Dear Advocates of Urban Youth Ministry,

Mission Waco took a step of faith several years ago when we hired Gabe Dominquez as our urban youth leader to reach Waco’s toughest kids. At age 31, Gabe came from a life of drugs, gangs, illiteracy and prison, until God got a hold of him and transformed his life. For almost three years, he has helped lead our Urban Youth Program into an incredible ministry among young men and women who were just like him in his early days. With an understanding of the streets and their messed up lives that only one who has been there could know, we are reaching scores of tough youth with the love of God. There are many amazing and overwhelming stories we can tell about changed lives.

Because we believe holistic ministry is the key to changing lives, we not only work at building relationships that point them to God, but we also try to help these teens overcome the numerous barriers in their lives so they can get jobs, return to school, complete community service hours, get clean and sober, reconcile with family, etc. To reach them, there are various interests that we capitalize on. Two of those are music and computers.

Early in the program, we restored our teen center to include a full recording studio so we could help them reshape the cultural songs of hopelessness into their poetry of hip-hop that is more positive, respectful and honest. For over a year, many of these youth have learned about the music industry from real professionals who know the business and can teach life skills around their interests. Their first CD (“MixTape Vol. 1”) will release on December 18 (see above).

In addition, we are teaching these youth to build computers! A local seminary student who is one of those technical gurus has been training them to assemble and understand the basic technology of the hardware. The youth are so pumped that they can do these skills they are ready to move to the next stages.

Each year Mission Waco tries to raise funds for our job training program to move those who can’t land a “real job” due to the various barriers of their past. For about $650, we can train a drop out teen in pre-employment work maturity skills, get them “job experience” for a three-week “resume building” opportunity with pay, and then...hopefully....the real job that brings dignity and respect. While the cost to society for disenfranchised youth is a multiple of that cost, we know how hard it is to raise funds for jobs. Yet Mission Waco is built around an empowerment model of ministry that moves beyond charity into life skills that create personal responsibility with Christian values.

Would you be interested in helping these teens? Here are three ways:

Make a designated donation to the Mission Waco Urban Youth Program. Any amount is appreciated. You can even do it online and put “youth program” under the “comments” section.

Choose to sponsor one of those teens for job training and placement.

Donate in-kind gifts that can be used in our ministry.

With any of these gifts, we’ll give you their new CD. In fact, if you have friends who might join your in this venture, we’ll give you more CDs to pass on to them. Even if you aren’t big on hip hop or their first amateur effort at producing this project, you can appreciate all the hours involved to creating it.

We will gladly tell you more about the ministry if you are interested. Just let us know.

For them....
Jimmy Dorrell
Executive Director
Mission Waco
1315 N. 15th St.
Waco, TX 76707

MISSION WACO YOUTH WEBSITE