Los Angeles' Skid Row shocks student on spring break

Madison Moseley paid for trip through donations from Christ the King members

Published: April 18, 2015

By Aprille Hanson
Associate Editor

Madison Moseley poses with Vincent, a homeless man originally from Little Rock that she met while on a mis-sion trip to Los Angeles in March. Moseley said he jokingly referred to her as “Arkansas.”

Madison Moseley didn’t like what she saw on her college spring break.

Instead of soaking up sun rays or catching a glimpse of a celebrity in Los Angeles, the Texas A&M sophomore worked to feed the homeless on Skid Row.

“Skid Row was shocking,” Moseley said.

The 54-block stretch of street is one of the largest consistent homeless populations in the United States.

“I’ve never seen poverty like that before,” she said. “It was like the Western version of Kolkata — people living on the side of the street, sleeping on pieces of cardboard, tarps set up. There are thousands there every week.”

“One of the beautiful things about our faith that I think a lot of people don’t understand is that we are an apostolic faith. We’re not only taught what we believe but act on it in radical ways,” she added.

Moseley, 20, raised $700 to go on this Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) mission March 14-21 while on break from her studies in kinesiology. The trip wasn’t out of the norm for Moseley, who was involved with missionary/volunteer work in Challenge Girls Club in Texas and Oklahoma.

“She went to a lot of camps, she got attached to girls from all over the country,” her mom Evelyn said. “She’s very devout, far more than I was in college. It has just kept her fully balanced in her faith.”

The family — parents John and Evelyn Moseley and their five children — moved to Little Rock in 2013 after Moseley graduated from high school and attends Christ the King Church. Evelyn Moseley said Madison’s younger siblings attend local Catholic schools, are active at Christ the King and have also done service work.

“The temptations are immeasurable out there for kids,” Evelyn Mosely said, adding they’re thankful that their children have stayed rooted in their Catholic faith. “We want them just to say ‘yes’ when they’re called” by God.

For Madison, that meant traveling to Los Angeles. While she’s active in campus ministry and will be interning in the fall at St. Mary Catholic Center in College Station, she hadn’t known many people involved with the evangelization group FOCUS, as it’s the national group’s first year on campus.

“I felt called to do it,” Moseley said of the mission trip. “I didn’t want to go out of the country, but I still wanted to step out of my comfort zone. I’ve never been to the West Coast. I didn’t know anyone going.”

Moseley raised the money and collected as many prayers as she could from members of Christ the King as well as friends and fellow Catholics throughout Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma.

“I’m so grateful for them, they were so generous and so supportive,” Moseley said. “I would just talk to our family friends that go there, even if they couldn’t support me monetarily, they would pray for me and that was really beautiful.”

Bunking in a two-bedroom West Hollywood home — one room for the young men, the other for the women — Moseley and others on the trip stayed in a “pretty poor community” with Salvadoran refugees, she said. In the mornings, she volunteered at a local homeless center that focuses on fostering community for the homeless. It is sponsored by Blessed Sacrament Parish.

“They provided stimulating mental exercises. Mental illness is so prevalent among the homeless because they don’t have human interaction. They talk to themselves because they have nobody to talk to,” she said. “We had a lot of one-on-one conversations with people.”

It was there she met a man named Allen, who shared with her his latest Star Wars short story and sang to her an entire Matchbox Twenty song. Most importantly, the two shared nice conversations.

“He wore a suit and leather trench coat every day that week,” Moseley said, adding that the two took a photo before she left California. “I said, ‘I look really underdressed next to you.’ He looked at me and goes, ‘Just because I’m stuck in this lifestyle doesn’t mean I have to represent it.’ I couldn’t say anything in response. He turned around and said, ‘Madison, I will never forget you.’ … It was really a beautiful moment.”

On the trip, Moseley volunteered at a handful of other locations, learned about other ministries, including Homeboy Industries, which is a gang-intervention program started by a Jesuit priest, and took in some sites, including the Santa Monica Pier.

But it was driving in downtown Los Angeles on Skid Row that opened her eyes to true poverty. She said she kept busy at the row’s Midnight Mission, making the homeless “a lot” of macaroni.

“I think it was just the gravity of the situation as we were driving through. You can’t have your windows rolled down, don’t make eye contact with people,” Moseley said. “When you think of Los Angeles that’s not what you think of — all those suffering people all at once, all together.”

Moseley said she’d do another mission trip in a “heartbeat” and hopes that other young adults feel that same spark.

“You kind of have to have a drive with it … I think it’s just important to remember there’s a need everywhere,” Moseley said. “I see God in all of those people. I think that’s something I’ve learned because I’ve been Catholic my whole life.”