UNDER THE OVERPASS: A JOURNEY OF FAITH ON THE STREETS OF AMERICA
MIKE YANKOSKI
ISBN: 9781590524022-Print/ 9780307563439-eBook
March 2005-Print/ January 2009-eBook
Multnomah, a division of Random House Inc.
www.randomhouse.com
Print/ eBook
$14.99-USA/ $16.99-CAN-Print/ $11.99-eBook
235 Pages
Christian Life; Autobiography
Rating: 4 Cups
Mike Yankoski is listening to a Sunday sermon in his church when he realizes he is not being the type of Christian he should be. Determined to fix that, he comes up with the solution to find those in need on the streets of America.
Sam Purvis is another Christian who is going to live out the next five months on the streets, completely homeless and sometimes foodless. Throughout all of their experiences both will find that their faith in God remains true even through the toughest of times.
Mike and Sam meet many different homeless people on the street, many who have a drug or alcohol addiction and would prefer to sate that than their hunger. However, there are others who know they have a problem and turn to God for help, giving Mike and Sam the experience of helping those they have previously overlooked while living in their middle class houses. Throughout their experiences, Mike and Sam continue to gain friendships and knowledge of how to survive in a world where even some of the churches seem to have pushed the oppressed away. The one thing neither really expected was to learn so much about how true their faith was and how much their education was expanded not by books and professors but by those with no homes, dingy clothes, and yet a strong will to survive the basic elements.
Under the Overpass is a journey unlike anything I have encountered as Mike Yankoski bares his soul to the reader and allows them to see everything he saw, experience everything he experienced, and feel everything he felt day in and day out as he journeyed from one street to the next. My faith in God is strong; however, seeing this young man go through such extraordinary circumstances opened my eyes to the reality of the truly needy. The horrendous feelings of anger I felt as church after church turned Mike and Sam away just because they were homeless made me want to travel to that area just to knock some sense into their thick skulls. The emotional twists and turns that they experienced as one of the homeless really stood out, not only for what they experienced themselves, but for those other characters who told the story of how they came to be on the streets. This book definitely gives the reader a chance to think about what they have done to help those in need, whether it is someone who lives on the streets or maybe even next door. Thanks to this book, I will never take what I have for granted and assume I am being a good Christian person just because of my faith in Jesus. Thank you!
Danielle
Reviewer for Coffee Time Romance & More
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