Forum leads Warren teens to consider how their actions become their destiny

WARREN

The last time this month that temperatures rose to unseasonably high levels, six teenagers drowned in a sport utility vehicle that overturned in a pond just south of downtown.

That March 10, early-morning tragedy led to six funerals, some of which featured sermons lamenting the reasons boys age 14 and 15 would be arriving home at that hour with an 18-year-old man and 19-year-old girl.

Saturday, another unseasonably warm night, Pastor Todd Johnson of Agape Assembly Church on Nevada Avenue Southwest led a forum for youths and young adults focused on their needs and futures.

Mark Callion, who works in real estate and is a staff member for U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-13th, conducted the first part of the forum, leading the youths through a discussion on the effects of things we do in our everyday lives.

How do you spend your time, he asked.

Callion told the group that research shows that much of what we see and hear on television bypasses our reasoning mind and simply enters subconsciously.

“Things you think become the things you do,” he said

of the things we do and see in our daily lives.

“The things you do become your habits,” he said. “Your habits form your character.”

And in the end, he said, character forms our destiny.

For more on this story, read Sunday's Vindicator or Vindy.com.