Why should we even bother with the homeless?

“Homelessness is not a problem. There are economic, starvation, drug, and alcoholic problems which could lead to homelessness. Homelessness, however, is the result of multiple problems.” 

I think it was during January, someone from Messiah College asked me to write something about homelessness. I asked her where my essay would be posted. She said “the toilet booths around the campus.” I thought it was great; therefore, wrote a 500 words short essay about homelessness. The quote above is the sentence I concluded my essay with which I will belabor throughout this journal.

Maybe I am not an expert on Homelessness. I do not care if I am or not. Why? Because what I care is the homelessness not my expertise or title on it. Because I care about homelessness, I would like to jot down some of my thoughts based on my year long observation (strictly less than a year).

From my experiences with the homeless people, I was able to realize what the quote means. There is no one solution to homelessness and we need to take care of each person with love. Since homelessness is not a one simple thing that can be approached in one way, we need many different types of people. We will need economists, social workers, doctors, and so on to cure homelessness. However, there is a something that is most dire to be fixed.

Biggest “problem” I saw from the homelessness is devoid of love. People are scared of the homeless and in some extreme cases, people abominate the homeless. Sometimes, even non-profit organizations treat the homeless like pets they have to train. 

Often times, we call the Bible “The book of love.” Love, indeed, is the gist of the Bible. The Bible teaches us to love each other as Christ did. In my personal opinion, God left us a huge assignment in which we have to apply the lesson from the Bible – homelessness. To make all these jargons simpler, the Bible is saying that it is a Christian duty to help the homeless with love.

I have seen people who say “I don’t feel like I am called to help the homeless.” I believe that you need to be called to be a social worker, doctor, engineer or accountant. You would not be able to be any of those unless you have some sort of talent in each area. But, helping with homelessness is beyond just being called. We call ourselves Christians. If the term Christian means people who live like the Christ, the love, should not loving others (helping the homeless) be part of our daily lives?

From today, I ask you to show your love to the homeless “personally” so that they know you care. They are the ones who need love. You do not need to go to Africa or Central America to find the weak and poor people. Go out now and talk to a homeless person. Buy the person a meal! Build a friendship with the person. I am not asking you to do something extra; I am simply asking you to start living like Christians.

             

Issac Won

The final story from Harrisburg

                                       
                                           Greg reading the newspapers.

             Kyle put his face right in front of Mr. Boyd’s and started to curse at Mr. Boyd in a whispering voice. Mr. Boyd stepped backward and yelled at him saying: “Don’t threaten me.”  Everyone looked at Kyle and Mr. Boyd. Surprisingly, some people did not say anything as if they wished to see them fight.

            The dining room became chaotic as people gathered around us. I was very intimidated by people’s aggressiveness. It took few minutes for everything to be settled down. When people calmed down, we could not find Mr. Boyd. He must have gone out already. Kyle, Greg, Andy and I walked out from the soup kitchen and went to the state library. Again, there were more homeless  people resting inside the library. We went all the way back and sat around a long desk. Greg, by himself, went to the newspaper section and read newspapers and rest of us just chatted. For the most of the part, Kyle led the conversation. He said: “Issac, I advise you that you never go out with an Asian women.” Kyle told  me his "crazy" stories with his Asian ex-girl friends. Even though it sounded bit racist, I would have to admit that he was very funny.

            Around 5pm, Kyle left us for he had to meet his friends. Greg, Andy and I went to Bethesda Mission to see if we can all stay there for a night. Since the Mission serves dinner everyday, we had dinner together. After we ate, we looked for Jacob, the man whom we had the interview with.

            “Hey what are you up to?” Jacob welcomed us.

We asked him if we can stay one night at the shelter to learn more about the homelessness. Jacob peeked at Greg and whispered: “Is he with you guys?” When we said ‘Yes,’ his face became serious and asked only Andy and me to follow him. 

“I know people like him. I know that you guys want to learn about the homelessness, but don’t stick                                                          around with a person like him too much.”

Jacob did not let us to stay because he did not want to make an exception for Greg. We did not tell Greg about what Jacob told us. Like that, we had to say goodbye to Greg.

Few months later….

Greg:


Many students at Messiah College expressed their interest in our ministries. There was one event when 4 other people volunteered to stay a night at the street with me (Andy could not come). Next morning, we went to Grace Methodist church for the breakfast. Fortunately, I was able to meet Greg there. I asked him how he has been doing. During the past few months, he got a job and got laid off again.


Kyle:

Kyle and I are Facebook friends. Shortly after his experience on the streets, he got hired at AT&T. Few days ago, I saw his facebook status saying that he got rehired at Verizon.

 That was our story from Harrisburg. However, there are more stories that not many people know of. I wish that people who read our stories will strive to listen to the stories that homeless people have. 

Issac Won




                                    
   The homeless need people to whom they can rely on. 

Update in Seoul

So we started volunteering this week and we have also been able to visit several more unique places. This trip so far has been full or great experiences, frustrating experiences, and overall a great learning experience. I don't know where to begin with what to talk about. I guess I'll just tell about the different places we have visited. Because we had some free time before we started working and because transportation is cheap we were able to see a lot of Seoul and some areas north of the city. In Seoul we visited the world cup stadium and went to an FC Seoul soccer game there, we checked out some of the historical parts of the city, and we also  went to the largest church in the world (mostly just to say we did it). We were also able to visit the DMZ, which is the border between north and south Korea. We were able to go to several different places along the DMZ and it was a very sobering experience. Learning about what is going on in North Korea and the tension that still exists between the two countries that were once a unified people. When people talk about starvation and oppressive governments it seems like North Korea is not talked about as much as it should. This isolated country is not well known about and I really encourage you to research the current situation. There are many documentaries that can be seen on YouTube if you just search North Korea. It's a very sad situation and something that we have been taking some time to learn about. Please keep them in your prayers. 

As for the homeless and what we have done. We have started volunteering at a soup kitchen and we delivered food on sunday night with a group of foreigners like myself, except most of them have been here several years and not just a couple weeks or months. It was cool to here their stories and I always enjoy meeting new people. It was a lot of fun and a very good experience. We hope to continue going every sunday night and build friendships. As for the shelter/soup kitchen we went two times last week and hope to go more frequently if we can. When we serve there we work from 2:30-8:00pm preparing dinner, serving dinner, and cleaning up afterwards. There are about 300 people that get dinner from that shelter. The shelters and soup kitchens are run a little differently here than they are in the US. They are all run by the state and they started out with 90 different shelters around the country and are down to 37 now. Every shelter does a different meal but all of them look for a holistic recovery. They help with health care, food, shelter, and job searches. A homeless person is allowed to spend 20 nights a month at a shelter. It also seems like the biggest cause for homelessness is due to the economy or family situations. I really don't want to comment too much on this because we haven't been here very long at all. I hope to continue to learn more about it though. I feel like God is doing a lot of good through the homeless shelters and the group that goes out on sunday nights. I'm excited to meet knew friends, help the homeless, and learn more about the homeless situation here. Please pray for us as we seek to serve the poor. 

As far as breaking the cultural differences, communication is still difficult. There isn't a great need to learn korean because most people are willing to try and speak english even if it is not the best, but I think that continuing to try and learn as much as I can is important. The language barrier is different than what I expected also. It's hard to practice my Korean with other people when I am out because it seems like people either want to only try to speak english to you or don't really speak at all. An example that seems pretty common and explains it pretty well is this story. I went to a Burger King last night in Seoul station and I ordered a drink and an apple pie in Korean. The cashier looked at me, took my money, held up 8 fingers, and in broken english said 'eight minutes'. I said thank you in Korean and that was the end of the conversations. There have been several times that I have spoken in Korean to someone asking where something is and I normally get a reply back in english. It's not really what I was expecting before coming here. 

I don't really know what else to talk about, if you have any questions I'll try to answer them, just feel free to ask. 

-Andy

Collage

First of all, I would like to apologize for my inconsistency. This past semester has been very hectic. There were some major decisions I had to go through and some of them are still remain undecided. Also, I was kept reminded that my so called occupation is student; therefore, I focused on what I had to do (unfortunately, it caused my inconsistency with the homeless ministry). Thankfully, Andy already mentioned about our “new trip” to Korea.

Before I write about anything, I think I should mention several incidents we have undergone. First, our plan to go to North Carolina has been changed. We ended up going to Toronto, Canada. To be honest, we changed our plan to give a break for us. However, as we “had fun” in Toronto (who doesn’t have fun there right?) we continued to seek to learn more about the homelessness. We slept on the street first night. It was raining and I probably had 1~2hours of sleep. An interesting thing about the homeless in Toronto is that they sleep right at the middle of the streets. No one ever bother them go interrupting the pedestrians. I brought my guitar wanting to try to panhandle, but I ended up just playing and singing for fun in a park right next to the Eaten Center (at least got to interact with some local people including the homeless people).

The second incident occurred on my way back to Guatemala. My flight was from La Guardia airport in New York City. For a cheaper ticket, I had to stay one night at the city. As all college students are, I am very poor so I decided to sleep at the airport. Since I had whole night at the city, I tried to interact with a homeless person whom I met at a subway station. I offered him to buy a meal. We went to a pizza place. As we walked in the restaurant, the worker frowned his face. He was quite rude while we were ordering. I disregarded him and just sat down at a table with the homeless man. I asked him his name and he said his name was Ronnie. Ronnie was born in New York City and he has a house where he lives with his children. As Ronnie finished his pizza, I told him that I am currently trying to grow awareness in my school and asked him if he is willing to have an interview with me.

Ronnie paused for a while and asked me to pay him money. I thought about it for a moment, and finally said no. He mentioned about his family waiting for him at home. I felt really bad saying no to him but I did. As we walked back to the station we met each other, Ronnie asked me how long will the interview be. I said few minutes. He reluctantly agreed to have an interview with me. I pulled out my video camera and asked him questions. After I asked him maybe three questions, he abruptly ran to somewhere else. While he was gone, a big man approached to me and asked me where Ronnie was. I told him he went somewhere else. Ronnie came back shortly. As soon as Ronnie came back, the big guy furtively showed him a bag. I instinctively realized the big guy was a drug dealer. Ronnie shook his head and said “I don’t have enough money. Come to me later.” I was shocked about what I saw. I quickly said good bye to Ronnie and walked away (it was more like me running away).

So, those are the incidents I really wanted to share. Even though I have not posted for few months, I actually kept journaling on my notebook. I would like to post some of my thoughts; however, I should finish writing about our experience in Harrisburg. 

Issac Won

First Week In South Korea

So we have not done any homeless ministry yet. We did meet with the place where we will be volunteering and set it up so that we will start volunteering on Tuesday. This past week has been a lot of getting to know area.  Adjusting for me has been difficult at times not being able to communicate with a lot of people and being a foreigner. The culture, the food, the country, the place we are staying, is all different from what I am used to. It's been very exciting though getting to know and see knew things and I hope to learn a lot about South Korea while I am over here. We have visited a lot of different places in Seoul that were very exciting. We went to Gyeoungbokgung, which is the palace where the king used to live. It is a very interesting place to see. We also went to Seoul Tower, which is the highest point in Seoul and from there you are able to look out at most of the city. We also just went to visit some of Issac's friends and see different parts of the city where they live. I'm excited and nervous at the same time to start volunteering and I am praying that language is not a barrier for me. I ask that you be praying for us that God gives us meaningful work to do and that we will humbly do the work that he sets before us. Also be praying that we make meaningful relationships that bring glory to God.

Andy Breighner