Mentoring into who?

It goes without saying that one of our aims as youth leaders is to mentor our young people for their future. But when we mentor them, who is it that we are hoping that they turn into? May times when I see people being mentorred I often see them turn into their mentors. And when I am not saying that that is neceessarily a bad thing, it doesn't enable the young person to become themself. surel within mentorring our aim is to mentor our young people into the gifts and tallents and abilities that they have, using all their wonderful atributes, rather than passing ours on to them. Are we wanting to mentor young ople into new and dynamic people, or into clones of us? Surely the best thing within mentorring our young people is to give them a wide variety of experiences, and then allow them the freedom to express themselves in the way d manner that is apropriate to them. So when we are mentorring, let's lok at the ong person first, the gifts they have, the abilities they pocess, and le's see how we can develop those further, rather than turning them into mini-me's, after all a new generation needs new types of people and that will also include new gifts as well.