Riverbend Neighborhood by Kylie Ayala
Thanks, Kylie Ayala, for this wonderful account of how community building work began in Des Moines’ Riverbend neighborhood. A nearly identical piece was published in THE AMERICAN BAHA’I, July/August 2018, inserted below. Shared with permission of THE AMERICAN BAHA’I, all rights reserved.
It is a long story of how I wound up serving where I am. A lot of the time, while living in the moment, things were unclear. But after four years of Homefront pioneering, it is all very clear that I wound up right where I was supposed to be.
My home cluster in Southern Oregon wanted to make sure that every single youth that grew up in the area, regardless of where they were living at the time, would be able to attend the conference of their region. So, I made it to Chicago in July 2013 to attend the youth conferences. In the summer of 2013 I was a year away from graduating from Northwest Missouri State University. While I was in school, I happened to be the only Baha’i in a 45-mile radius at both NWMSU and my Community college, College of the Siskiyous of Northern California. So, I was eager to jump into an active community after spending five years as an isolated believer. I did not have a destination picked out after graduation. I thought about moving back to Oregon, or possibly staying in Missouri. I had always been drawn to a year of service and thought maybe Haifa would be a good post-graduation opportunity. I applied in the fall of 2013 with a return reply in January. The letter back from the Universal House of Justice stated that they would not need my service in Haifa after all. Part of me thought I really should have been sad, but I trusted that I was supposed to serve somewhere else. As soon as I closed out of that email, the next unread email was from a friend in Kansas City who was serving closely with two other youth asking what I thought about serving in Des Moines. I thought it was pretty clear why I had been denied from Haifa at that point and decided to set in motion the idea of serving in Des Moines.
Following graduation in May 2014 I moved to Ackworth, Iowa (TINY town about 40 minutes from Des Moines) with a friend from college. I had a long-term goal to serve somehow somewhere in Des Moines, but the picture of where and how was very unclear. It would be a few more months before things began to fall into place.
In August 2014, I attended an Institute campaign for Ruhi Book 6. I had finished Book 3, 4, 5, and 7 via skype in college, but had never gotten the chance to study book 6. Looking back, I am so grateful that I was able to first take this book completely surrounded by such a wonderful and loving group of friends in a focus neighborhood in Kansas City, because this book made me realize how important the practices of each Book are. I got to practice, every single afternoon for ten days, how to have important conversations with strangers. Sometimes we talked about the Faith, but sometimes we just talked to each other as people living in the same neighborhood and what the needs for the area were. The fear we often have of talking to strangers was gone. It was no longer an obstacle because of the confidence that the practices of Book 6 had given me. Following that campaign, I had a much clearer idea of how I could begin to serve. Now I just needed to figure out where. In September 2014, I took a flight from Des Moines to Medford, Oregon and I sat on the plane next to a man who grew up in Des Moines but was currently living in Southern Oregon. I was still aglow with Book 6 confidence and could think of nothing else except service. So naturally, that topic came up during the flight. I told the man of the Junior Youth program and the institute campaign I had just taken part of. We talked about the need for this day in age and what type of youth are growing up in different communities across the states. I told him my desire to serve and we talked about the things that hold people back. At the time, my current obstacle was where. Des Moines was foreign to me, and what Kansas City had learned is that often the most receptive neighborhoods aren’t always the most well-off, but I had no idea where that might be in Des Moines. But he knew exactly where this program might thrive. Riverbend.
We had a follow up weekend where the friends from Omaha and Kansas City joined Des Moines in Des Moines to do some outreach for the practices to finish Book 6. We all consulted on where the best area might be to start. I brought up Riverbend and the man on the plane. We pulled up different maps showing income levels and diversity within that area and it really did seem to fit what we had learned was receptive. So, we tried it out and we had so much success. After we all came back together, we compiled names and addresses of people that we met so that we could go back in the future. It wasn’t until a year later, that the neighborhood parameters were discussed in any official capacity.
One of my final obstacles before beginning to serve was I still waiting for another youth to arise and move to Des Moines to serve with me. I was waiting for the other half of “my team.” I got hold of every Baha’i friend I had growing up and asked them to serve with me in Des Moines. I asked new friends from Kansas City to move here, old friends from Oregon. I wanted to wait to start serving until I had some accompaniment. Finally, a youth serving in Tennessee sent me the following quote that ultimately gave me the courage to take the plunge. “Should a man all alone,” He had clearly affirmed, “arise in the name of Baha and put on the armor of His love, him will the Almighty cause to be victorious, though the forces of earth and heaven be arrayed against him.” -God Passes By, p. 376
This gave me the courage I needed, but also from this point on I was never actually alone. I was accompanied in everything I did. I was introduced to a man named Paul Olson. Paul was a Baha’i living in Johnston and his family had recently moved to Budapest. He was trying to move with them but had to have a job lined up first. Paul had a ton of extra time on his hands and was very excited about the possibility of starting a Junior Youth group together. For six weeks, I went once a week to try and meet middle schoolers. Three of those weeks, I found success in bringing friends I played softball with, to play football with the kids on 10th St. There were numerous middle schoolers in that group. After a while, everyone began to recognize my car. Some weeks, I took friends who knew almost nothing about the Faith but were willing to support me just by being with me when I went door to door to speak with parents of middle schoolers. The last two weeks, Paul joined me as we compiled a list of names of kids whose ages ranged from ten to fourteen. Some of those kids were met in that initial outing in September. October (2014) came around and we finally had our first group meeting. Paul and I were nervous that nobody was going to show up. But to our surprise nine middle schoolers showed. Although the meeting felt like a total disaster, Paul and I were thrilled and focused on the victories. For a few weeks we met at the local library. We outgrew that pretty quickly as our group was loud and excited and they always wanted to bring friends. We often met outside, but also, we learned that meeting in a space with four walls was helpful to keep all the kids from literally running away from the group. We knew we would need an indoor facility soon as the weather was beginning to turn. Saman Mirkazemi, a Baha’i attending med school at Des Moines University offered his place. He gave us a key to his apartment and always bought snacks for the kids to have, but often he would not be home because he had so much to study. One thing Paul and I learned in having to drive a bit further than their neighborhood library, was that the Junior Youth were less wound up when we drove the extra ten minutes to our new location. It gave each kid a chance to have their voice heard by one of us in a smaller group, rather than try and talk over one another in the larger group. This gave us opportunities to practice having conversations about important things happening in their lives as well as around the world both during our car rides as well as in a group together. We had a talking stick, a talking ball, a talking owl. Often the kids wanted to enforce a certain number of pushups that one had to do if they talked out of turn. As time went on, our capacity for conversation grew to the point that they would hear something in school and want to discuss it in group. They really loved having knowledge of things going on in their worlds. Especially as their world view expanded. Eventually Saman, the med student, would move away and again we needed new location. Saman’s apartment got us through the winter, but I decided I wanted to buy a house. We had not designated neighborhood boundaries yet, but I worked with a realtor to find a house close to the area. I landed a house in Beaverdale close to an elementary school with a large field that would end up being where we would spend over an hour every group playing together over the next two years. I closed on the house in May and immediately began having group there. The kids were able to see the construction of the house over the years as walls were torn down and other walls were put up.
Paul tried to move a couple of times, but jobs always fell through. It wasn’t until an Iowa state student, Ariel Prosser, moved back to West Des Moines after her summer semester, that Paul finally landed a job and moved to be with his family. Ariel began co-animating with me in his place. After a year co-animating together, she moved to Kansas City and in her place, a mother of a junior youth living in Boone, Iowa began to co-animate with me. A lot of the older junior youth (who had become youth but were still part of the program) would stay after group to have dinner together. Tuesday night (post group) devotions brought the community and the youth together one night a week for socialization as well as prayer. This evening continually evolved. During some time, it was a space where youth from Ames could meet over skype with youth from Des Moines, to go through some of Book 2 and 3 together. Later, it would be a place to share a meal together.
In the last year of the group, as they finished up their middle school days, others began to move into the community. A friend from Chicago moved into the area. For a while, she was my roommate. The family from Boone moved into the neighborhood. One of the friends in Kansas City landed a job in Des Moines, and she moved back in January of 2017. After graduating high school, a young friend in Ames decided to dedicate a year of service to Des Moines. All of the sudden we had a team. In the beginning of our formation we met weekly for dinner and devotions. Designating ourselves as a team bonded us together and gave us a sense of accountability. Currently, we have a Ruhi book 1 study circle, with three friends, one a youth who graduated the program in August of 2017. We also have a Swahili Book 3 study circle with two brothers from the neighborhood. We just started a Junior youth group in May with another planned to begin in the summer. We have summer of service programs beginning in June. We have activity. We have a team. We have plans.
