jonathan and I went to his house because his mom wanted to make us dinner…scary…but we did it. She made stew I think. Before we left Jon’s dad gave Jonathan a swimsuit calendar. Jonathan didn’t realize what he was taking, but it was pretty funny I thought.
We hung out with Jon nearly every day. Where we went (aside from school and traveling places) he went. It wasn’t that he was a project, it just felt he needed us.
For Christmas one year we bought him piles and piles of stuff to take care of himself. Shampoo, deodorant, razors, some new clothes, and other things that he was happy to accept. We also got him admitted into a half way house that was going to help him overcome some of his addictions. While he was gone we also cleaned his room…does it sound like we invaded his space a little bit? If it makes us sounds any better he did appreciate what we were doing and it was a necessary intervention. A bit about his room…
The carpet was black. Black. It wasn’t originally black, it was black from cigarettes and dirt. You wouldn’t know that it was black though because there was a few feet of stuff covering every surface area of his bedroom. We had the women come in ahead of time to remove all the porn. We found a Bible that a church had given him about five years prior. It was in bad shape. The front said “The Good Book”. We begun bagging up all the clothes to take to a public laundromat but were annoyed by all the dirt clods…the dirt clods were on all his pants…the dirt clods weren’t dirt clods…we quickly got some gloves…eew. I’ll tell about the laundromat in a second. After the floor was exposed we begun steam cleaning and washed everything down. It took a long time. A bit about the laundromat…
It took a lot of change to wash one room two feet deep worth of clothes. We took a collection and had a hug sack of quarters. We threw away the clothes that were uncleanable because of the “dirt” smears…or st least we thought we threw away the worst of it. After we had put clothes in ten washers or so we peeked inside to see our progress and it was then that we noticed it. Brown water. Dark, dark, brown water. So we washed them again and threw them in the dryer. Problem solved…or so we thought… As we pulled the clothes out of the dryer rock hard brown balls began to fall onto the laundromat floor. Lots and lots of brown balls. All hard as rocks.
Change of gears.
We prayed with Jon, we did our best to help his spiritual and physical needs. I’m not sure we did anything to help his emotional needs aside from being his friend. After I left Lubbock I never talked to Jon again. I knew that I never would.
A year or two later I heard that some other students had later baptized him. Good news for them. I hope it was Good News for him.
I was talking with Jonathan yesterday about Jon. We talked about how our goal was mainly to just help him make good choices. To stop smoking. To understand that he has choice. Often we zealous southern students want to convert the world, but very often those people we’re “converting” don’t really ever make a choice to follow Jesus. They just get wet. We want them to get wet. We want to save the world.
I hope Jon has learned to make healthy choices, conscious choices. I hope he chose Jesus.