Area students minister to homeless Portland teens
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POLSON — With graduation looming and “senioritis” rampant, most senior trips focus on fun for the soon-to-be graduates.
But the seniors at Mission Valley Christian Academy chose a different sort of senior trip.
The five seniors, Joshua Lake, Anne Mae Macy, Jemimah Murphy, Richie Thomas and Ryan Windauer, went to Portland, Ore., on a mission trip for homeless teens.
They also wanted to go to the beach, and the two worked together since Portland is not far from the coast.
According to Chris Bumgarner, MVCA director, the seniors challenged the other classes at MCVA to collect items homeless teens needed, and local businesses joined the effort. Bumgarner thanked Kim Slack, Walmart, Providence St. Joseph’s Medical Center, St. Luke’s Medical Center, KwaTaqNuk Resort, Ronan Sports and Western, McDonald’s, Subway and Three Dog Down for their generous support.
“The result was a U-Haul trailer jammed with clothes, guitars, soccer and basketballs, backpacks stuffed with toiletries and food, plus blankets and supplies the outreach suggested bringing,” Bumgarner said.
One of the most-requested items was socks, Joshua said.
The average teenager wants an iPhone 5 or a car, Ryan said, but these kids wanted socks.
Mothers Sheila Lake and Jodi Windauer accompanied the students and towed the trailer.
The group stayed with Ryan’s aunt, and Ryan credited his mother with finding the website for Transitional Youth and talking about the mission trip.
The MVCA students began their mission in Portland by handing out sack lunches and then serving dinner at a park frequented by homeless kids.
One of the first homeless kids they provided a lunch for, the group saw further on down the street sharing his lunch with a homeless lady, Sheila said.
“I thought (the trip) would be a great thing. Coming from my family and this town, I thought it would be hard to connect, to show them God’s interest and love,” said Ryan.
“The most valuable thing we could give was our love,” Josh said. “Love through time (spent with the homeless teens).”
How do teenagers from Polson, Mont., begin to deal with homeless teens, many of whom have drug issues?
Besides handing out food, the MVCA students got acquainted.
“It was amazing to see our kids. They would just get out of the car and start kicking a soccer ball or throwing a frisbee, and the kids would come,” Sheila said.
Homeless kids would join in and soon they’d be playing catch and talking.
“There was a huge drug problem,” Ryan said.
About 90 percent of the teens the MVCA students interacted with were high or doing drugs, Ryan and Josh agreed.
The park was “drug deal central,” according to the boys, with people doing drugs, dealing drugs or suffering the effects of drugs. Although the two MVCA students said there were teens smoking pot and doing other drugs, they never saw policemen in the park, just park rangers who talked to the MVCA group.
There were probably 80 to 90 homeless teens in the park area. The homeless teens said they can always get food, Josh said, and donated clothes and other items. Sometimes they sell the donated stuff to get by.
There have been five different mission teams in the last two months, Ryan explained.
“What got me was a lot of the kids were just like us,” Josh added.
Both young men said you couldn’t tell who was a homeless teen just by looking at them walking down the street. They said their group mistakenly gave lunches to people who weren’t homeless.
About 40 percent of the homeless kids had cell phones, Ryan said, and just a few had iPods. However, many of the homeless teens asked to borrow phone chargers. Homeless or not, the teens knew about the most popular cell phones, music and movies.
Josh and Ryan each had stories of kids who particularly touched their hearts.
Josh met another teen named Joshua, and they began talking about their shared name. Now living day-to-day on the street, Joshua said he grew up in a rich neighborhood.
Another teen, Keefer, had a beat-up football when Ryan met him. Since the MCVA group brought a bin of new balls, Ryan offered him one.
“He was so into sports,” Ryan said. “He was a Seahawks fan, and so am I.”
A natural athlete, Keefer said he had always been good at sports and picked them up easily.
He wants to “get his life together” before he is 21, and he now is 20.
When the MVCA group left, Keefer told Ryan when he goes pro, he’ll play for the Jaguars so they’ll stand a chance, and he was serious.
There’s a big division between homeless teens and homeless adults. Some of the adults have been on the street for 30 years, and when they are around, everyone shuts down. There are varying levels of homelessness, Sheila said. Some kids are “couch hoppers,” sleeping in different apartments, while others have camping gear and tents and some sleep under bridges or in parks.
Both Joshua and Ryan commented on how loyal the homeless young people were to each other.
In a frightening episode, there was a fight the first night the MVCA kids arrived in Portland. A guy pulled a knife, telling another boy he couldn’t be in the area. A homeless teen who’d just arrived in Portland from Chicago almost got killed defending the threatened boy, a teen he didn’t even know.
Ronna, the head of the mission, told the kids her goals was to get teens off the street in a couple of months or a year, otherwise they may stay on the street.
Many of the homeless kids have a better, safer life on the street, Ronna told the MVCA group.
The homeless teens were shocked when they learned the MVCA group was from Montana, Ryan said, “that we actually would come three or four states for them.”
“They were amazed that we would take that much time and effort to connect with them and love them,” Joshua said.
The MVCA group did get to the beach, too. They spent the last two days of their trip at Cannon Beach to enjoy a couple days on Oregon’s coast before returning to the Mission Valley. It was about 75 degrees Fahrenheit, but the water was cold the teens rented wetsuits the second day.
“It was weird going from 'let’s-serve-the-homeless' to 'let’s-hang-out-on-the-beach,'” Ryan said.
“Before I left for this trip,” Ryan mused. “I was complaining about my truck. Now my truck’s just fine.”
