Homeless life

Greg at Strawberry Square

            Finally, Greg came and shook our hands. There was an Asian man right next to him. Someone told me that he is a Korean. Since I am also a Korean, I wanted to talk to him. “Hey what’s up? What’s your name?” As I was asking these questions, I extended my hand to him and shook his hand. “Kyle,” he responded with an awkward smile. Frankly, initiating a conversation with a stranger is not the easiest thing in the world. Kyle sat two seats from mine and started to eat his sandwiches. Attempting to learn more about Kyle, I asked him several more questions, and he answered them kindly but still smiled awkwardly. Kyle was adopted by an American family when he was very young. He went to University of Southern Florida to major in architectural engineering and got a job at AT&T as a sales man. Kyle told me that he was one of the best sales people in the company and his salary got maxed out. However, he never knew that working hard would ever make him unemployed; the company decided to lay off Kyle and hire a person with a cheaper pay check.

            “I did not save lots of money. I liked to shop clothes. Express can get expensive you know haha.” Kyle admitted his fault in a joking manner. Kyle was a funny person; he constantly joked about everything. I asked Kyle if he wanted to come along with us and he said yes. With Greg, Kyle and Andy, I walked around the city. First place we went was Strawberry Square, a mall in Harrisburg. Strawberry Square, especially during the winter, is like the meeting place for homeless people.  We found a table and sat around it. Greg looked around and suddenly pointed at a black man sitting at a table alone and said “He is the true homeless. He literally has no place to go. Why don’t you interview him, I would like to hear from him as well.”

            The guy’s name was Simon. He is a Sudanese who ran away from the war in the country. Simon tried to find a place to work in the US, but he failed and became a homeless. Everyone was mesmerized into Simon’s stories so that no one realized that people were surrounding us. “What’s up guys?”  A man in a black uniform interrupted Simon. I looked up and finally realized that there were about 6 people around our table.

“We are security guards here. What are you guys doing here?”  He asked us with a serious and intimidating tone.

“We are students from Messiah College and we are doing a project right now.” Andy replied carefully.

“You are not supposed to film inside please turn your video camera off.”

As soon as I turned my video camera off, they left. “So, he needed six people to tell us that” Andy said sarcastically. After the security guards disappeared, we started to talk about homelessness in Harrisburg. However, I was so tired from walking outside so that I could not resist keeping my eyes open. “Issac is sleeping now haha!” Everyone including myself laughed but after few minutes later, I fell asleep again.

            About an hour later, we decided to go to the county library. As we were walking to the library, Kyle looked at me holding up my video camera and said: “I am inspired by you guys. Maybe I should make a documentary about being a college student.”  While we were cracking jokes and laughing we arrived at the library – which we left soon after we entered.

            Our next destination was Daily Bread, another organization that provides the lunch every day. Lunch was quite good and I ate until I became full. Along with the homeless on the other table, however, there was Mr. Boyd – the black man who introduces him as the advocate for the homeless. Mr. Boyd and Greg do not like each other for they blame their situations on different causes – Mr. Boyd thinks that the government and other wealthy people are the causes while Greg thinks that the homeless people’s bad decisions are the causes. When Mr. Boyd saw Greg, he raised his voice and tried to embarrass him. As he became more excited, Mr. Boyed began to talk down on Andy, Kyle and me. We did our best to ignore him; however, Kyle could not hold his anger in. With his determined eyes and blushed face, Kyle stood up and walked toward Mr. Boyd.

Issac Won

Kyle, Greg, and Andy eating at Daily Bread

Thoughts

               When I’m sleeping out in the streets and it seems like it couldn’t get any colder outside, I think to myself how in the world did I end up here? This isn’t a dream that I am sleeping on concrete, the dream is that I can be used by God to empower those who are sleeping on the streets and don’t have a warm bed and a house to go back to.

                I don’t know why God chose me to do this. How could a middle class white kid from small town Pennsylvania end up helping in the streets of Harrisburg thinking he could make a difference. The truth is that I cannot make a difference at all, I can tell these people what they want to hear, I can give them what they want to have, but ultimately it is God who provides what they really need and He is the one who can renew minds and transform lives. I believe that God has answered my prayers when I asked if I could be used by Him. I never expected this is how he would do it but the Lord has given me a heart and a passion to help these people. I’ve come to learn a lot about my Christianity from my interactions and I hope that I can help others through my service.

                I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have eight children with six different mothers having to pay child support for each one. The options available are to work forty hours a week and receive a ten dollar pay check because I had so much child support to pay or I could be unemployed, live of the food provided by shelters and soup kitchens, and make my own cash dealing drugs. This is a real story told to me by a homeless friend. It’s easy to sit back and think to ourselves in the warmth of our homes that this person should work and pay child support, but he still can’t support himself with that. This is a situation the friend of mine likes to describe as a humpty dumpty scenario. We all know what happened to humpty dumpty and how all the kings’ horses and all the kings men couldn’t put him back together again. This person’s life is an example of that.  The decisions he made led to a shattered life that all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men can’t put humpty dumpty back together again. It seems like a lose, lose situation. How can his life be put back together after the mistakes were made? He has probably already changed his ways but there is nothing he can do to fix his situation.

                Morality becomes more blurred when you lose your job and are forced to live on the streets for a couple of months. It seems right to the average person to go to a temp agency to find work but it really doesn’t help a person. You need to work for at least three months to secure yourself. After three months of working  you can collect unemployment if you get laid off which is very likely to occur in the current job market.  Working from a different job day to day doesn’t make enough money to get you off the streets and wastes your time when you could be applying for a long term job. And when those long term jobs aren’t available, what do you do? Of course you would tell them to work, but it just isn’t that simple.

                Another thing to consider is this; someone grows up living on the streets and using drugs from the age of 13 or 14 ends up wasting 20 or 30 years of their life until they realize at mid-life that they can’t keep living like this. They enter a rehab program that gets them off their addiction, moves them into their own apartment and gets them a job. They work for a little bit but realize they don’t have any friends living this kind of life, they don’t know how to live like this, this life is uncomfortable to them.  What should they do? Everyone wants to go back to what is comfortable and what is known to them. That’s why everyone doesn’t live in a tourist location, it’s nice to get away but we all have a desire to go back home at some point. And for some people, home is on the streets.

                I met a guy who was in the marines for four years, got a degree in architectural engineering, worked for a company getting almost a thousand dollars a week right out of college and is now living on the street because of layoffs.  He had enough money saved up to pay rent for about a month or two but had to live on the streets for a couple weeks before he could start collecting unemployment and get an apartment. It’s easy to say he should just find another job but it’s not that easy to find one. He is working hard to find one, but a lot of people don’t like hiring people off the streets. So he has to wait for a couple more weeks for unemployment to get an apartment to get a job. And the weeks that he is on the streets is filled with humiliation and to a certain degree, dehumanization, where he is rejected by society because of his status on the street. 

                Maybe I ended up questioning what I am doing trying to help the homeless in order to break down the stereotypes I had about them from before. Maybe it’s so God can use me in ways I could never imagine. Just take a leap of faith, stop judging, and start serving. It doesn’t take sleeping on the streets to help and understand though, it just takes saying hello. It’s as easy as not ignoring them and looking them in the eye and saying hi.  

More steps forward

The early birds in Harrisburg are the homeless. But they only catch the left over worms.

 “Hey! Hey! You can’t sleep here!” The security guard yelled at us and walked away. I rubbed my eyes and got up. My mind was blank for a while. I looked back and asked Andy what time it was. “Guess it. It is 12:00 am,” Andy answered with a frustrated tone. I was stunned and began to understand the situation. My thoughts were not coming together. Panicked and baffled, I was thinking “where should we go? It is too late and cold to find another place!” On the other hand, Andy looked placated and he started to wrap up our sleeping stuff.

We walked to the Presbyterian Church with our blankets and made our beds again. The wind was stronger than it was at the parking lot; the wind carried snowflakes so every time the wind hit my blankets, it made noises (which prevented me from sleeping for an hour or so). I opened the bag from Angel and started to eat the snacks. Munching the snacks in the cold gave me mixed feelings. I was very upset and depressed about my current situation. I was kept asking myself the reason I was out on the street. A strong desire to go back home quickly dominated me. Stifling my anger and depression, frankly, was extremely hard.

Andy anxiously walked around our sleeping place. “Andy what are you doing?” I asked curiously. “I need to pee” I paused for a second and burst out laughing. “Just find a place and take care of it” Andy pointed at a blue box and said “I think that is a portable bathroom but it says ‘No trespassing’ on the sign.” Andy ended up going some other place. As I laid my head on the my pillow (which was in fact a rolled sheet of blanket), I felt like Andy and I were completely abandoned by everyone that night. It was a tough night.  

            I opened up my eyes when I heard Andy bustling. Even though I did not have my watch with me, I could tell that it was too early to wake up since I was still very tired and the sun has not risen yet. Andy asked me if I heard a guy telling us that he will buy us Dunkin Donuts and coffee. “No I didn’t,” I replied trying to express my tiredness with my voice. We waited for the guy for about 20 minutes but he did not come back. We were still not sure whether he will come or not; therefore, we decided to go to Dunkin Donuts. Surprisingly, there were many people in the store at that early time. We went inside the store so that we could keep ourselves warm. Andy bought a cup of coffee and I bought one Boston cream donut (probably my favorite kind).We sat down and started reading books. I took out my water bottle (we got it from Angel as well) from my back pack but I could not drink much since it was frozen. After I had water, I looked around and found guys sitting on the other side. They were talking furtively as if they were CIA agents or something. My eyes stopped at the box of donuts and several cups of coffee in front of one of those guys. I whispered to Andy “Andy, I think that guy is it!” but Andy frowned at me telling me not to say anything. Eventually those guys left.

            “I think those guys were dealing drugs,” Andy told me as he was explaining his action. He continued “One guy had a wad of cash. People who would have wad of cash in Dunkin donuts at 5 in the morning would either be wicked rich or dealing drugs. And… they were definitely homeless people.” I could not believe the things we were experiencing. I could only see this kind of things from the movies but now I was seeing them in the reality.

            We came out and walked to Salvation Army to get breakfast. We were supposed to meet Greg there – yesterday, we asked Greg if we can hang out whole day with him. There was already a line of people but Greg was not there yet. We figured that Greg will come for breakfast, thus went inside to get breakfast. Apparently, the cook at Salvation Army got fired so lately, the homeless people have been getting cold meal for their breakfast. When I heard the story, I was expecting cereal at the most. I waited on the line and got a bag of food. I opened the bag to see what was there and could not shut my mouth; there were 5 sandwiches (they looked really good). I had a bite and it tasted just fine. I have heard from the homeless friends that it is impossible to starve in Harrisburg and now I really know why they are saying that.

            Eating a sandwich alone made me thirsty. So I grabbed a bottle of chocolate milk and started to drink it. However, it tasted little different from my expectation of chocolate milk taste. I looked at the bottle and realized that it was outdated. “Well, I wouldn’t die drinking it,” I rationalize myself drinking outdated milk and emptied the bottle. I was beginning to notice that I was preparing myself to see more ingrained cultures among Harrisburg homeless people.

Issac Won

A line of the homeless in front of Salvation Army

The way to Veritas?

            Andy and I got bored and decided to go inside the Hilton hotel to just hang out. One of the most famous hotel branches in the world has been very generous to the homeless in Harrisburg. Homeless go the Hilton hotel when they need to use the bathroom. Andy and I walked into the hotel and sat down on the fancy sofa in the lounge area. Sitting down in a hotel was not too exciting. While I was sitting there, many things popped up in my mind – my college classes, home in Guatemala, and many exciting plans I have. When I came back to the reality from my imagination, I realized that I am not a homeless. I knew it from the beginning; however, this realization at this time made me sad because I couldn’t imagine what it would be like thinking like a homeless. I wanted to believe that they have more exciting things to think about than I have.

            It was uncomfortable to be in Hilton for long time because we did not fit there well with our shabby clothes and dirty back packs. Since we were tired anyways, we decided to go to bed. We made our beds at the parking lot and I laid on our “beds.” Shortly after I covered myself with 4 sheets of blankets, a young, well dressed guy with an old woman walked toward us. He was smoking weed (I did not know until Andy told me later) and the old woman was leaning her head on the guy’s shoulder. When the guy found us about to sleep at the parking lot, he started to tell us the places where we can go to get helps. He introduced his name as John.  He said: “I was a homeless myself as well so I know you situations.” I went to Andy and whispered “That guy thinks that we are homeless.” I was not quite sure if I should have taken as a compliment or what. John told us that there will be a family that will be coming soon to give out food. We wanted to see who this guy was; therefore, we decided to delay our sleeping time.

While we were waiting for the family, we were able to talk to John more. According to John, he worked his a- - off to get out of the homeless situation. He had lots of complains about the shelters in Harrisburg. John said: “If you don’t have any problems, you can’t go anywhere.” John told us that shelters in the city have programs for drug addicts and others with problems; however, for normal jobless people, they only allow them 10 days to stay. “You can’t get a job in 10 days!” John shouted with a frustration.

Finally, a white van came and parked right in front of us. A Hispanic guy with his friends and children got off from the van and started to hand out chicken soup and snacks. Few minutes after his arrival, many other homeless started to show up. Among those homeless, we found Greg. I was really happy to see him again. Greg and us talked and tried to catch up each other. Greg was hired but got laid off soon after his employment. My Christmas vacation stories from Quebec City and Montreal stopped right at my throat and I swallowed them back.

Greg introduced the Hispanic guy to us. His name was Angel who has been helping the homeless for past 3.5 years individually. He told Andy and me many testimonies such as the donation of the white van and God providing food to give out every week. Everyone there looked so happy. I could tell that Angel’s family and the homeless have built a stong bond between them from the way of their interaction with each other. Angel’s children were playing around with the homeless and Angel was joking around with the homeless. It was really nice to see an individual Christian who has leaped forward with faith and love and provided minor help that the homeless need. It was nothing professional or fancy but a mere action of love.

Everyone was gone and it was eventually bed time. I bent my legs to stay warm and compelled myself to sleep (it was ver cold). Maybe after an hour, I fell asleep. It was a sound sleep and it was quite sweet until the midnight. With a vicious voice a security guard shook us up.

Issac Won

A Christmas decoration on the second street of Harrisburg

That is me! Too many clothes on.. Can't see my face.

Angel in the middle, his wife on the left, and his freind on the right

                                     

The First Step

Andy and I

                                             

            Andy and I decided to make a documentary on the homelessness. Building friendships and attempting to live like them were precious experiences for us. However, as we experienced these “crazy” things we realized that helping the homeless was not a rocket science. Through this documentary, Andy and I want to grow awareness of homelessness among Messiah Students (our college friends), and accentuate the importance of small steps over their bubbles.

            It has been almost a month since last time we went out to the street. With all the supports from our dearest friends (and with the cameras from my friend, Lance Williams), Andy and I headed to Harrisburg. Kevin Manieri, a friend and a part of our ministry, took us to Harrisburg. We put our blankets in trash bags and piled them right next to the Presbyterian Church where we used to sleep with our homeless friends. There was another pile of blankets but icicles were forming around the blankets. I prayed that our bags will be fine. With a worried complexion, Kevin said “see you later then.” Unlike other days, Andy and I were planning to stay out in the street longer so that we can document more parts of the homeless life in Harrisburg. We said goodbye to Kevin and he went back to the campus.

            Andy and I started to walk around the city. We got a paper that has all the locations of organizations where we could get help from. Looking at the paper, Andy suggested me to go to Salvation Army. Salvation Army was about 30 minutes away from the place we were. The wind in the city was very strong and sharp. Even though I wore 4 layers of clothes and a thick jacket on top of it, the wind blew right through those clothes. Just like the saying “misfortunes never come singly,” it snowed the day before we came to the city. The 4 inches of snow on the ground made it tougher to walk around –  embarrassingly I became weary only after 30 minutes of walk.      

            Finally, we arrived at Salvation Army; however, the place was closed. Andy pulled out the information paper and looked through it. After he glanced over the paper, he pointed at Bethesda Mission. Bethesda Mission was about 20 minutes away from Salvation Army. It was not hard to find Bethesda Mission; the building was noticeably big and clean compare to other buildings in the surrounding area. Andy and I went inside the building. There were few homeless people walking around the lounge area. For few minutes, we wandered around aimlessly. One homeless guy noticed that we are new to the place and he came close to us and asked: “Looking for help?” I nodded as a positive answer to his question. He pointed at a skinny and tall white guy who was at the information desk. Andy and I awkwardly went to him. He peeked at us as we were walking toward him. I opened my mouth and asked “We are from Messiah College and we are trying to make a documentary on the homelessness. Could you have an interview with us?”

             The skinny and tall white guy led us to a glass walled room. He told us that his name is Jacob and he is a house supervisor. I held the video camera and taped our interview. Andy asked him the questions we prepared. Jacob talked about 40 minutes. Throughout the interview, he threw lots of statistical information at us as if he was trying to prove that he is a professional Christian social worker. After the interview, we thanked him for his help. Right before Jacob was about to open the door, I asked him if I could interview anyone who used to be a homeless but currently working at Bethesda. Jacob paused for few seconds and said “I will ask Tony.”

            Jacob put us in another room and few minutes later, a big black guy came in. Tony told us about his life stories. One thing I have noticed from him was that Tony was quite thankful to God for His mercy on him. He had a rough life in Philadelphia and he heard about mission organizations in Harrisburg thus he came here. Just like Tony, it seemed like there are many homeless people coming to Harrisburg simply because of the organizations in the city (because there are so many organizations, homeless people get 3 meals everyday) The interview was not too long. Andy and I came out of Bethesda and walked back to the Presbyterian Church. There was no conversation between us for a while. We were both tired. I just simply wanted to sit down and rest but there was no place for us to sit down. The silence did not last long; I told Andy that I would not mind just living in Bethesda. Really, Bethesda was a cozy place especially during the winter.

            By the time we got back to the Presbyterian Church, the sky was getting dark. We looked around the area trying to find the place to sleep over and decided to sleep at the parking lot of a Bank (the homeless people told us that we can sleep there). While I was moving my blankets to the place I decided to sleep, a guy came to me and asked if we had any food. We took him to a pizza restaurant nearby.

            The guy’s name was Mike. He was surprised when we told him that we are from Messiah College; he actually thought that we were homeless. We had a light conversation with him. Mike really appreciated us for buying him a piece of pizza. Like a person who starved, he finished the pizza in an instant. It only cost us 2 dollars to make one man be full and befriend with him. After Mike emptied his plate, we wrapped our conversation and stood up. Before Mike was about to take off, I asked him if he can help us by having an interview with us. Mike hesitated for a second but allowed us to interview him. The interview was quite straight forward. When we asked him how people can help  the homeless, interestingly, he said not having judgmental attitude and providing the need.

            Andy and I were back to the Presbyterian Church again (The Presbyterian Church has become our central location of activities in Harrisburg). When we got back, a familiar face was there – Stanley. Supposedly Stanley has lived the homeless life for a long time. He is very seclusive so that he does not enjoy talking to people. Every time either Andy or I try to talk to him, he would avert his eyes from us. Even among homeless people, he is a mysterious guy; no one really knows exactly how long he has been out on the street.  I greet to Stanley and he greeted back. He was carrying a trash bag stuffed with blankets in it. It was very familiar to me so I looked at it more carefully. It was our bag. Andy and I did not want to take it away from him; therefore, we did not say anything.

            Biggest mystery we had about Stanley was the reason he does not go to the shelters. Unlike other homeless friends, he does not like going to the shelters. Rather than going to the shelters, he would sleep on the street. Andy and I got some more blankets (we got donations from people) and gave them to Stanley. When we handed those blankets, he opened his mouth and said: “Since you guys are helping me, I will tell you something. I am going down to south because there will be a big flood and it will destroy everything. You know in 2012, this city will be gone.” Andy and I looked at each other dumbfounded and did not know what to say.  

Issac Won

                                                 Icicles forming

A pile of blankets

Going to the Pizza restaurants with Mike

  

Our bags of blankets