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By Jeremy | December 13, 2004
December 13, 2004
Dear Friends,
Christmas celebrates a love that that
gives its best to enrich others. This year, Generation Xcel will experience this in a profound way as we commission one of our homegrown leaders to join a national ministry later this month as a project manager for their “Urban Youth Strategy.â€Â
Enid Almanzar has been a standout staff member for four years and my right hand for two. The first in her family to graduate college, she is a role model and mentor to our children; an innovative site director, program coordinator, and administrator; and a confidante and friend. Enid first learned of Xcel in 1996, when she visited as a neighborhood teen with a crush on one of our cofounders. The crush never went anywhere – he told her they couldn’t date because he was “of the light†and she wasn’t – but his new-found faith inspired her to explore the Bible. She discovered Christ and later joined Abounding Grace, where I met her.
She interned at Xcel the summer before her senior year in college, then joined the staff after graduating New York University in 2001. In the last four years, she has grown as an indigenous leader who both understands and relates to urban kids and can communicate their realities to people from other contexts. Thus, her promotion.
She is one of our treasures, someone it has been my distinct pleasure to mentor and serve with as a colleague.
Our staff loss is gain for urban kids around the nation. In her new capacity, Enid will manage the development of curricula and products that will potentially redefine urban youth ministry for generations to come.
As Enid makes this transition, I am reminded of
other Xcel success stories who, like a certain baby born in a stable, have emerged from obscurity to empower others to achieve their dreams. Co-founders like my brothers Jonathan and Jamie, who, respectively, co-pastor a youth group and serve as an NYPD officer. Rollie directs a neighborhood youth center. Mei-Ling graduates NYU with a nursing degree this month. Luis graduates from Nyack College this month and will replace Enid as one of our program directors. My lovely wife Diana, the greatest teacher and mother I could have imagined for our son. And the other co-founders: Arturo, Dennis, Ling Mei, Celeste, Joey, and Kristi.
Others have followed their lead: Alisa, who sings with the Dove-award winning group Zoegirl; Dorothy, now a junior high science teacher and missions coordinator at a local church; Louis, the Xpress director and a music minister; high school students like Kevin and Loreal, who were recently named to Xcel’s Board of Directors; and junior high XL Service Corps members like Ciarra and Jeremy.
These are but a few of the dozens from Xcel who have elevated their lives with a passion to share their successes with those around them. There’s no geater reward than watching them succeed and share the lessons they learned here far beyond our walls.
This Christmas, as we remember so many gifts that continue to give, please consider making a gift to Generation Xcel. Your donations to our ministry help insure that many more Enids will follow in her footsteps, even as those footsteps get larger and there influence exponentially grows.
Tax deductible gifts may be made online via PayPal at
www.GenerationXcel.com, or by check to: Generation Xcel, 9 East 7th Street, New York, NY 10003
Merry Christmas,
Jeremy R. Del Rio
Topics: Christmas, community, correspondence, empowerment, faith, generation xcel, leadership, mentoring, prayer alert, urban, youth | No Comments »
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