I wrote my Doris Betts Literary Award winning story Lucky some eighteen years ago. I had just stepped down then as coordinator of an inner city program in Charlotte, N.C. for Southeast Asian teenagers. How I had even found myself in that position resulted from “one-thing-led to-another” decisions that kept me at it for over…
Our group wasn’t the first such program in this area of Charlotte. Before I came out there, the church already had a Wednesday evening meal for area children. My husband and others had also helped facilitate several programs among Southeast Asians in neighborhoods not far from our site, one in a large downtown church, another…
It wasn’t long before more volunteers arrived and the Cambodian pastor and his congregation moved to the same site. Soon these programs were welcoming neighboring children and the programs were sharing the church and field. Volunteers from Charlotte churches began providing meals for the Wednesday and Sunday evening events and soon a program director was…
It began with a beach trip. Loading up the ministry bus, which the Cambodian pastor drove, we spent several days at a place at Myrtle Beach we’d found to host our group at a reasonable cost. After this trip, in which one of the guys broke his leg playing basketball at a nearby gym, we…
My goal as a volunteer had been to remain with the program until the first participants, still the core of the group, graduated from high school. And they all did graduate, among them several with honors. So I had expected to leave at the end of that summer, which I’d already announced. But a more…