This is the first part of at least a three part series of posts I will be writing over the next week or so.
As many of you know I was "homeless" for 48 hours. Bryan Walker is the outreach minister for Benton 1st Assembly. He stayed on the street for a week as a fundraiser for the outreach ministry there and I stayed with him for two days.
Channel 11 came down and did a report on what Bryan was doing.
This first post is going to be about my time down on the street. It all started with a text message on Wednesday night. I closing up the coffee shop at my church after service. It was from Bryan and he said that he was not downtown, he was in Benton at 1st Assembly. He said he had a 19 year old girl that he rescued from the street and that he wanted me to come over to 1st Assembly while they figured out what to do in regards to this girl.
When I got over there he explained the situation. This girl had shown up and no one knew her. She said she lived on the streets and she was from Little Rock. She said her parents had died and now the street was her home. One of the homeless men had given her most of a bottle of vodka and she was REALLY drunk. Bryan called his mother (who had come down to visit him earlier) and she came and picked them up. The young lady threw up before she left the street and then she threw up again in the car on the way back to the church.
Something was not adding up with this girl. She wouldn't tell anyone exactly where she grew up or exactly where she lived. We asked for her birthday and she wouldn't say, but she kept saying she was 19...even when we didn't ask her how old she was. After some discussion we decided to call the cops. I called a friend of mine who is a state trooper and he called the Benton PD and had them send an officer over. The officer talked to Tara (that is the name of the young lady) and she told him her birthday. It ended up she was only 16, she was autistic and she was a runaway. The officer took her into custody and delivered her to juvenile services. That is how my time as a homeless man started...from there Bryan and I drove down to 3rd and Markham to stay the night.
When we got there it was already cold and dark. The police had kicked the homeless people off of the sidewalk where we were going to sleep and they had to move to a vacant parking lot behind a building. There isn't a huge difference between sleeping on a concrete sidewalk or an asphalt parking lot, so we got our "beds" ready and laid down. I had a sleeping bag (I forgot a pillow) and Bryan had a large comforter that would go over both of our sleeping bags to keep the wind out. So I was next to Bryan and about 5 feet away there was a stack of blankets and sleeping bags at least as high as a normal mattress would have been. On this mound of bedding were three homeless people. One older gentleman (we call him Pops), a woman (who I found out is a crack addict prostitute) and a middle aged gentleman (who was also a crack addict).
As we started to settle in for the night and the conversation started to slow down they started singing. Yes, I was serenaded by three homeless people. They sang a wide range of country music, old gospel and some blues. The only problem was that they didn't know any of the songs all the way through. You would get about one verse and maybe the chorus and then it would be time for another song. That went on until about 2:30am or so and I started to fade in and out of sleep. I found out in the morning that part of the discomfort I felt while laying there was because I had a tennis ball sized piece of asphalt under my back! I didn't see it when I laid my sleeping bag down because it was already dark when I got there. I also couldn't move to one side or the other due to the comforter situation (if I moved away I would be out from under it and and closer and I would be cuddled with Bryan...which neither of us wanted.)
Around 5am I was jolted awake by a man shaking both Bryan and myself. He was asking to use one of our phones. He said he needed to let someone know where to bring his truck. Bryan let him use his phone and the guy told someone to come down to the "Sally" which is what they call the Salvation Army. He thanked Bryan and walked away. Later Bryan told me that he was actually setting up a drug deal.
After the rude awakening I didn't sleep very well, which was probably for the best. I needed to be up around 6:30am to go get in line for breakfast at the Salvation Army.
The sun wasn't up yet and it was really cold when I got out of my sleeping bag. Bryan got up too and he folded up his sleeping bag and the comforter. I took the sleeping bag my roommate had loaned me and put it in the trunk of my car and Bryan left his bedding in a stack with all of the bedding of the homeless people who had sang us to sleep the night before. Now it was time for breakfast!
We got in line at the side door of the Salvation Army. The door opened just after 7am and we walked in. You have to sign in as you enter and the line goes two different directions. One line for coffee and then you turn around and go find the end of the other line for the food. I got coffee out of the big cooler and got in the food line. I looked at the breakfast (the people who were in the front of the line were already sitting down and eating). It was a donut, scrambled eggs with sausage mixed in, a hard boiled egg, rice a banana and a cup of apple juice. Since I don't eat eggs I was a bit nervous about the whole thing. I didn't want to waste any food...but no one was customizing their orders in the food line. You picked up your tray and you sat down.
There were not two empty seats next to each other so Bryan sat at one table and I sat at another table. I offered my eggs to a woman next to me when I had eaten everything else and she gladly accepted. Just before I got up to go a woman walked in the door. She had a clip-board in her hand and she started talking over the crowd noise. She said that once again this year they were going to rent hotel rooms for anyone who was NOT getting a check for Christmas so that they wouldn't have to sleep on the street. She said if you were getting a check she would find out about it and take you off the list! Also she said that you couldn't bring your girlfriend into your hotel room to stay the night! She said it was a Christian company that was based on Christian values and if you wanted to "shack up" with your girl you could rent your own room!
At that it was time for us to go, so Bryan and I walked outside.
That was my first 8 hours as a homeless man...I will pick up the story in part two.
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