This past week I have been working on a small side project for Elanco, an Indianapolis-based animal health company with a strong focus on ending global hunger. For the project, I spent time interviewing several families and individuals connected with Shepherd Community Center, one of World Next Door’s partner ministries.

Each story I heard gave such a unique perspective on hunger, poverty and the incredible work of Shepherd that I had no choice but to share them here.

You’ll find the other stories here. I encourage you to read them all. Who knows? Maybe they’ll change your perspective as much as they did mine…

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 I’ve written about the plight of immigrants in American before (this article, for example).  Every year, thousands upon thousands of people flood into the U.S. looking to escape the poverty of their home countries.  They follow the dreams of a better life promised to them by American TV, movies and advertisements. 

But that dream quite often becomes a nightmare. 

Vast unemployment, deep poverty and a lack of healthcare lead many immigrant families to a day-by-day existence.  With a seemingly endless supply of cheap manual labor in our country, immigrant workers often live on the edge of a knife, knowing that even a single broken bone can lead to financial ruin.

The other day I met with one of these families.  Gabriela, whose name I changed for the sake of anonymity, sat down with me in her dilapidated old house to talk about what she goes through day by day.

Gabriela

Gabriela is not fluent in English.  As we spoke, she often drifted into Spanish, especially when she wanted to make an emphatic point.  Thankfully, I am able to understand a whole lot more Spanish than I can speak.  Somehow we made it work.

Gabriela’s house. An old and crumbling building.

Gabriela has six children from two marriages.  Her three oldest children are grown and currently live in Guadalajara, Mexico.  Her youngest three, still in elementary school, were born in the U.S. 

Her husband is a roofer.  For a while, this meant that he had a steady job.  Although the hours were long, the work was backbreaking and the pay was meager, her husband could make a living. 

Then the housing market collapsed.  Construction firms went bankrupt.  Suddenly, there were a lot of roofers looking for only a handful of jobs.

Today, he has a very hard time finding work.  And now, as winter approaches, Gabriela’s family must face a very uncertain future.

But a lack of work is not the only problem that comes along with winter…

The Luxury of Heat

When the weather gets cold outside, things become very difficult for Gabriela and her family.

Gabriela can’t afford much furniture. Most of the space in her house is empty.

After moving in to their current home, they quickly learned that heat in the winter was a luxury. They still use gas to heat their water and to cook, but keeping the gas on to heat their old, drafty house made their utility bills simply too expensive.

So, with no other option, they use small space heaters to stay warm.

Although it was only the beginning of autumn when I visited, I had to keep my jacket on inside.  I couldn’t imagine how cold it would get in the winter.

For My Kids

But despite the discomfort and hunger she herself faces, Gabriela has something much more important on her mind.  As we spoke, she told me over and over about her primary focus in life.  “I’m here for my kids.”

Like many immigrant parents, Gabriela has decided to forgo her own comfort, health and dreams of prosperity to ensure that her children have a chance to lift themselves out of poverty.

The near east side of Indianapolis is home to thousands of immigrant families eking out an existence on very little pay.

Because they are American citizens, her children are eligible for Medicaid and food stamps.  Gabriela, however, is not.

Whenever she gets her family’s monthly allotment of food stamps, Gabriela is able to feed her children well.  When I visited (at the beginning of the month), there was a nice chicken dinner simmering on the stove. 

But it is not always like that. When it gets to be the end of the month, and when the food stamps run out, Gabriela struggles to get food on the table.

Loving Community

Thankfully, Gabriela’s children don’t have to go hungry.  Right across the street from their home is Shepherd Community Center… a place of hope in a hopeless part of town.

Shepherd touches Gabriela’s family in a multitude of ways.  Her children have been able to develop a love of learning through Shepherd’s after-school program.  Her family has made it through the difficult months with food from Shepherd’s food pantry.  Each summer, her children get to enjoy Shepherd’s exciting summer camps.

On top of that, Shepherd Community Church is able to support Gabriela with a loving and supportive community.

“What would you do if Shepherd wasn’t here?” I asked.

She thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t know.  I don’t know what we would do without Shepherd…”

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Dinner on Gabriela’s stove. For now, at least, they have food on the table.

Gabriela’s story is not unique.  In fact, there are millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who struggle with deep and cyclical poverty. 

That is why the work of Shepherd is so important.  Giving hope to hopeless people, giving a decent education to children at risk of illiteracy, caring for basic human needs such as hunger and medical care…

When I think about what Shepherd has done and will do for my city of Indianapolis, I can’t help but echo Gabriela’s sentiments exactly:

“I don’t know what we would do without Shepherd…”

Angel M. was a highly skilled medical technician in Honduras for 30 years. His family lived well. His job sent him on business trips around the world. By Honduran standards, Angel was a very successful man.

Today, he’s part of a roofing crew in Noblesville making $40 a day. He struggles to feed his wife and daughter. He has no health insurance. And just last month, he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer.

What happened? How did someone so successful end up doing manual labor for less than the minimum wage? Why did he come to America when he once had a job so good?

These were the questions I sought to answer when I sat down with Angel last week. In our one hour interview, I heard a story that not only broke my heart, but convinced me that something needs to change in our country…

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A Chance at Prosperity

Angel was born to a poor carpenter in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Though struggling with poverty, his parents worked, scrimped and saved to provide him with a University education. Thankfully, Angel was a gifted student, and after graduation found a good job in his chosen field: medicine.

His job included a mix of responsibilities. He was part medical technician, part salesman, part teacher. He traveled to many countries around the world, and made quite a few trips to the U.S.

Angel, an immigrant from Honduras.

Depending on the bonuses and commissions he made, Angel brought in as much as $20,000 per year. It may not sound like much by American standards, but it’s almost ten times as much as Honduras’ GDP per capita.

Angel’s hard work and skill helped to bring his family out of poverty. His four daughters were able to attend the finest bi-lingual schools in the country, and were on their way to successful careers themselves.

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Unexpected Consequences

Then, in 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept across Central America. The hurricane killed 6000 people in Honduras alone, did $2-3 billion in damage and devastated the country’s economy. For the next three years, Honduras struggled under a severe economic recession.

In 2001, Angel’s company went bankrupt. He lost his job. And everything came crashing down.

Because of the new economic climate in Honduras, Angel was not able to find work. He could no longer afford to send his daughters to their school, and they were forced to drop out.

For five years, his family struggled with the decision of what to do. With every year that went by, Angel’s age made it harder and harder for him to find a job. Finally, in desperation, he made the decision to come to the U.S., confident that his experience in medicine would eventually land him a well-paying job.

Because the business visa from his previous job was still valid, Angel was able to enter the country legally. However, to land an American job in medicine, he would have to acquire a specific license, as well as go through the rigorous process of immigration. The license alone cost $10,000… no small fee for a man with little more than the clothes on his back.

For his first month in the U.S., Angel lived in Florida. He searched high and low for any job that would help pay the bills. Nothing. Washing dishes, doing construction, mowing lawns… every job was already taken.

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With little hope for a consistent income, Angel ended up here in my hometown.

Barely Making It

Eventually, Angel gave up on finding a job in Florida and moved in with relatives in Indianapolis. Here he was able to find a string of jobs paying minimum or less-than-minimum wage.

He did siding. He was a janitor. He drywalled.

Now, two years after his wife and daughter moved to the U.S. to join him, he is living in a small house on the near-east side and putting on roofing tiles in the suburbs.

Roofing is hard work. Each house his crew works on takes two full eight hour days. Because undocumented laborers don’t have the same rights as documented ones, any accidental damage to the roof or to gutters comes straight out of their paychecks.

Last week, for example, Angel put in two long days of work. He came home with a check for $80.

With such measly pay, the $10,000 license is looking more and more like an unattainable dream. Add that to the $2000-3000 it will cost him to go through the official immigration process, the high cost of food and transportation in his day-to-day life and his newly discovered intestinal cancer, and it’s clear that he won’t be finding a better job anytime soon…

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The American Dream

As I sat listening to Angel’s story, I became more and more upset.

Here is a guy who has a whole range of useful skills and a broad spectrum of experience, a man who has a charming sense of humor and a big heart. He loves his family. He works hard. Yet he lives in poverty.

It’s hard to reconcile his story with what I have been taught throughout my life.

Here in the States, we love the whole “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality. Elementary school students across the country are taught that with enough hard work and dedication, they can accomplish anything. But Angel has been “pulling himself up by his bootstraps” his entire life, and he’s still poor.

By definition, Angel should be living “the American Dream.” But because he wasn’t born here, he is faced with a far more difficult reality.

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Hope for the Future

Shepherd Community Center, which proved to be instrumental in keeping Angel afloat during his hardest times in the U.S.

However, even with every right to be bitter, Angel is remarkably happy. With every right to be hopeless, he exudes a calm and expectant hope. With every right to just give up, Angel presses on.

And although the odds are stacked against him, Angel has been getting help in a variety of remarkable ways.

With the help of Shepherd Community Center, Angel’s family has had access to food, counseling and after-school programs for his daughter. Through Wishard Hospital, he has received free medical care for his cancer. And through Shepherd Community Church, he has found a significant outlet for his intelligence and education as a lay pastor for the church’s Hispanic population.

Like his parents before him, he has been scrimping and saving with his wife to send their daughter to college. Thanks to their dedication and a few scholarships, she is now studying history and anthropology at Indiana University.

It’s heartbreaking to think that Angel will most likely end his life in the same situation as his impoverished parents, but it’s incredibly uplifting to know that his daughter has a chance.

Perhaps for her, living in America will amount to more than just a dream…

For kids growing up in the midst of poverty, gangs and hopelessness, Shepherd Community Center is offering them a second chance at life…

Jose and Manuela came to the United States with their two children, Enrique and Maria, nine years ago. Jose was hard working, good with his hands and quickly found a couple of jobs doing manual labor on construction sites around town. Manuela cleaned houses four days a week to help make a little more money for their family.

Together they dreamed of their small hometown in Mexico and often talked late into the night about their plan to return. After working for a few years, they dreamed, they could return home. They would use their savings to build a small grocery store, buy a few chickens and raise their children with plenty of food to eat.

They worked hard. They saved. They prayed. And their children grew older.

Finally, after nine years, the day came. They had saved up enough money to return to Mexico and fulfill their dream!

But then, the unthinkable happened. When they told their children about the plan, Enrique and Maria wanted none of it. In fact, they started crying. Maria held her face in her hands and Enrique stormed off to his room.

Over the next couple of days, Jose and Manuela tried to talk to their children about why they wanted to return, but the kids wouldn’t even entertain the idea. After long discussions, arguments and even a few raised voices, the truth became apparent. Their children did not want to return to Mexico.

Suddenly their simple plan became a whole lot more complicated…

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Ok, so I made up Jose and Manuela. They are not real. But their story is.

To which culture does he really belong?

You see, many Latin American immigrants come to the U.S. each year looking for work to support their struggling families. A lot of them plan to return home once they’ve saved up enough money. But the one thing they rarely take into account is the changes that their children will undergo in the U.S.

That’s one of the things I’ve already been so fascinated with here at Shepherd… watching second generation immigrant children adapt to American culture.

First of all, most of these “third culture” kids are bilingual. They speak Spanish at home, but have perfect American accents when they hang out with their friends.

It’s so interesting to hear the middle-school aged girls in my host family rattling off a whole sentence in fluent Spanish with their parents, only to turn around and say something to me in English just like any other pre-teen American (complete with the word “like” every three words or so!).

Their entertainment is a completely mixed bag, too. In one evening, it’s not uncommon for my host family’s kids to turn off hip-hop music to watch a Disney teen show (with a guest appearance by Hannah Montana, of course) and end the night by flipping over to an epic Mexican soap opera on Univision!

How much does her last name say about who she really is?

When it comes to food, their stomachs are definitely bi-cultural. A common week’s diet might include tacos and Big Macs, enchiladas and pizza, rice pudding and Twinkies… The other day my host family and I started the day with pancakes and ended it with pickled jalapeño peppers!

These kids definitely have a foot in both worlds, and it creates some very interesting situations.

But there is a dark side to this multiculturalism as well…

Children born in Latin America and raised in the U.S. have a very hard time fitting in anywhere. With their American classmates, they discover that they have “weird” customs and eat “weird” food. They face a wall of stereotypes and prejudice from people who wish that they had never left home at all.

But what is home to a third culture kid? Talking to their parents, these kids are baffled by the way their parents think and act. It’s not the way their neighbor’s parents act… Trying to imagine raising goats in a tiny village seems absurd. Why do their parents look back with such fond memories?

With all this in mind, it’s not too hard to understand why so many Hispanic kids end up in gangs. Imagine… a place to belong. A community of like-minded friends with a common ancestry.

In a gang, nobody thinks you’re weird if you listen to Spanish hip-hop. Nobody looks down on you for being “foreign.” Gangs are a place for the uprooted to put down roots.

At Shepherd, many early-learning tools like this calendar are written in English and Spanish.

But it’s obvious that gangs can have dangerous implications. Thankfully, they are not the only place where a new cross-cultural identity can be formed.

At Shepherd Community Center, for example, Hispanic kids are encouraged to value their cultural heritage. Although they teach in English, many of the staff members here have learned Spanish to better communicate with them. Parental classes help first generation adults adapt to the realities of their kids’ changing worldviews.

Most importantly, at Shepherd these kids can find a new cultural identities, not as unwanted foreigners, but as children of God.

Now, I may never fully understand what it’s like to be a child of two cultures, but I do have a brand new respect for the Enriques and Marias of the world.

And thanks to the work of Shepherd, kids like them are finally able to have some respect for themselves…

What do I know about my city? I mean, what do I really know? Well, let’s see… We have a racetrack, a pretty cool children’s museum and what… a canal?

Um, ok. To be completely honest, I know very little about Indianapolis.

But my ignorance doesn’t extend to just our sightseeing destinations. I also know very little about the people who live downtown, the issues they deal with and the struggles they face every single day.

In my world of video games, manicured lawns and caramel macchiatos, it’s easy to forget that there are families struggling to survive just 40 minutes from my front door. Sure, I’ve seen poverty in India, Ukraine and Kenya, but when was the last time I spared a thought for the urban poor in my own hometown?

The fact is, I can’t remember.

But all that is about to change. As of this past week, I am living downtown for one month. And not in some upscale gentrified neighborhood, either. I’m staying smack in the middle of a struggling community with a first generation immigrant family from Mexico.

I will be exploring urban poverty from the inside, doing police ride-alongs and spending time in our public school system. But most importantly, I will be learning all about the work of Shepherd Community Center, which is dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty on the near-East side.

Shepherd Community Center, striving to break the cycle.

And what a cycle… In Shepherd’s neighborhood, less than 30% of students graduate High School. Almost a quarter of the population is under the nation’s poverty line, and out of 40,000 zip codes in the U.S., 46201 is 16^th in the nation in foreclosure filings.

Parents in this community can’t afford to send their children to private schools. Often working two jobs just to pay the rent, they don’t have the time or energy to adequately care for their kids. Their children grow up, fail school, get minimum wage jobs and eventually have kids of their own.

And the cycle continues.

But Shepherd is here to break that cycle. Through preschool classes, after-school tutoring and summer programs, Shepherd gives the children of this neighborhood a chance to succeed in their education. Through parenting classes, a food pantry and a free medical clinic every Saturday, Shepherd gives parents a chance to properly care for their kids.

Shepherd helps to give kids the education they deserve.

While I am here, I will be writing about these programs and more. I will be learning from Shepherd’s staff, interviewing families from the community and attempting to discover what God is doing in this place.

It may not be as exotic as eating goat brains in India or living in a slum in Kenya, but living downtown will undoubtedly teach me a ton about the brokenness of this world and the hope that can be found in the Kingdom of God.

By the end of October, I may still get lost trying to find the Indianapolis Zoo, but I can tell you one thing for sure… I’m going to know a lot more about my city!