Blessing and Troy were matched through Chapter2 in 2020 and have been meeting regularly since. Whilst the road for Troy hasn’t always been easy, Blessing continues to be a consistent trusted presence in his life: someone that he can spend time with, confide in, and rely on.
Transcript
You want a blessing? All right.
I first met Blessing in 2020 at the cost of coffee. I was a bit hesitant to go at first cuz something my mom just dropped on me. Said there’s this mentoring sort of charity and you’re meeting him next week. See if you like it or not.
He came uh still fairly young uh with his mom clearly dragged from his bedroom. He didn’t want to be there. All he would say, “Hi Troy, how are you?” Never used to say. So I was a little bit concerned. Are we are we going to ever really have a conversation here? Yeah. So those are my first memories of Troy.
Uh but we thought we had a lot of things uh in common that we could do together and enjoy. His father lives in Poland, so he’s not able to meet him every week.
And this is where I come in for a blessing. He’s probably getting in a lot of trouble. Just go out with the wrong people.
Didn’t really have any aspirations or anything. I want to leave the house genuine weeks on end. And then bless starts dragging me on these walks.
At first, I’m like, but then I start doing more and more. I’ll start enjoying the walks. So getting me outside has kept me out of trouble a bit. Love going on the walks.
Now, usually we arrange to meet on a Sunday. We go either some food or play golf, walking, football, come up the a lotment. It’s nice to sort of get away.
I try to always meet him uh once a week. He still doesn’t like to do the same thing over and over again. Then we do different kinds of activities. Uh one of my favourite of course is coming to the alotment. Initially when I started I would uh uh propose both uh activities and I would always be chasing him. Over time he looks for me and he also proposes what activities we do. It’s no longer my responsibility but it’s a shared responsibility.
One of my favourite memories is probably when we went paintballing with Blessing on my birthday. That was really fun. One thing we tried was um bouldering and it just Blessing just couldn’t do it. It just just didn’t happen. Couldn’t get up the wall. He was a cameraman that day.
When you are mentoring, it is something that is difficult to see week on week whether you’re making an impact or not. But then growth takes place over time.
It’s almost a metaphor of what mentorship looks like. You have to do the work today. You put the seed, the water. You may not always see the fruit coming out, but over time you see uh you see the fruit.
If I hadn’t met Blessing, probably hadn’t realized there’s much more to life. Changed a lot of my views on things. Um done a lot for me. Done a lot of fun things. I’m always looking forward to seeing them.
I think mentoring has certainly high moments and really low moments. I probably have a couple of memories.
One of them was when I tried to call and then he answered me and he said, “Who’s this?” So clearly he had deleted my number. He was done. He was totally done with me and I would say he wasn’t really in his right state of mind. So that was uh that was one moment.
Um the second time was he wanted to understand so blessing uh how much are you being paid to do this uh mentoring uh job and I told him no I don’t do this uh uh for any cost and he was uh quite surprised and he asked me why so why are you doing it and then I explained to him um I believe that this will benefit you uh in as much as it will uh benefit me so it’s a mutual uh benefit and that conversation just changed a lot about uh about our relationship. There has been a a a drastic uh change even from that moment on um including the level of trust that he had in me. And he would come and begin to tell me about things that he was doing uh to change himself to ensure that he doesn’t get into trouble with great joy and enthusiasm. It was amazing to see.
It’s funny, caring. It’s just good knowing there’s always someone you can rely on, someone who always wants to meet you every week. He’ll never tell me on the day we can’t meet. So I’m never let down or anything. Just really nice to be with Blessing. See all these nice things he gets to do, all these nice things he has, all the things he works hard for. So now I want to work hard and get some nice things. love to be able to just come out to my a lotment in the weekends was sit down with my wife and kids, play football, watch football, have a barbecue, have a nice job.
Maybe a few months afterward started and I asked him um where do you see yourself uh in 5 years from today and without hesitation he said to me in prison. I was like wow. Um and then maybe uh a year or so again we had uh the same conversation. Um and he told me that he sees himself uh really in a stable relationship. Um things going really well. So that’s part of a way that I’ve seen impact. It’s a beautiful thing to witness.
I think he’s a amazing young lad who has no idea the type of potential that he has. I think he’s extremely intelligent. He’s really smart. He’s sharp. So he’s clearly a young man with influence. So what I see is a bright exciting future and I am privileged to be part of that story of his story. I really mean that from the depth of my heart. I do.
He is he’s amazing.
If someone is thinking about uh becoming a mentor, um I would say please do not underestimate the value that you’ll bring um and the difference that you can make to a young lad. This has been rewarding. It’s lifegiving. It’s uh fulfilling and it makes a difference to both Troy and I.