11/11/2024
“‘We want you to live as a homeless person for a weekend.’
Mission Year dropped our son off in downtown Chicago for what they called Pauper's Right of Passage.
And at 2pm on Saturday afternoon he had not eaten, was getting hungry, and asking people for money to get something to eat.
This lady stopped, looked at him, and said ‘You're pathetic. Why don't you go out and get a job like the rest of us?
He said ‘I realized even about myself that we make so many assumptions and often assume we know someone's story before we listen to their story.’
When he was telling me this, my first reaction was, how dare she treat my son that way?
And then immediately the Holy Spirit said, have you not done the same thing with someone else's son or daughter in the streets of Memphis?
One time there was a man trying to sell flowers and I remember grabbing my boys.
They were little and I was saying to them, just keep walking. I wouldn't even look at him.
I literally got off the phone sobbing, looked at Joe, and said ‘Our son met me this weekend in the streets of Chicago.’
We both decided that our life has to change. I don't want to be that person anymore.”
—Kelli Fielder Carson
Memphis, Tennessee
Executive Director, Memphis Dream Center
Listen here: https://link.chtbl.com/Carsons
