By Raylee Foster | Staff Writer
Mission Waco’s Poverty Simulation has been offered since 1986 and originally targeted youth groups and youth pastors. Recently, the program has taken a step towards being available for adults, families and organizations. Their most recent simulation took place Feb. 17-19.
“300+ people a year attend Poverty Simulation at Mission Waco and have done so for over 30 years. We have seen many, many lives changed as they understand more fully Christ’s love and compassion for the poor and marginalized,” Mission Waco’s website said.
The poverty simulation is a resource accessible to the Waco community to better grasp the reality of living below the poverty line. Individuals who have attended encourage Baylor students to take advantage of this potentially perspective-shifting opportunity.
Michael Riemer and Ryan Neuhaus, teachers at Concordia High School in Tomball, said the poverty simulation is something they bring students to because it changes the way they view the world. Riemer said he has participated 15 times over the past seven years, and each time he has left feeling “recentered.”
“Every year we bring about 15-20 [students], so watching their lives change and perspectives shift — and watching their behavior change after the fact — is what continues to cause us to come back because they just live completely different from this perspective,” Neuhaus said.
Riemer said the experience is extremely effective in changing the lives of those who attend; being a young adult is a pivotal season, and the simulation allows humility toward this community. He said he encourages students who identify as people of deep faith to attend the poverty simulation because it will expand their view of the world beyond what their church can provide.
“Our experience in the evangelical world is very much centered on church and how to think, how to believe, how to worship, and those things are important,” Riemer said. “I have explored these kinds of spaces and worked with the poor [and] God cares less about what I’m doing on Saturday night and Sunday morning and much more about what I’m doing to make the world a better place.”
The simulation took place from 8 p.m. on Friday, and lasted until 3 p.m. Sunday. The details of the experience are not disclosed because a large part of its effects are based on not knowing what to expect; however, its influence does not only rely on the physical challenges, but also the mental battles.
“Those of us who go to Baylor — I went to Baylor myself — or grow up in middle class, upper class families, we have a lot of power that we don’t even realize, which is connected to our choices and our options,” Riemer said. “Our power gives us lots of options, but in this weekend, a lot of that power is taken away.”
Riemer said the poor and marginalized have choices, but they’re all mutually exclusive and will not provide adequate opportunities. Neuhaus said the experience is physically challenging.
“I got an old body, the ground is hard [and] sleeping on the ground is the hardest,” Neuhaus said. “Some periods of time with no food are kind of what it is but people are pretty generous around here … but the nights are long.”
Riemer and Neuhaus both focus on issues of justice and perspective in the classes they teach high schoolers, and said the goal of the simulation aligns with this. Riemer said it allows Christian students to better grasp what it looks like to serve Christ.
“If you do not know the poor you can’t serve the poor, if you’re not feeding the poor you’re not feeding Christ [and] if you’re not clothing the poor, you’re not clothing Christ,” Riemer said. “This work is very much central to the Christian faith experience and without it I don’t know the degree to which you can fully and authentically know God and who he’s calling you to be.”
Mission Waco holds poverty simulations periodically throughout the year. Their next simulation will take place April 14-16. For more information about Mission Waco and their Poverty Simulation availability, visit their website.
