We rested.

Day 7

"Every choice has a consequence," Satan told me this afternoon during a sit-down chat at a coffee shop.

This afternoon, I interviewed Satan. It was unexpected but still fun. He wasn't the devil incarnate but a man who had been on the street for eleven years. He used to be a Satanist street preacher even thought he had grown up in the Mormon faith. His story was different from the other people I have interviewed. His real name is Sam but to be honest, Satan is just a lot catchier. You kept reading, didn't you? He had lead a pretty nice life; bouncing around the world with his military family, experiencing things that other men twice his age still dream about. Boredom had driven him to the street. Boredom let him to drugs and fights, a violent cycle that would take him years to recover from.

People are driven to the streets for various reasons; abuse, abandonment, boredom, economic issues. Each story is unique to the person telling it. The sheer amount of people on the street is saddening. Broken lives are becoming even more shattered as lives take turns for the worse with every bad choice that is made.

This isn't going to end with another "save the homeless" plea. Instead, I want you to think about the choices that you are making. They will have consequences. Are you willing to live with them? Where will they lead you? The chances are that you won't end up on the street but you will end up miles away from where you once dreamed you would be. So please, think before you act.

Day 6

I'll be honest. Today was rough for the team. Things happened that
threw us off guard. Some things made us laugh while others made us
cry. But all of it has brought us to our knees.
As I write, I'm sitting in a warm cafe just shy of the Willamette
River. The sky is the same marbled gray as the concrete floor
underneath my feet. The handsome barista behind the counter is staying
warm as he delivers drinks to people that come in to find shelter from
the cold. It's March in Portland and the world is just as it should
be.

A few blocks away sit a married couple. They are sitting in a
cardboard box underneath a freeway overpass, swaddling themselves in
blankets, smoking a joint to keep them warm. They are part of a small
community on this side of the river. They are like any other dedicated
couple. They bicker. They kiss and make up. The simple domesticity of
the situation seems ironic at first. After all, they are homeless.
Where's the house? Where's the yard? They have the dog. They have the
tender glances, the soft looks and the stolen kisses that symbolize
happy Americana.

They were married by the fountains in Waterfront Park. Their third
anniversary has already past--they are doing much better than many
newlyweds in the rest of society. Instead of wedding bands, they
exchanged barbells. Both of them proudly stuck out their tongues to me
and showed me the shiny silver bars. You could tell that it meant more
to the wife than any diamond ring would.

The couple was seperated for a year. He had to serve time in a county
jail. She stayed in Portland. Both of them have been helped by
Transition Project in downtown Portland. They have been given help
finding clothes, showers and meals. They told me that Transition was
the best service that the city had to offer to the homeless. The
husband dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, pulling out two
checks for $29 that he had been given earlier that morning. He was so
proud to have some money for him and his wife.

They are humans like you and I. All they ask is that they are treated
as such. Please. Show them love. Show them care. Show them that they
actually do matter.

Welcome to Portland.

This was the first day that the crew really got to hit the streets of
Portland. The weather was dismal. The sky was a steady gray, an
endless blanket without any hue of blue to be seen. It was a bad day
to be homeless. The constant drizzle was depressing; even those of us
who were fully prepared for the weather didn't want to be out in the
elements. Rain jackets weren't an effective barrier to stop the bleak
nature of the day. Even the MAX was sad, silently gliding down the
streets, passing the huddled crowds seeking shelter under the
overhangs outside the shop doors.

A trip to Powell's was in order for the day. The interviewing team sat
in the Global Cafe downstairs while the rest of the team tried to
navigate their way through the maze-like shelves, rooms and buildings
that help make up the largest bookstore in the world. They soon
discovered that there was more to the store than books.

While walking down one of the aisles, Taylor Lindsey, one of the
interns from Texas, saw a woman collapse in a heap on the floor. When
the rest of the witnesses stood blinking dumbly, he ran to her side to
see if she was alright or in need of assistance. She assured him that
she was fine although she didn't know what had happened. She didn't
feel that it was necessary to call 9-11; instead, Taylor found himself
searching the massive building for her nearest relatives. It was like
searching for a needle in a haystack. Ultimately, Taylor found the
husband and son and was able to help get the woman back to the ground
floor.

While this took place, I was busy sipping on a cup of Rice Green Tea.
That's right. Rice tea. It tastes better iced. I don't know if I will
ever try it hot again. Summer please come quickly. My companions were
less adventurous in their beverage choices; English Breakfast tea and
a decaf short Vanilla non-fat latte. I was there to interview the
other tea drinker. Over the course of the consumption of our drinks,
she shared with me what her life on the streets of Portland had been
like. It hadn't been easy.

Whoever thinks that life on the street means freedom is woefully
misinformed. Life on the street means that people will look at you
differently; mothers will warn their children about you, people will
lock their doors and no matter what you do, the stigma remains like a
tattoo. Trust is a word that is deleted from your working vocabulary;
it's a fond memory or an often wished for element. It doesn't grow on
the streets. It died the moment the first time an angry word was
spoken or a fist struck the skin. Street people are people. Period.
They laugh. They cry. They feel both pain and happiness. They want to
be noticed. They want to be treated like the humans that they are.

It was another day of planning for the team.

The amount of planning that goes into a docudrama is surprising. Even for someone who took film studies, it's easy to forget that someone has to plan out camera angles and scripts. Drama's do not naturally unfold before a camera. Story elements are not always in logical places. It's only through interviews, time and some serious planning that a film begins to take shape.

I spent almost two hours interviewing Sarah M. today. We chatted quietly in the coffee shop, interns and crew members buzzed around us quietly. Some were transcribing the interview while others were capturing it on video. I became painfully aware of every scrape of a chair or crash of coffee beans, hoping beyond hope that the video would somehow pick up the audio of Sarah's voice while leaving the background noise out. Again, I became more aware of what goes into news video. It's easy to script a five minute segment but it is far harder to splice down a two hour interview into a small segment to be packaged for television. And yet, that's what happens all the time on the network news shows.

It's amazing to me how much editing God does. That sounds like a funny thing to say but it's true. He carefully splices things, composing two separate elements back to back with a beautiful segue between them. Things might seem long, disjointed and drawn out but when the story is finally unfolded, you can see how events were carefully crafted. It's a beautiful thing.

Stay tuned for some pictures from the week. There might even be some video clips coming soon.

Written by Revolutionary Media Team Journalist, Caitlin Muir

Day 3:

Today was one giant meeting.

We met with three contacts over the course of the day. Two of them ministered to people on the street and will be highlighted in our documentary. The other person we met with was different. He was my old Sunday School teacher.

He sat in the coffee shop, the light from the garage window filtering into the room beautifully behind him. He looks so innocent. So wholesome and so nice. You would never have guessed that he had been a drug dealer. That he had lived on the street for over a year. That he had been addicted to meth.

Just after high school, he was kicked out of the house and onto the cold streets. He found sanctuary in a meth house in Portland. Dealing drugs wasn't a new activity--just a familiar lifestyle that he found himself settling into. It wasn't a nice life. He stayed awake for days on a meth high, only to have his body collapse from exhaustion once he was down and try to make up for it by sleeping for three days straight. There were only a few drugs that he didn't try. He had a deep hurt that he was desperately trying to fill.

Then he met her.

She didn't make him change. Instead, she was the unknowing catalyst. They went over to dinner one night at her grandparents house and they offered to let him live with them. He accepted and moved in, more than happy to be off the street and have a real bed to sleep in. It wasn't long until the young couple split up; she moved out and he stayed living in the basement of her grandparent's house. They never got back together.

He was given a Bible by her grandmother. One night, driven to distraction, he finally opened it up. Sobs tore through his body as he read through Psalm 51, identifying with the heart cry of King David. That's when he finally surrendered to Jesus.

His life still wasn't picture perfect. He still had addictions to take care of. While reading through the book of Romans, he became convicted about the life he was leading. He quit his drugs cold-turkey, deciding to clean once and for all.

It wasn't long until he got his GED and started to take college classes. An interest in science turned into pursing a degree in Nursing. His love for chemistry soon changed his major and his life plan. Now that he's eleven years away from his conversion, he's close to finishing his doctorate degree in Pharmacy. The irony isn't lost on him. The man that used to run a street pharmacy will soon be dispensing legal ones.

His story is full of extremes. He is a man that has felt the width and depth of God's grace. Jesus was introduced to him by some people who saw "something" in him; something that wanted to change and do better. All they did was open up their home to him and love on him.

How many people just like him are we ignoring? How many doctors, lawyers and teachers are we keeping on the streets?

- Written by Caitlin Muir, Revolutionary Media team Journalist

Day 2:

Personalities are crazy things.

I don't know who invented the personality quiz. It almost seems inherently wrong to be able to diagram a personality--to chart out the whims and intricacies of a person on paper--it just shouldn't be able to happen. Yet there we were, assigning numbers to our "happy" and "negative" traits, plotting out our results on tiny colored graph paper.

The results weren't exactly shocking. The official readings tended to just be an affirmation of first impressions, expounding on personality tendencies and showing the potentials of the person. It felt like reading the paper from a giant Chinese fortune cookie.

It's going to be interesting to see how these personalities play out with each other. Will they react in a volatile manner? Create a stinky odor? Make something delicious like chocolate chip cookies. It's all coming down to chemistry.

Stay tuned.

Written by Caitlin Muir, Team Journalist