Crystal Knapp of Reach Up Magazine

The Total Tutor Neil Haley will interview Crystal Knapp of Reach Up Magazine. She will upate us on latest Reach Up Magazine news.

Crystal Wacker Knapp has lived and worked in one of New York’s toughest inner city for a number of years. Prior to that life-changing experience she’d been a children’s pastor. Since New York, she served in various capacities on several large church staffs. Most recently Crystal married David Knapp, a career missionary with New Tribes Mission. Together they make their home in Mesa, Arizona.

Summer of 2003…. I had been asked to speak for a women’s retreat at a church in the inner city where I’d worked for nine years. Many of these ladies were my friends from the ministry or on my route in East New York. I lived as they did in government housing.

They knew that I knew what it was like to hear gunshots in the night (or day), smell marijuana through the windows, sweep up coke vials on the sidewalks, stop up holes with steel wool in my apartment so rats couldn’t squeeze through, guard every belonging so that it wasn’t stolen, walk ‘on guard,’ outside constantly aware of who’s around, wear little to no jewelry so as to not attract an attack – as well as why brown water comes through the faucets in the summer. They may not have known that in one apartment the holes in the flooring were so big I could see through to the basement or that I had to wear a coat inside if I didn’t turn the oven on for warmth in the winter. They knew that I knew what it was like to live in an oppressive environment and pray to God for relief.