episode four

Episode 4: Instruction vrs. Information

So recently the guys at the youth center have had a real desire to go geocaching! Geocaching is a GPS related thing to do in which you put in some co-ordinates and try to find a hidden treasure somewhere in a bush, city, town ect. (Actually there is one in Wingham and close to 50 in the surrounding area not more than 20 minutes from Wingham!) So far, we have had two grand adventures involving finding treasure hidden under a ‘dragon’ shaped log, and trudging through swamp, thorns and discouragement to find the geocache. When you find the cache you trade something of yours for something that is already in the cache, following this you can log what you left and took and leave a record of how long it took you to find the cache. Our log during one of the adventures involved 14 guys having to battle 100 plus orc warriors and coming out on top! Crazy i know, but it gives them an adventure to live and story to sacrifice for.

Coming out on top...hmmm... I think I have something to write about this week! (0h and by the way since the last PSOB I now have a fancy laptop and even have just finished a coffee culture coffee, things are good!). For some time now as I have worked with the youth of this community as well as taking some good schooling in teenage development I am starting to learn a thing or two about how students operate. I am convinced that youth today are not being taught using instruction but simply information. We are taught by simply parroting what teachers, leaders and texts books say but not taught how to live and process the given information. Instruction vrs. information, what is the difference? Much of our current society is based around information, its easily accessible and abundant but with more and more information every day, new studies, new statistics why are so many teens failing and falling through the cracks? Reality check for small towns; being a part of an international organization called Youth For Christ we have staff in Toronto who work with homeless youth and are desperate to share that 90 percent of all homeless youth they see come from small towns... The false dream to make it big in the city is what draws youth away. We need to instruct them before they are bombarded with information. Think of information as forming something within. If information happens without instruction there is no house in which the information can actually form in. Instruction (hardship, challenge, work ethic, failure, obedience and correction) is what creates a house in person so inner formations can happen.

Back to geocaching, youth long for adventure and long to feel alive, I and some key volunteers have made it our goal to start working with young guys and try to create an environment in which instruction is given so we can give them information and thus they can get a dream for their lives and follow it! The most important thing we do to see youth succeed is challenge them in real life situations. We talk to them about dating, challenge their motives, provide them with places to serve their community and for us as older volunteers to live by example. I am convinced that challenging, instructing and mentoring youth to live up to higher levels of commitment is the only way to see young people truly have inner formation and have the courage to risk failure achieve a dream and come out on top! When we provide the environments to instruct youth about life and failure we are giving young people the character needed to resource themselves for their future God given dreams! Stronger character equals stronger families. Once again, thanks for the time--this has been episode 4 of PStacO’Bot and the 50 cent Pop saying that you have been created for a purpose!

episode three

Episode 3 of P'StachO'Bot and the 50 cent Pop

YOU MAY FIND THIS EDITION HARD TO SWALLOW...WHY YOUR KIDS MATTER! As of now I have been on a hope theme with my column. Right now I am "hoping" for a laptop because when you are trying to write a creative column you need sunlight and good coffee. Both of these things are available one block away at one of my favorite places in Wingham, Coffee Culture. However without a laptop I am destined to write to you again from my desktop in my office with no real sunlight and some coffee that I have mixed up the water and coffee ratio again! However this kind of pain pales in comparison with what I am about to tell you, and please hear these words... In our society the teenage population is in a war for their very survival. I chose those words specifically. Last month I wrote that in the broken walls there is HOPE and this month I hope to encourage something. Here is a chart to start this discussion. Listed from top to bottom are a list of primary influences on the lives of our youth for the last 50 years.

1960	1980	2010
family	friends	media
school	family	friends
friends	media	family
church	school	school

As you look over this map of teenage influences what do you notice about today? I notice that the top two influences of youth today are youth themselves and preceded by friends is a multi-billion dollar business that markets to what youth like. As I work with youth in the community and being close to their generation myself I see one vital thing missing. Where are the adults. If this chart is right than the main influences in teenage life are void of significant caring adult attention. In most every other culture in the history of man the older generation has always handed down the customs and rights of passage to the younger but this is not the case in our society. There are statistics now coming out that a child by the time they are 6 will already have spent more time in front of a digital screen than they ever will with their fathers. Youth today are being taught earlier and earlier by a media soaked culture, leaving them void of any truth, anything real, anything of substance and virtually without consequence. The youth of today is without guides and thus has grasped at the only thing that is engaging them--cheap media tricks. This is what I want to encourage myself as a father of two boys and our community with--HOLD on to your kids, do not step away when they are teenagers, risk the conflict and make family time. Be bold to protect and stand for your kids and prove yourself to be a guide showing how failure and wisdom are the best teachers you can lean on. Choose today to engage your kids, leave the house a mess, forget cutting the grass and play with them. Take your teenage daughter for coffee late at night, and encourage your son to be dangerously courageous! Give them a story by volunteering together, helping those in need together, leave a legacy that gives your children a history and identity that runs deeper than the newest fashion or Lady GA Ga's newest song. My Mom did this for me as she earned her teaching degree over 16 years as she studied her courses at 4 in the morning so she could raise my brother and I. In conclusion we belong to one another, lets act like it! I do want to add that as I write this I have one of our Youth Center Board members encouraging me to add to this edition that we are having a BBQ/bake sale and open house fund raiser on May 29th for the youth center and our work in the community...thanks DK :)

Once again this has been P'StachO'Bot and the 50 cent Pop saying that everything and everyone has been created for a purpose!

Episode two

Episode 2 of P'Stach'O Bot and the 50 cent Pop

My last column was entitled P'Stach'O Bot and the 50 cent Pop in which a lost robot set off in an epic journey to find his maker and find his purpose (Because everyone knows a robot is made for a purpose!). However this episode will feature a little more heart than allegory. For most of you who know me and many of you that don't my name is Adam Shepski and I work at the Upper Deck Youth center here in town and am a wacky sort of duck (for anyone who works with youth for a living, being wacky is a pre-requisite!). When asked by a friend "If I could do anything the very best in the world, what would it be?" My answer was invalid because I started listing the super powers I wanted! However as a human being (even a wacky one) I have suffered great loss, trial and hardship and along with that great joy, peace and purpose and in this second episode of P'Stach'O Bot and the 50 cent Pop I want to offer hope when the walls of our lives appear to be burnt and broken. In a book I read most everyday I came across a story of a man who lived in prosperity and prestige who when hearing a discouraging report of his home town decided to leave his place of honor to rebuild the walls, the lives and the community of his heritage. This community in which he had lived had been destroyed by years of war and the walls had been left in rubble. After his long journey from wealth to his broken old home he went out late at night and "inspected the walls." What he saw forever changed him, his city and the community. As he looked at broken walls, burnt gates and the shabby dwellings of his neighbors he saw something more than destruction, more than hopelessness. The book in which this story is told was originally written in Greek and Hebrew languages and when the book says he "inspected the walls" the word "inspected" in its original language is sabar which means to examine and hope. This man saw his community as it was, broken and desolate but saw hope in its dark time. He worked for years and with his community rebuilt the walls, the gates and the hope of his community! I don't know where you are as an individual but when I encounter another dark situation or teenager who has been abused, who has not eaten that day or at times is even homeless I see hope as the man in the story did. I see that with love, truth, faith and time the worst of all situations can be redeemed if I/we are willing to act on our prayers and desires for a new day to come. In the broken and the burnt and the busted up I challenge myself to examine and see hope, and with courage face another day with youth, friends and family who come face to face with the brokenness of life and work to rebuild the walls that depression, lies, abuse and loss have taken. I too desire that in this community we see the hope in our walls, our youth and our children!

Episode one

pisode One of P'Stacho'Bot and the 50 cent Pop

Once upon a time there was a great inventor and CEO named Alpheus who created a very special robot--a robot who would in time learn to take care of all that Alpheus had made! He was a superior invention created with the potential to accomplish much of what Alpheus could do himself. Alpheus then game him a very special name (we can thank the guys at the youth center for this); P'Stacho'Bot! Before P'Stacho'Bot was ever turned on and instructed how to operate, an old employee of Alpheus named Sneaky Stew (who had recently been fired for insubordination) had snuck into the his old work station and kidnapped P'Stacho'Bot and taking him halfway around the world left him in a dense tropical jungle. Before Stew left him there to rust and fall apart Stew turned on P'Stacho'Bot, leaving P'Stacho with no orders or instructions to his design. Alpheus was overcome with great sorrow and began searching for his favored robot and P'Stacho'Bot was left lost and confused (Because everyone knows ALL robots are invented for a purpose!). P'Stacho'Bot, gathering the courage to look around his new surroundings stumbled upon a jungle drop-in where many monkeys gathered every Friday night to hang with some older Monkeys who saw P'Stacho'Bot and invited him to a 50 cent pop! As P'Stacho'Bot talked to the older monkeys he learned that they had heard of this Alpheus and told him the greatest piece of information P'Stacho'Bot would ever come across--That P'Stacho'Bot was indeed a created Robot and the only way to figure out why he was invented was to find Alpheus (because everyone knows ALL robots are invented for a purpose!). With that P'Stacho'Bot left the monkeys and set out on a grand adventure to find his inventor and with that his purpose.

As I have worked with the young people of North Huron for the last 4.5 years I have learned this one valuable truth; No matter where someone comes from , what a particular youth is going through, how many piercings or tattoos they have or what decisions they have made or not made, of one thing I am most certain--every young person and every person is a P'Stacho'Bot. With this at the front of our minds the Upper Deck Youth center volunteers and staff see hope and potential in all young people. Keep walking and keep hoping!

of flaming arrows;