God's Faithfulness in New Beginnings

Feb 07 | Nov 06 | Oct 06 | Aug 06 | July 06 | Mar 06 | Jan 06 | Oct 05 | Sept 05

Desire Street Academy (DSA) recently moved from its temporary location at Camp Timpoochee in Florida to our new home in Baton Rouge. “The boys need some stability,” said DSA Principal Al Jones, “we all do, and making a new home for the Academy in Baton Rouge will do just that.”  The 24 acres that DSM purchased in Baton Rouge is now being prepared for the start of the 2006-07 school year.

A church owned the property and had operated a school since 1967. DSA will upgrade the existing space to add more classrooms, renovate some of the buildings, and add athletic fields. “It’s a great opportunity,” said Oscar Brown, one of the school’s deans. “We’ll be back in Louisiana, back in a bigger city, closer to family and closer to New Orleans.”

The move to a new campus provides us with new ministry opportunities, as well. In addition to the current DSA students, we can open our doors to youth in the Baton Rouge area, many of whom are hurricane evacuees also.

Overall, the transition to Florida and back has presented many challenges but God has turned them into blessings. Katrina’s impact allowed our staff to work with the kids on a much deeper level. As the students confronted the realities of Katrina, DSM was there to help them understand, cope, and overcome this incredible challenge.

The privilege of working with these kids is what makes us thankful for another dimension to  our experience over these past few months: the ability to regroup and re-focus our core areas of ministry. Over the coming months, we will be concentrating specifically on education of our young men, redevelopment of the community, and replication of the Desire Street model in other urban areas. We believe our ministry’s strengths and the current conditions of Louisiana are factors which shape both our short-term and long-term efforts. I’ll personally report more on what happens within those focus areas at DSM in future newsletters

God Bless,

Danny Wuerffel
Executive Director