YES! Youth Equipped to Serve

REFLECTION ON SKID ROW IN LOS ANGELES

Lauren Ajalat

Los Angeles always looked like just a famous city

Hollywood sign and big buildings is what you see with your eyes

But go down further and you’ll find a surprise

People with no home, sleeping on the street

Desperate faces look at me, they’re so incomplete

How could my home, the place I grew up, be so dreary?

The city keeps secrets and people pretend to act cheery

We put the people with no home, no money, surviving off a dollar all in one place

So Los Angeles can look so surreal

But that’s not the case

TESTIMONY FROM YES LA SKID ROW STUDENT

Christopher Ajalat

I've been told all of my life that we don't need material things to be
happy, and I thought that I believed it.  Now that I have seen people with
much less than me who are way happier than me, I really understand what
that means.  We often see people on the streets and say, "I can help them"
and don't realize that they can help us just as much.  I've also realized
how much we learn in church that we don't use, but how easy it is to put it
to use.  We tend to think that there is no one in need near us, that to use
what we've learned in church we must travel to distant countries- but in
reality all we need to do is walk down the street.  We should never miss
out on a chance to meet a new person.  They have much to give us and we
them, so why do we ever avoid strangers?  American culture has taught us
that all strangers are dangerous, but more often than not you will walk
away a better person and having bettered them.

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