CRM - Empowering Leaders

A Day in the Life of an Intern: San Francisco

I had only been with InnerChange in San Francisco for two days when I first met Enrique. Less than a week later, we sat in the courtroom at the Youth Guidance Center, a juvenile correctional facility, listening to the judge give Enrique’s terms of probation. We spent the rest of the day welcoming him to the San Dimas Community, since he was going to be living in one of the InnerChange houses. We went out to lunch, caught a movie, got coffee and chatted in a bookstore. That night, at the weekly San Dimas Community meeting, we had a party to celebrate his arrival and pray over him as he seeks to start a new life.

Such is one day here as a San Dimas intern. The San Dimas Community is a network of volunteers, led by an InnerChange team, which focuses on gang members in the Mission District of San Francisco. Working in partnership with St. Peter’s Church – a well-known and widely respected local parish – San Dimas Community reaches out through providing residential care, visiting incarcerated youth, and being a presence on the streets.

Building friendships with these youth may take the form of celebrating birthdays, visiting mothers and their newborn babies, tutoring or going horseback riding. It’s about sharing life together, living in community, and watching God work in unexpected moments and unforeseen ways. Because this ministry is all about relationships, no two days look the same.

Of course there are some regular events. A couple times a week we go into juvenile hall to visit the youth there and do bible studies. Once a week I meet with Jenny, my mentor, to talk about how things are going and what I am learning. The staff has set up themes for each week to help focus my experience as I encounter so much that is new. Since an intern is to form a part of the existing ministry here, I attend weekly InnerChange and San Dimas Community meetings to fellowship, pray, brainstorm, and plan events. To be here is to be surrounded my other members of the body of Christ, learning from them, growing with them, being blessed by them and seeking to bless.

Beyond these concrete events, an internship with the San Dimas Community is sure to be used by God to change, refine, challenge, encourage, and grow me; to open my eyes to the way people live in a world very different from the one I have known growing up; to manifest His love and power; and to bring glory to His name.