“But If Not, He Is Still Good” - from a 15 year old.
Fredo, or Frederic, is someone who is so important to us at tC and has been part of our teens community for years now. His character is a testament to how God’s grace can adorn someone’s heart and form it in His image. Fredo displays a very rare combination of maturity and youthfulness. He is a responsible and wise person, but that doesn’t come at the expense of living his childhood to its fullest regardless of the difficulty of his situation. He is a kindhearted, lively 15 year-old who loves to surround himself with people, and people in turn love to be around him. In the time we spent together so far, he has been nothing but a bundle of joy and optimism, but that’s not for a lack of hardship.
Fredo really loves his mother. To some, it might seem that that’s pretty standard, but his love for her was anything but that. She was his best friend in the world and was always supporting him and there for him. When she was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, it felt like the greatest betrayal to some of us at tC. We were devastated. We loved Fredo so much and he always radiated this aura of hopefulness and optimism and felt that a dagger was driven into his back.
His reaction to this situation surprised us all and showed us how Jesus can really overflow someone’s heart with unyielding light that even such a dangerous and treacherous disease can’t snuff out. He didn’t blame God - which a lot of people would do even way beyond that age - and he didn’t isolate himself from us. In fact, he kept coming back to our Teen services and sharing with us how God is moving in his life and offering him solace. To us, we felt if God used us to affect just one percent of his strong heart, that something good was happening here.
Since Fredo was going through such a difficult time, we felt that we needed (and wanted) to give him some extra attention; be there for him and try to share the burden however we could. Fredo is a very talented swimmer and competes at a national level where he won a few medals in the past. It is a passion that he is very protective of. He trains every day, takes care of his health, and never compromises at the expense of his sport. We felt that this is the area where we could be of most use for Fredo as his mom, Germine, was his number one fan and used to attend all his swim meets. In the past when she wasn’t able to attend due to the nature of her job which involved a lot of international travel, we used to gather the Teens community and all go support him. When his mother got really sick and stopped being able to go and support him altogether, we picked up the mantle and stepped up. We didn’t want him to lose his passion in the face of adversity, we didn’t want him to skulk in his pain. We wanted him to still enjoy life while it was still there to be lived.
