Taryn and Scott Aspell recently travelled to Portland, Ore. with a church group to work with homeless people. For the 15-year-old twins, it was an eye opening experience. They plan to work in skid row Los Angeles this spring. (Richard McGuire photo)
Two Osoyoos teenagers had a life-transforming experience when they volunteered at a Portland, Oregon homeless shelter last summer.
Now Taryn and Scott Aspell, 15-year-old twins, are hoping to do similar work in Los Angeles during the spring break in March.
The two travelled to Portland with a Kelowna-based church group in August, where they worked to clean up a school before spending time with homeless people, some who regularly lived with drugs, alcohol, depression and violence.
“You get to see another part of the world that you don’t see in Osoyoos,” said Taryn. “We don’t get to see what people in a bigger city see. We saw 50 or 80 people living on the street every day.”
The two had seen large numbers of homeless people in Vancouver in the past, but this was the first time they dealt with them one-to-one and heard some of their stories.
The non-identical twins, who are very different from each other, but are still close, connected with the church group while attending a Christian summer camp on the east side of Osoyoos Lake. The camp and group are run by Willow Park Church in Kelowna, a Mennonite Brethren church.
Their adventure started on the way to Portland when one of two buses broke down in a mountain pass and all 75 teens had to squeeze into one bus.
When they got to Portland, they first worked at a school where they were given such tasks as weeding, painting or filing.
Before long their work switched to a homeless shelter and an experience their mother, Tamara Aspell, describes as “pretty life-changing.”
As Taryn describes it, the teens took a bus down to the homeless shelter each morning after breakfast and were assigned jobs.
Some of the teens tended to the nails of homeless women. Others handed out chocolate bars to homeless people.
Very often they prayed for the people they met and often spoke to them one-on-one, hearing their life stories.
“They were really happy because they said nobody has really done that for them before,” said Taryn. “They felt appreciated.”
One man told her he has a house, but he finds it too quiet since his wife died, so he prefers to live on the street with his friend.
“He got stabbed at a bar eight times in the abdomen and it was really bad,” she recalls being told by the man, who she guesses was around 55. “He was told he was going to die. He’s been through a really rough patch after that. It was hard to believe that anybody could go through that much stuff.”
Scott met a homeless man who used to live in Canada before coming to Portland.
“He came here with his family, but his family left him because he was a bit different,” said Scott. “His family disowned him because he didn’t have a job, so he moved onto the street.”
Some of the people were depressed about their lives and in at least one case a man told the teen he felt suicidal.
“They said that it gets really boring out on the streets,” said Scott. “Not a lot of people love them. It’s really hard in your life if you don’t have anyone that can take care of you or can love you.”
One man told Scott he couldn’t take living on the streets anymore by himself.
“We asked him if he wanted prayer and he said no, so he stormed off because he was in a little rage,” Scott recalls. “We just prayed for him in a group after he left.”
Taryn remembers one man asking for two dollars and saying he’d only received three dollars after asking at least 1,000 people.
“So I gave him a five dollar bill and our leader gave him a five dollar bill,” she said. “Then we said, ‘Can we pray for you?’ When we prayed I looked at him and he was crying. He said, ‘God bless you. Thank you for this.’ I felt really good after that because he was happy.”
She believes prayer made a difference for the homeless people and made them feel better.
The teens usually asked first if the person had anything specific they wanted them to pray for. It might be a young daughter or safety and health.
The teens often encountered instances of substance abuse involving drugs or alcohol.
Taryn recalls one woman, apparently under the influence of something, running up and down the stairs and yelling profanities. The incident scared her.
“She was really messed up,” Taryn said. “I was kind of, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
The shelter had several levels, with a place serving food on the lower floor and about 50 men’s beds upstairs. There was also a room for women and children to stay if they were coming from an abusive relationship, Taryn said.
The teens also played games with some of the homeless people, one involving flipping a coin and trying to get it close to a wall without touching it.
They also had time for activities away from the shelter, such as a trip to the beach.
The experience of seeing other lives so different from their own in Osoyoos was an eye-opener for both of them.
“It makes you feel grateful for what you have,” said Scott.
When spring break comes next March, some of their classmates may be travelling to resorts to have fun.
The Aspell twins, however, plan to follow up on their Portland experience with a trip to Los Angeles.
“We’ll be going to skid row,” said Taryn.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
