One day in Southwest Philadelphia, at a combination laundry-gas station, a homeless man was hassling Jesse Bauer.

There were comments about him being a white boy in the black neighborhood and about people not caring. The man told Bauer to give him a cigarette. He doesn't smoke.

Bauer said he sensed this man had a bottled anger and a self-loathing and isolation common among the homeless. So Bauer entered the station and bought a sandwich.

He returned outside, where the man he came to know as Grape was hustling tips by pumping people's gas. He gave Grape half his sandwich.

"It totally disarms the situation. And more than that, to show him who I am and that I do care about him, I invite him back to my place for dinner."

Grape came to dinner.

Bauer's place: A rented house in one of Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods, where Bauer and five others share living space and work as a team for a project called Mission Year. Bauer moved there this summer, just months removed from high school graduation in Normal.

Across the Delaware River, in Camden, N.J., Josh Phillips, also from Normal, lives with and works with a second team of six.

The two Normal men didn't know each other until they realized that, 850 miles from Normal, they came from the same town to work for the same missions organization in the same metro area.

Now, they share stories about desperate conditions and how their neighbors struggle from poor education, joblessness, addiction and prison records. But they also share victories - of a third-grader who couldn't read but now is learning to do so through the work of Mission Year. Stories about feeding the poor and making friends and seeing the Gospel lived out before their eyes in the nation's most broken spots.

Camden may be ever more desperate than Southwest Philly.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the high school graduation rate for Camden, population 73,000, at 57 percent, which is 27 percentage points below the national average. Per capita income is $10,435; that's $14,600 less than the national norm.

According to Phillips, the Camden drug trade has become so open, with local users supplemented by outside buyers, that street dealers propose sales to strangers for two reasons: A business proposition but also a casual inquiry into their reason for being there.

In these areas, potentially good role models typically move away as soon as they can.

Just about everyone in the two neighborhoods is broke, including the Mission Year volunteers, who live off $60 monthly stipends plus $300 in monthly grocery money per six-person team.

The crush of community problems sometimes overwhelms Phillips. But then he has an experience - a conversation that lifts the spirits or the making of a new friendship - which renews him and ends the temporary uncertainties of his being there.

He wrote in one blog entry, at http://jayphilly.blog.com//: "We aren't what we do, we aren't what we own, and we aren't what people say about us. Instead, we are the beloved children of God and we need to start acting like it."

Phillips is 22. He graduated in spring from Central Michigan University with a double-major in religion and broadcasting/cinematic arts. During his college years, he said, he rejected the partying lifestyle and enriched his faith through church, study and weeklong Christian missions trips with His House Christian Fellowship.

He thought of going to graduate school to study not-for-profit administration, and he still may. But he felt pulled, for now, into this urban journey.

Bauer is 19. He said he became inspired by Christianity during his sophomore year at Normal Community High School. He was inspired through worship and service at Crosswinds Community Church in Bloomington.

His perceptions and priorities changed as his faith deepened. People here question his decision to delay if not forego college, but in this past three years he began doubting and now openly rejects the concept that life success means "a six-figure salary and a retirement at 55."

This is not to devalue education, he added; he spends afternoons on a tutoring program for children.

He may yet go to college. But during a vacation in Normal over Christmas, he found himself longing for his home in Southwest Philly.

There, and in all Mission Year spots, teams work with local churches and service agencies. Bauer said this is a primary reason Mission Year is effective. They are lending hands to existing institutions rather than trying to import ideas.

He and his team work for Mount Zion Baptist Church of Southwest Philadelphia. He is a church member, works for its food pantry and helps serve a weekly community meal. He participates in the church's prison ministry and helps with meals at the Southwest Community Enrichment Center.

Phillips serves at New Mickle Baptist Church and at a homeless shelter, where he assists people with meals, job applications and public aid applications. He works on a Christian-based, after-school tutoring program.

Working in neighborhoods that are almost exclusively black and Latino, 11 of the 12 team members in Philadelphia and Camden are white. (One is biracial.) They use this as a conversation starter, as it continually begs the question: What are the white people doing in these neighborhoods?

Their affiliations with churches and service centers give the teams credibility, but so do their informal friendships.

This summer, Phillips' team initially built relationships at the basketball court, initiating conversation by distributing sports drinks and water. In the area of the laundry-gas station in Philly, Bauer now is known as one of Grape's friends, opening up more relationships.

Phillips has his own version of the Grape story.

Phillips was on an errand when a homeless man followed him into an alley and asked for money in a hostile tone, not as a typical request. Phillips took him to the Mission Year team home, fed him, gave him a little money and informed him of regular meals available at a community center.

Both Normal men see these encounters as the building of friendships, not a patronizing handout.

"It's so abnormal to them," said Phillips. "That's when they start to see they are a likable person, and they are a loved person. They can be a friend to somebody."

Phillips explained the original errand: "I was delivering food to one of my friends, who lived in a crack house."

He said it casually, as if it was like making run for pizza - which he also does on occasion, splurging out of his stipend and sharing pizza with street people.

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Area Mission Year participants falling short of fund-raising goals

By Steve Arney | sarney@pantagraph.com

As the name implies, Mission Year gets Christian missionary volunteers to spend a year in service. It takes men, women and married couples. They work as teams in Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia metro areas on projects with churches and service organizations.

The missions team members receive $300 for a six-member house for a month of groceries, $60 each per month for spending money, mass transit passes and health insurance.

Each team member is asked to raise $12,000 to support his/her year of service.

Halfway into their year, both team members from Normal are short of their goal. At Christmas, Josh Phillips had raised $7,600 in pledges and Jesse Bauer had raised $4,300.

Donations needed

Donations can be sent to Mission Year in a team member's name or as a donation to the organization in general. The organization's annual reports and online donation center are available at the group's Internet site: www.missionyear.org.

Contact information: Mission Year, 1297 Jonesboro Road, Atlanta, GA 30315. (404) 880-0063

Mission Year snapshot: Roots trace to Kingdomworks, founded by Bart and Marty Campolo in 1988, as a summer camp. Merged in 1996 with Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education to become Mission Year. EAPE was founded in 1972 by the Campolos' father, Tony, a preacher of some renown who has spoken in Bloomington-Normal and written numerous books. Mission Year spun into its own entity in 1999.