Oregon Mormon convert to walk 1,863 miles for change

PORTLAND, Ore. — Lynn McPherson is no stranger to change.

Whether it's living on the streets, scrounging for every penny, nickel, dime and quarter she could to keep her three children alive, altering the views of those who view the homeless as nothing but drunken failures, reshaping the lives of those once like her, or even converting to Mormonism, the 54-year-old McPherson tries to do it all.

And that's why she started walking 1,863 miles from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Tijuana, Mexico, on April 20 with only $600 in her pocket, the shoes on her feet, and a traveling companion in a van to keep her safe.

"Every face has a story," McPherson said. "Some of them are heart-wrenching, and some of them you want to question. But it doesn't matter if you've been in the streets a week, a month or 20 years — there's always a story behind it."

Finding her way back home

McPherson's story begins in Stamford, Conn., in February 1979. Fed up with multiple broken bones, missing teeth and attempts on her life, she chose to take her children out of the situation and into one just as foreboding: a life on the streets, living in a 1966 Vega with her children, and even having to give birth to her youngest son in that car.

"Being homeless is a very humbling and humiliating experience. People think you're invisible," McPherson said.

For five years, McPherson did whatever it took to feed her kids, to survive, to keep moving.

In Columbus, Ohio, after finding a hotel to get out of a blizzard, a driver hit a patch of ice and crashed into her car, totaling it and destroying all her possessions. Eventually, she worked the carnival circuit nationwide because it guaranteed an empty trailer, a hot meal, a shower and a place to hide.

What made it harder was growing up with no religion in her life. The daughter of Plymouth Brethren-turned agnostics in a mostly Jewish neighborhood, the thing that pulled her out of her worse-than-impoverished situation wasn't a belief in God. It was a mother's love, and an attitude that she would never be denied the opportunity to see the day when her children could eat their own meals, in their own house and sleep in their own bed.

"I didn't believe in God. I didn't believe that he believed in me," McPherson said. "My faith in him didn't bring me through those years of terror. His faith in me did."