A Change in My Life

Written by Jason Stevens - a second year at Fresno State:

"I was born in a Christian family and have therefore been a Christian all of my life. I have not exactly been the most “active” Christian however. I went to church and believed in God, but I never really got to experience an opportunity to live out God’s word. I went to camps and on one mission trip to Mexico but those were in high school and a majority of the reason I went was for the fun memories.

Now that I am in college and I learned it is not about the fun for myself, but it is really all about living out the word of God and trying to be like Jesus. As I came into this FUI project, I was informed that it is not made for fun, but rather a learning experience for us all. At first thought, I was wondering why so many people wanted to go. I wanted to go because I have been craving Gods guidance for about a year now when I decided I wanted to live my life out for him. I found out that people in college want to experience God more then to just go have fun, and let me tell you… God has certainly made an impact in my life and many others here, so the experience of him crashed on us like a wave in the ocean taking you off your feet and directing you in the path of its will. I have come to understand so much more about myself and my relationship with God.

My sight was at the Rescue Mission working in their rehab program. I have seen God’s work in their life as well as mine. Guys came off the street or out of their own homes and away from their families to join this rehab program to fix an addiction of theirs, but instead, they have found God in their lives and accepted Christ. I have never seen such a dramatic change and large commitment. These men take this new life with confidence and understanding that God himself can be their pillar of strength. These guys are the best guys I have ever met, guys that I would never expect to have been previous gang leaders, or drug addicts or some with violent crimes related to alcohol. If there was any man more respectful and service-offering, I have not met him yet. The impact God has had in their lives has showed me that he is there for me too in my sufferings. I came in expecting to help the community, but I feel I have been helped more then I ever could have offered to do myself. My life is changed in my knowledge of God and I will never forget this experience. I have now given my problems and all of my pain to God so that he may deal with them and heal me in every situation that could potentially separate me from God. My life has been moved closer to the Lord and I am now much more spiritually mature just by the understanding of Gods impact by his overwhelming love and mercy. Praise God!"

Pictures of the City

This is only part of the reason why so many of us have fallen in love with Fresno...

Intern Site Photos

As a gift to our agencies that we worked with all summer, each intern took a site photo. Here are all the interns and where they worked this summer!

Sarah and Michael from the Bridge Academy.

Alex and Bryson at Hope Now for Youth.

Kevin, Melissa, Mackenzie, and Glenda at Light and Life Urban Ministries

Sol and Cameron at Mobile Market

Krista and Lawrence at Bethany Inner City Church

Lissah and Lauren at the Evangel Home

Eric, Tramaine, Amanda, Marissa, and Vivian at Fresno Street Saints at Bigby Villa

Shayne, Marissa, Zoe, and Joyce at Fresno Street Saints at MLK

Carolyn and Jaret at FIRM (Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Mission)

Jason and Matt at Fresno Rescue Mission

Sarah and Julie at Youth for Christ's City Life

Tracey, Josth, Meghan, Mariah, Shannon, Betty, and Danae at World Impact

Tangible God

"Before FUI I knew God. I knew who he was in my life, I knew his heart for missions, I knew his love for people, I knew his sovereignty. Well, 6 weeks engaging with the city of Fresno has shown me how ignorant I was and still am to the character of God. FUI has introduced be to the incarnate God and the incarnate gospel. It has introduced me the God who became flesh and dwells among us. I have been consumed by a gospel that is tangible and relevant. In the city its hard to see a tangible God, violence, poverty, oppression consume you. All you seem to see is ugliness in broken down infrastructure, malnutritoned children, and seemingly unchangeable circumstances. But God has changed my eyes from that of one out looking in, to one in looking out. He has shown me the world from this perspective. And I know God is here, he is present and he is working.

The first class of the project we talked about loving our neighbor. We spoke of the greatest commandments asked of Jesus in the Gospels, He replies to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. These by many are believed to be separate not in relation to each other, but Jesus was asked of one commandment and He gave one commandment. Loving God and loving your neighbor is one command. You do not love God if you don’t love your neighbor. God has shown a very minute part of his heart for humanity. I am learning to love my neighbor but in essence I am learning to love God.

My site has become my training center. Throughout the summer we have engaged in various service projects, we have volunteered at many places and this has definitely shown me how to love my neighbor. However, it has been the teens that I work with whom I have learned the most about what loving my neighbor looks like. My teens have been at times difficult. They are amazing but they are a product of their environment and the sin within it. I’ve in this process I’ve learned that most importantly they are children of the almighty, they are influenced by sin just as I am but God has shown me so much of himself through them, their nature of hospitality, their passion and compassion, and there willingness to serve they have a great work ethic which they showed by putting in insulation and painting at different FIFUL sites. They have shown hospitality by inviting me to their home and having a meal with them. And they’ve show compassion by their tears in love and sadness. He has through them shown me how to love my neighbor.

God is here, he is engaged in this city, in the prison walls, at the rescue missions, in the churches who praise him, and in the people who call him Lord. God loves my neighbor I love my neighbor. God loves the city, I love the city."

by Lawrence Lyons

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

“I remember the exact moment when my ethnic identity journey began: it was one day in elementary school when a classmate told me that I wasn’t black because I acted too “white-washed.” The tone in the young girl’s voice told me this definitely wasn’t a good thing, and quite frankly, it made me incredibly confused and a little angry. It felt like a war had been started inside of me, and I was bombarded with the question of what it meant to be black. For the longest time, it seemed like this journey was at a stand still. But, looking back over middle school and high school and even my first year of college, I can see how God was using all of the dissonance, disgust, and questions that arose to continue leading me on this journey of discovering what it means to be me, an “atypical” African-American woman, in His kingdom.

I didn’t feel comfortable around African Americans because I identified with white culture and therefore was much more readily accepted by it. But I couldn’t fully fit in with white culture because my skin color would not allow it. The pain of not being able to figure out where I fit in is not something I wanted to dwell on or process through, so I buried it until I couldn’t any longer and I had to face it at FUI.

One of the topics in our urban ministry class happened to be on racial reconciliation. Disconnected from all the things that I had swept under a rug and neglected to deal with, I entered the class thinking I was already well on my way to being a reconciler and that my issues with my ethnic identity were long since over. As our speaker began to talk about her own journey in discovering her ethnic identity, I was reminded of my own journey and all the pain that it encompassed. I had to allow myself to feel the weight of being the “model minority” a false identity that I had partly adopted on my own and that had been partly been forced on me. I felt like it was my duty to dispel any negative stereotypes associated with being black and to maintain the idea that I was a “good kind of black person,” something I had been “affirmed” in time and time again. Along with that, I had to accept that I had internalized the notion that African Americans were created to be not as intelligent as other races, and then realize that I desperately needed to let that go. I also allowed myself to feel the heartache of having my achievements written off to affirmative action and to maintaining a diversity quota. As plain as day, I could see all of these false things I had been carrying on to that were perpetuating racism and doing nothing to help with the plan of reconciliation that God called for. By being numb to and passively accepting these fallacies, I was actually undermining reconciliation. This made me angry at the systems in place in our society and culture that made these ideas hard to escape, but more so, I was angry with myself for being so blind to my own faults. I felt like my journey had never really begun and that I was starting from square one; I felt so lost.

I suddenly felt a strong desire to learn about African American culture and history. In InterVarsity in my first year of college, God had already begun to help me find my identity in Him and show me that I was a child of His kingdom first and foremost. Now, God was telling me that my next step to reconciliation was in reconciling myself to my own culture. He was opening the door to show me the beauty in being African American. God made us all different and that beauty and the gifts in our differences are of God. It’s the oppression and racism and hate associated with it that is not of God.

I’m beginning to see that God created me with these experiences on purpose, not just the ones associated with my race but all of them.  He is the Master Creator, after all.

Recently, I have found much comfort in Psalm 139:13-14: For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

I want to know that full well. Armed with a clearer view of myself, and the truth given to me through Jesus Christ, I can now continue on this journey living out my life being a reconciler for the Kingdom of God.”

by Lissah Johnson, a second year at UC Santa Barbara. 

Life of Refugee

This post is from one of our students, Carolyn:

"Yesterday I started learning a Lao dance that tells the story of a refugee people escaping to arrive here and finding Jesus. On my first day at Fresno Interdenominational Ministries (a.k.a. FIRM), the woman who was teaching it to me told me how she survived a land mine explosion that knocked her unconscious for a few days. She credits God for saving her so that she could later know him. Through this woman’s testimony and faith and so many stories I hear at FIRM, I am learning God’s heart for the foreigner, for compassion and justice and hope.


These three things are lacking from the Lao and Hmong peoples’ recent history. FIRM has a beautiful pan’dau, a hand-embroidered Hmong quilt illustrating a story, that taught me this history missing from mainstream textbooks: During the Vietnam War, the CIA recruited Hmong and Lao guerilla fighters to disrupt the supply chain of the Communist north that ran through Laos. After the U.S. left Vietnam and deserted these fighters, they ran from the Communist soldiers tracking them, abandoning their sick and injured so that some few could survive to cross a treacherous river into Thailand. Then they left the sickness and dangers - like poorly built stairs that collapsed beneath them - of the refugee camps there to come here.

I was taught that the U.S. is the land of opportunity where hard work brings success and prosperity, but that isn’t entirely true. This is a country that gives refugees five years on social security to learn a new language, culture, and way of life and then cuts them off, inspiring suicides. The unsettled, fragmented reality of these people was illustrated in where one woman’s children had been born: two in Laos, one in Thailand, and one in the U.S. I learned this in a practice interview in FIRM’s combination English/citizenship class, of which she was a part so that she could get work and then put her life back together.

Another way FIRM is helping Southeast Asian refugees move forward is by setting up community gardens. These allow former-farming families to sign up for a plot to grow produce and medicinal plants they otherwise would not have access to. I especially enjoyed helping all the gardeners set up the irrigation piping in the new garden because we could work together joyfully toward our common goal of finishing the last preparation for planting despite the language and cultural barriers. It was part of new, hopeful stories beginning in which healthy food is available at a reasonable price.

Today during the urban ministry class, I wrote poems as a way of processing what I am experiencing and learning. I intended to write from my perspective but adopted a refugee’s, because their stories have broken my heart over and over as I learn about them and internalize their stories:

“…finally, fleeing my continent/finding my way to another world: /new language, new culture, new friends, confusion…”

We’re all refugees in God’s kingdom, having run from evil in the world to a place of shelter and a chance at new life. So I’m looking forward to my next dance lesson tomorrow, and my next day to learn from and serve refugees and the God who took me in."

Carolyn is a 3rd year student at UCLA.

FUI pictures!

Jason and Matt get a lot of free food from the Rescue Mission

We also have a lot of students who enjoy the piano... and pictures.

FUI swim day!

Cameron at our FUI dance party!

Even the staff enjoy embracing their inner child with sparklers on 4th of July.

Students making food duirng FUI's first ever Food Justice day.

Discussing what we are learning in class.

Eric, Matt, and Bryson listen intently during our Intro to Urban Minsitry class.

Love for Motel Drive

from student Michael Quinones, a third year at Cal Poly.

"During my second day at FUI, I went on a Fresno driving tour. I was apathetic about going on this tour, since I had done the same tour back in January when I came to the Fresno plunge. One of our tour destinations was motel drive, a very low-income street.  The people who live on motel drive experience violence, drugs, and prostitution on a regular basis. As we were praying for the people who live on motel drive I felt even more apathetic. We drove down motel drive, and then we turned around and drove down motel drive in the opposite direction. I was looking at the buildings and at how desolate they were since nobody was outside. Suddenly, I felt the Holy Spirit manifesting Himself in my heart. God was telling me that He really, really, really loves the people who live at motel drive. For the next two hours, I was super convicted about what God had shown me. I know that God wants me to do something at motel drive at some point in some capacity, but I don’t know when or how. What I know is that I need to pray more for motel drive and about what God wants me to do there."

Reality Limbo

"On Saturday I had to retake part of the CSET exam and ventured out into the real world to do so. The testing site was all the way in Clovis. For those of you not familiar with Fresno think of nice rich suburb right next to a bigger city, the Sierra Madre to Pasadena if you will. While I took a break from FUI activities to review and prepare for my test, I noticed a few things.

I remember re-entry being difficult the first I participated in FUI. I remember being angry about any injustice I saw in my city. I was infuriated with the apathy I thought I saw in everyone around me. I was very prideful, but I meant well. I also heard continued stories of people having the same reactions – hatred toward the rich and the indifferent. But this time, it was different.

After spending about three weeks living in intense community where the plumbing doesn’t always work and fridges break and you get paid very little and everyone is around you all the time – I was so thankful to be away from it all. In fact I was not repulsed by any of the wealth I saw parading around me. The better stores, the bigger malls, cleaner streets, and all apparent lack of diversity in the richer part of Fresno did not disturb me, but allowed me to forget about the realities that lived downtown. I forgot about the fatherlessness, the homelessness, the brokenness, and whatever else seemed to plague the inner city. I was comfortable, and I hadn’t felt that in a long time. I could blend back in with the landscape. I could drive my car wherever I wanted because I wasn’t worried about gas. I could eat wherever I wanted because I wasn’t worried about money. I could drive by myself because it was a “safer” part of town. In short I was relaxed.

Apparently being in the city had really broken me down. I was tired of having to care so much about the people around me. In a place where I see a lot of brokenness – I had to care. The poor aren’t hidden behind gated walls, they are right there in street for you to see and for them to be seen. When I went to North Fresno, it was all hidden beneath flowerpots and paved streets, behind large gated communities and inside mansions. I didn’t have to face anything I didn’t want to because everyone was hiding from each other.

I was tired of having to constantly be present in community. When you live with seven people and are around thirty others constantly, you are always on display. Your faults are magnified to extreme degrees because they just come out in this type of environment. But on Saturday I could blend in. I could sit in a restaurant or a coffee shop and have no one talk to me if I didn’t want to talk to them. I could drive in my car with the windows up and the air conditioner blasting, all the while ignoring people walking on the street, if I actually saw any. I could basically be whoever I wanted to be – hip, cool, trendy, studious, silent, funny, or anything else. I wasn’t forced to deal with the negative aspects of who I was that come out in living with so many people.

In North Fresno my fridge wasn’t broken, my toilet wasn’t clogged, my laundry didn’t cost money, my car wasn’t teetering on empty, my air conditioner blasted, and I sat alone to drink my coffee. I don’t know what scared me more. Was it spending a whole day in North Fresno where I blended in, became invisible, and forgot all about the poverty less that twenty minutes away? Or that I liked it?

If you asked me a month ago, I would have told you that relocating was exactly my plan. I would either go into ministry or go into education – but I knew I would live in an inner city. But now, I am questioning that. And I don't know what I will choose. I know deeply that living in the inner city will not be glamours (as it appeared to me three years ago) nor will it always be fun. And God temporarily brought me out of this city and into North Fresno to show me some very harsh realities. Choosing to relocate to the inner city is a big deal. This is not a decision that can be taken lightly or that I should do because it seems cool. This is a not just a decision of where to live but how to live."

by Melissa Montecuollo, a Cal Poly Grad

Dying to Live

from Josth Stenner, a Cal State Bakersfield 2nd Year

"On Thursday we had class and the topic of the class happened to be about something that I really have a heart for, immigration. This politically controversial topic has proved to be a hot button issue on the minds of many Christians because many people don’t know what God says about it. The film brought up two very different emotions for me; it made me happy but angry at the same time. I was happy that people were learning the depth of this issue and that it made people think about it through Gods eyes rather than through some political lens. But to be completely honest, this film was frustrating. I love the idea that people are no longer viewing this as an abstract issue but that it now has a face for people, however the face that it has is not a completely accurate one. This film focused on illegal immigration from Central and Southern America and I personally feel that has been the face of immigration. 40% of the people who immigrate to the United States illegally are Asian but you never hear about them, you hear about the millions of Mexicans who cross the border, documentaries are made about the Mexicans who cross into the U.S. illegally. This is why this movie made me angry, even though you are getting people to think about immigration in a different way people are still subconsciously being fed this inaccurate idea that Mexican are the only people who are here illegally. You can see this with Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, there is no way to physically tell whether a person is illegal or not because there is no one type of illegal immigrant, with this bill, cops are left to assume that someone is not legal based on nothing. Because Mexicans are what everyone associates with illegal immigrants, they are going to be the ones who are more often ask for their papers, in Arizona. Overall, I’m glad that we watched this film, because I’ve gotten to have meaningful conversations with people about how this topic has impacted my life. 

To be completely honest, I understand that people are gonna have different opinions when it comes to this topic and I’m ok with that I just want people to understand that the people who come over are not here for any malicious reasons, they just want a better life. They don’t leave happily, it’s not an easy journey, and people die in search of a better life. The next time that somebody gets hung up about the fact that undocumented immigrants are illegal and therefore are bad people, invite them to see what Jesus say about loving your neighbor and help them see that people are literally “Dying to Live” ."

Fence Building Pictures - Day 2

Beginning construction of the new wooden fence.

Joyce Wang will start her own construction company when she is done with this fence.

The spot was too tight to actually put in the boards, so Sarah had to find another way to nail in the fence.

Zoe, Sarah, Marissa, and Monte make up Team Awesome Construction Inc.

We finished!

Fence Building Pictures Day 1

Sarah and Amanda get rid of the pile of trash that was in the backyard.

Bryson and Josth move a water cooler? Or something.

Marissa is strong and tough.

Zoe and Bryson dig a hole

DE FENCE

When I heard that we were building a fence, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is going to be so cool! I am definitely telling my friends what I did after."   I never built a fence before, nor have I ever did any real construction work, so I was really looking forward to this project..
On the first day, we started tearing down the fence. The fence that they had were those wire-y gate ones, and enclosed in it was a garden full of weeds and various plants and trees.  We also moved the trees to different locations, ripped out the weeds, and flattened the soil.  It took a lot more work than I expected because the metal posts of the gate were solidified in concrete, and not to mention, it was extremely hot!!
The next day, we started building the fence with wooden planks and posts.  There was a lot of teamwork involved because one person would hold up the wooden post, another person would position and hold the post in the place, and the third person would hammer in the nail.   Every time I looked back to see our progress, the fence was coming closer and closer to enclosing the backyard.  Before I knew it, we were finished and celebrating with tortas and fruit that the family provided for us.
It amazed me to see how grateful the Macias family was. They were so cute!  The neighbors often brought over food and told us to take a break.  They gave us sweet bread, tortas, and fruit! By the way, this was my first time eating watermelon with lemon, salt, and pepper, and it was amazing! They continually to greet us with smiles, and within that I could see their appreciation.
After the whole experience, I realized that finishing the fence wasn't the important part of the experience.  Instead, the more important part was what we accomplished by building the fence.  We beautified someone's backyard, and we provided them with something that they couldn't afford.  Of course, we would not have been here without the organization that we paired up with, Fresno Urban Neighborhood Development (FUND).  Basically, what they work with a neighborhood to see what houses are in need of fixture and remodeling. The community themselves get together and decide which house is in need of the most, and they prioritize which house gets worked on first.  This showed me what a community should look like.  So really, it wasn't the fence that I'm proud of but of the people that we helped with.  It inspired me to see what we could do in so little time and how we could change other people's lives in the midst of, and it's all thanks to God.

- Joyce Wang, UCLA junior.

FUI Photos!

Students Michael, Josth, and Lauren just finished exploring the Fulton Mall. 

Students sit outside the Pink House waiting for Todd to give them some important details about the project.

We make a stop at Evangel Home during our driving Tour. Lauren and Lissah (standing in the front right) will both be interning there this summer.

Marissa and Carrie go over some important details about the project. Our staff sure work hard :)

Driving Through Fresno

On Thursday the FUI team took a driving tour of Fresno - these are observations from Glenda, a second year from UCSB:

"Today all the FUI team went on a tour of downtown Fresno. By observing the buildings and the type of people there, I was able to get a better understanding of what the city needed and what life was like for the people in these communities. The first thing I noticed were the many closed down businesses and empty plots of land. It was like this for most of the tour. I observed that there was only one bank and instead a lot of bail bond businesses. I found that the area had a lot of businesses that weren’t needed by the general public in their everyday lives. They didn’t have a lot of grocery stores and supermarkets so the people around could go shopping for healthier food options rather than buy food from mini marts on the corner of their blocks that don’t have a variety of foods to choose from. There was an unequal distribution of development in downtown. The places around the convention center (areas more for the middle class) had better restaurants and had more businesses open. Some areas like Chinatown didn’t even have any Chinese restaurants or Chinese businesses. It was all empty plots of land. After we passed tents that had homeless people living in them, I thought that there were already a lot of tents in just that block. The next block, however, had the Poverello House, a camp that housed many more homeless people. The downtown area was just filled with many apartments that housed the homeless temporarily but the Motel Drive seemed to be the largest. Some people in these motels have lived more than five years in these apartments and even consider them their homes. This is all because they find themselves returning to these motels because they can’t find affordable housing. There doesn’t seem to be many job opportunities for these people with all the closed businesses either. Everything just makes it difficult for the poor to live comfortably with their families. If it weren’t for the various charities and ministries that help house the homeless and give them hope by giving them advice and training them for jobs and other helpful life skills, the city would not be making the progress that it has made with dealing with all this poverty and homelessness."

FUI - What is it?

The Fresno Urban Internship (FUI) is a 5 1/2 week experience in Fresno's poorest neighborhoods. Interns work side-by-side with a ministry while completing an academic curriculum focusing on biblical themes. Depending on the site, interns have an opportunity to see God at work helping at-risk young men find jobs, directing kids clubs, serving women in crisis, and many other things.

Participants contribute approximately 30 hours per week to their agency, five hours per week to internship classes, and 5 hours per week in study. Students live in community together in the Pink House. Arrangements for meals are arrived at by agreement with the other interns. Personal expenses are handled individually. The overall program is intensive, rigorous, and challenging, as well as joyful and fun.