"Carl" and "Ed," two juveniles, live in poverty. Their parents are unemployed. Carl's 16-year-old sister is pregnant and the families are struggling. So the two boys stole guns from the pawn shop, and turned to armed robbery.

In reality, "Carl" and "Ed" are Zack Angell, of Burlington, N.C., and Alek Link, of Langdon. They don't live in poverty, the money they took was fake and the firearms were actually squirt guns.

But there are many real Carls and Eds in the world making bad choices in order to survive, and understanding their plight is what Zack, Alek and more than 90 other teens and adults did Saturday during a poverty simulation exercise at Lancaster Theological Seminary.

"We're trying to teach people how stressful poverty is, and how living on the edge drains the life from people," said Reed Reynolds, program director for Community Action Program, which conducted the simulation.

The participants represented local and out-of-state churches and were at the seminary to take part in a weekend devoted to social justice.

In Saturday's simulation, participants spent a "month" (actually an hour) in poverty, with each 15-minute increment being a "week." They were broken down into family units. Each person was given a packet that outlined his or her own character — age, gender or other circumstance — and the plight of the rest of the family, including what bills must be paid, rent amount, cost of food and clothes and other family dynamics.

Around the periphery of the room were "agencies," including the public school, a social service agency, a utility company, a quickie loan office, a pawn shop, jail and juvenile detention center, an employment agency, the U-Trust-Us National Bank, a day care center, a homeless shelter, a mortgage and realty company and others.

Each "week," participants had to attend school for eight minutes, if their characters were school age; go to work for seven minutes, if they had a job; and still find time to pay bills, beg a loan, buy food and clothes, or visit social service agencies to seek more help.

The pawn shop was soon bustling as people lined up to hock items, both their own possessions or items they stole, as "theft" became more prevalent as the exercise rolled on.

"Doing the right thing [such as working] pays less than doing the wrong thing," one woman noted.

Meanwhile, Garrett Bollinger, 18, of York, stalked the room trying to peddle "drugs" and "firearms" to desperate people.

The jail soon became crowded, as did the homeless shelter as "foreclosures" began to increase.

During the simulation, Jillian Kinsey, 17, of Danville, was a 34-year-old, unemployed single parent, mother of the aforementioned "Ed." She found it "incredibly challenging trying to pay all my utility bills and housing, as well as food for my children." She said she would not want to live that way all the time.

"It'd be so hard to support your family and give them the best that you can give them," she said.

She was not alone.

Danika Diverio, 17, of Lancaster, said the experience "opens your eyes to what different families might face."

Brittany Burkholder, 18, of Lancaster, whose "mother" was imprisoned for "selling cocaine," said, "It's stressful. I don't like it, and I don't ever want to go through it, trying to figure out where you're going to get your money from. It's so difficult."

Megan Repoley, 21, of Reamstown, said, "You really have to plan accordingly. Sometimes you have to pick and choose what's more important; being late on your bills or not having food."

Reynolds said he hopes the participants "will learn from this experience and undertake action within their communities and churches to raise awareness of what poverty is like."

"Eleven percent of Lancaster Countians live in poverty, and those people need to be taken care of," he said. "It's the duty of all of us to do something about it."

For Andrea Troublefield, Saturday was not a simulation. She, her husband and their three children are among that 11 percent who live with poverty every day.

She told the group about dealing with compassionless agencies where "they treat you like you're stupid and have no value" and "talk to you like you're incompetent."

"I just want them to have an understanding of what people living in poverty have to go through on an everyday basis, and just to understand and not judge people," she said.

lalexander@lnpnews.com