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Finding a home: student recounts life in a homeless shelter

Freshman student used to be homeless 10-30-15 Photo by Abby Bellow
Freshman Mikayla Zarate said she found a home at Oklahoma Christian University and wants to pursue her passion for helping people after graduation. Photo by Abby Bellow

“Now you can cry,” Mikayla Zarate’s mother told her the first night she arrived at Strong Foundation, a homeless shelter in San Antonio, Texas four years ago.

The summer before her sophomore year of high school, Zarate, now a freshman at Oklahoma Christian University, was relocated from her hometown in Brownsville, Texas to an unfamiliar place in downtown San Antonio without any information about the sudden move.

“We got off at a street corner and across the street there were drunk people laying in the street. There were prostitutes everywhere, cars, police sirens everywhere,” Zarate said.

She didn’t know what was going on and her mother was not saying a word. Her life was about to change drastically.

“We had our own apartment, we had our own lifestyle, we had our own car – all these things,” Zarate said. “But then when we moved she hadn’t explained anything to me.”

Zarate learned she was now homeless when she saw the sign that read “Family Ministries Homeless Shelter.”

“It was very unexpected and I think that’s what caught me off guard and made me feel a little bit more out of place in this whole situation,” Zarate said.

Although Zarate’s mother never gave her details on how they became homeless, she said it involved financial struggles. While her mother was at work, Zarate spent the rest of that summer adjusting to her new surroundings.

“From the immediate moment it was a struggle for me because it was something completely different from what I had already adjusted to,” Zarate said.

Life in the shelter was constricting. She felt like she was being stopped with rules at every turn, she said.

“You had to sign up for showers, there was a clipboard outside the restroom and you had to sign in every time you went in and sign out when you left, there were just all these different rules,” Zarate said.

She said she stayed in her dorm-sized apartment the majority of the time.

When classes started back, Zarate wanted to stay at the same school as before. In order to make that happen she had to wake up at 5 a.m. every morning to catch a bus that would take her to the central part of San Antonio, where she would then board a second bus around 7 a.m. that would take her to school.

The commute time was only part of the adjustment her schedule undertook that year.

“Studying was definitely a lot different because there were so many kids in the place,” Zarate said. “Most times I would take a nap when I’d come home. I’d wake up at 3 in the morning and then study from that time, take a 30-minute nap again, then wake up and get ready to go.”

Zarate spent many of her nights at the shelter aiding families by babysitting their children for them. Zarate said some of her most vivid memories from the homeless shelter were of the children there. These children began talking to her on bus rides and would eagerly greet her when she arrived home from school.

“I have learned to work a lot better with kids, I wouldn’t consider myself a kid person, but now I kind of do,” Zarate said.

Adults living at the shelter told Zarate she seemed more like an adult than a high school student. Some of the children thought she worked there because she offered to help often.

“All the adults try to tell you it’s not that bad or you’ll get through it, and all the kids, they don’t understand what’s going on, they think it’s a big playground,” Zarate said. “I didn’t want to be seen as the teenager that was just sitting there not knowing what to do with themselves.”

Every school day presented a challenge, partly because of her school’s demographics.

“I went to a very rich white school so I tried to fit in, so I wore some of my best stuff,” Zarate said. “I never tried to look tired or exhausted from all the bus rides and dealing with all the kids.”

The largest impact on Zarate’s life happened when she began to get involved with Kingdom Resources, a Christian organization that reaches out to build relationships between people and ministers. She started to help teach Sunday school her junior year of high school.

“I had always grown up in a church but I wouldn’t consider myself a religious person,” Zarate said. “I hadn’t dedicated my life to Christ yet, but I was kind of starting to understand this concept.”

Zarate was given a Bible that already had verses written on an index card inside. The first verse she flipped to was Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Zarate began to believe that God had a purpose for her life, “That’s where the whole story started,” she said.

The people from Strong Foundation both supported and pushed Zarate to strengthen her relationship with Christ.

“They really did not give up on me, they had a really strong interest in me the first day I was there, and I really did not know why and they just were always trying to cheer me up and get me involved with things,” she said.

Zarate first found Oklahoma Christian through a spam-like email sent to her. After visiting the campus, she said she loved it immediately, finding it to be the small, tight-knit community she had wanted.

Majoring in biochemistry, Zarate said she wants to work for Doctors Without Borders, an organization that helps people all around the world in need of medical care. She said she wants to attend medical school after graduation.

“I think that’s something I got from being in the situation that I was in, just trying to help,” Zarate said. “A lot of the kids there were always getting sick and sometimes they couldn’t afford to go to the doctor.”

Zarate’s main passion is to better herself, “I knew that we struggled and I knew that life was hard and I don’t want to live like that anymore,” she said.

While the journey was a challenge, Zarate learned much from her experiences.

“It has helped me relate to a lot of people,” Zarate said. “You really don’t realize how much you have until you realize somebody who has less than you do. Being homeless I thought that was it, you couldn’t go any lower, but then I actually worked with homeless people who did not have a roof over their head. It was just that idea of realizing how much you have and being grateful for what you have.”

Previously, Zarate said she believed she had to dress and act in a certain way to fit in, but she no longer feels this way because of her time at the shelter.

“It’s taught me more to be myself and who I am,” Zarate said. “I still wish it hadn’t happened. It was mainly financial problems why we ended up there, and that’s still a struggle today.”

Living in a homeless shelter taught her a new perspective in life.

“I see everything as positive as I can because I know how much worse it can be,” Zarate said.

The homeless shelter taught her other important traits as well, she said.

“It has definitely taught me patience,” Zarate said. “It has taught me a lot of communication skills, to be able to open up to people instead of shying away. It has definitely taught me, especially coming to college, how to live in this lifestyle of carrying your stuff from your room to the restroom, how to share space with others and I’ve definitely downsized on the things I thought were important in my life.”

Zarate said Oklahoma Christian’s tagline “OC is Home” says something different for her than for other students.

“When they say Oklahoma Christian is home I really take that to heart,” Zarate said.

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