By Ellie McCardwell

Pendleton resident

In a Nov. 15 news story, our youth group of Madison Park Church of God was referred to as kids who didn’t take the “Reality Check” project to heart. Supposedly we weren’t impacted by our experiences. I’m writing this in frustration as to how we were unfairly presented in the Reality Check article. It was right about one thing — we had a lot of fun on that night. However, other things were happening as well. Our minds were being opened and our hearts were changing. If other people could have witnessed the conversation and prayer we had around our fire barrel, they would have thought differently about us.

That night, we talked about what really hit us hard; mainly the “cardboard confessions.” Up until that point, we had ignored a major issue in our community. Most of us tried to steer clear of homeless people and avoided eye contact with them. Stereotypes were in our minds, thinking that “homeless” meant middle-aged men who were alcoholics or drug addicts. That night, we learned that women and children can be homeless too. We could not continue treating them as less than human; that was terribly wrong.

We are junior high and high school students. We may have played football, sung camp songs and jumped ropes — we ran a little wild — but we did not go unchanged, nor were we oblivious or ignorant. Our group of about 20 students cared. What we learned that night broke our hearts and troubled our souls. Things like this just seemed unfair. We also knew that we served a God who helps people through the tough stuff, and we have all of our joy and hope in Him alone. One boy in our group probably transformed much more than anyone else there. He saw his own heart soften. After learning about homelessness, he realized that life can get pretty tough. Anyone could experience homelessness. We are all not too far away, and without Jesus it’s pretty disheartening. He saw that God had a place in all of this. He decided to get saved and declare Jesus as his savior. We were so thrilled to have another brother in our family in Christ. What an incredible thing! That was cause for celebration.

When we were asked if we wanted to do “Reality Check” next year, no one hesitated before saying “yes,” because we were impacted by what we saw. I have confidence that our group will react to this experience and do something to help. Next year, our friends and peers will know what we’ve done to help the homeless in this community, and when we invite them to join us, they will agree. We want to spread the word about this issue, and hope more people will become educated about homelessness and will want to experience next year’s “Reality Check” for themselves.

On a typical teenager’s schedule, one doesn’t expect to see “pretend to be homeless” penciled in for Friday nights. Our lives are so packed with different things we never think about anything more than ourselves. But, when we heard about “Reality Check,” we wanted to a part of what our community was doing. Along with the rest of the crowd, we built our houses of cardboard, humbly stood in the soup line to have others serve us a meal and slept out in the cold. We pretended, for one night, what a lot of people experience for real. How could we not be impacted?

After that night, we didn’t just want to hear about homelessness, we wanted to do something about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you heard more about the youth of Madison Park Church of God making a bigger difference in our city. We have a heart for the struggling, and we want to do something to help those in need.

That weekend, we realized how incredibly blessed we all are. We want to use what we have to give others a better life ... so stay tuned!