Bringing Love to "The City of Brotherly Love"

Recently Brandon Lane, a brother in the campus ministry at Morehouse College, was featured in the cover story on the front page of his hometown newspaper, The Philadelphia Daily News. This article comes at a time in Philly where young men are murdering, robbing and selling drugs more than ever before. The fact that they chose Lane's story to bring hope and love to a city in chaos is truly a testament to God's glory. The amazing thing is that Lane is just one of the several disciples in the GACC campus ministry from Philadelphia who are shining like stars in their home town.

Here is an excerpt of the article:

MISTER MANN'S MEN
By Dan Geringer
Philadelphia Daily News

Frisby started PhatBack Athletics in 2002, a summer track team and year-round mentoring program that evolved this summer into the mentoring without the track.

"Mister is not just a coach; he's never been just a coach," said Brandon Lane, a Carver High grad entering his junior year at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

He grew up in Frankford, where his life was shattered at the age of 6 when his father abandoned him and his mother, a nurse's aide at Temple University Hospital.

"I hated my dad for leaving my mom, for leaving us," Lane said.

"Once, she got into a car accident with some guy and he tried to fight her. I didn't understand why she had to go through these things. My dad was alive and well. Why wasn't he with her to protect her?"

Lane joined the PhatBack Athletics team at 16, was forced by Frisby to run hurdles and soon became one of the city's elite track champions. His father suddenly started showing up at track meets "taking more pictures than the photographers," which only added to Lane's confusion and his pain.

"Is he here because I'm his son and he loves me?" Lane asked himself. "Or just because I'm doing well athletically?"

"Anyone who hurt my mom like he did can hurt me," Lane reasoned. "I don't want to be around him."

But he did want to be around Frisby, whose mentoring was as unsparing as his coaching. "Mister would meet with the entire team at his house," Lane said, "make us chicken, make us pizzas and yell at us about wearing long tees.

"'You got the uniform on,' he'd yell at us. 'Long tees. Cargo pants. That's a model for a young black male that just committed a crime. Don't come around me like that.'

"But then, when you'd least expect it, he'd tell you, 'I'm so proud of you and I love you.' Mister spent hours on the phone with me making sure I was doing well emotionally. He's really a blessing."

Frisby's cross-country training regimen is something Lane still draws strength from. "If you can run that 3k on the Belmont Plateau, you can do anything," he said. "This one hill, man, if you can fight to get up this hill after running 2 miles in the woods, ducking through deer, you can fight through anything in life. That hill. Oh, man."

Despite his all-city accolades, Lane did not get a track scholarship at Morehouse.

"I'm not at Morehouse on anything except my own ambitions," he said. He's taken out $85,000 in student loans.

"I'm going to be a doctor, period," Lane said. "I won't settle for less. It's going to happen. I remember going to kindergarten wearing my mother's scrub jacket and her stethoscope because I wanted to be a doctor. My mother was suffering from a broken heart all her life. I always wanted to help her heart. That's what doctors do."

In an ironic twist of fate, his wayward father, a lifelong city worker, cosigned for the student loans. "My mom always told me, 'Never let go of Jesus,'" Lane said. "My freshman year at Morehouse, I got baptized. A friend told me I had the opportunity to forgive my dad and to forgive myself for hating him all those years. My friend said, 'Tell him how you feel but love him while you're telling him.'"

Lane went to his father, who was recovering from hip replacement surgery, opened up the Bible, read to him. "I told him I hated him ever since he left my mom and my brother and me when I was 6," Lane said. "I hated him for all those times he would say he was coming to get me and my brother after school, and we waited, and he never came. He apologized. We both cried. This was our first genuine father-son talk ever. I was 19 years old."

Click here to read the entire article.