Shawn was only 10 years old when his father passed away and his family fell apart. “My mom started drinking heavily, and I had to take care of myself. I moved in with my older sister when I was 15 because my mom and I...
“I don’t have to worry about sleeping outside anymore.” Shawn was raised by his mother after his parents divorced, and church wasn’t a big part of his life. “The whole going to church thing was more about appearance than a spiritual thing. We had to look...
“I was starting to drift in the wrong direction,” Ricki says. Though he had a good job as an accountant, Ricki started getting complacent as he grew closer to retirement age and began drinking more heavily. When the friends who owned the cabin he was living...
Jonathan was struggling to make a go of it, but nothing seemed to be going his way before he came to your Mission. During his time in military service, many years before, Jonathan relied on alcohol to cope with the stress of military life and being...
At five years old, Harold was abandoned in a grocery store. “My mother told the cashier she’d left her money in the car and went to get it… She never came back.” He’d often been told he was worthless, but his mother’s decision spoke –...
Dean sat by his wife’s bed, her hand clutched in his. “If anything ever happens to me, you can get married again,” she said. Her words fell on deaf ears. He’d been watching her health deteriorate for 10 years, ever since she was diagnosed with renal...
Justin was grateful to God for his life. “I had everything,” he says. “I worked with the same company for almost 10 years, was going to be married, had a new daughter and a house that was paid for. Everything was good.” Then tragedy struck and...
Imagine your life if every day were filled with sadness and angst. Imagine never knowing feelings of peace or joy. For Scott, this was reality. “I had a lot of anxiety and depression from being bipolar,” he says. So when he lost his job and found...
“When I tried meth, I loved it, and I knew I was in trouble,” Bob says. “It was downhill from there.” Bob started using when he was 31 and, for the next 12 years, worked long hours to support his meth addiction, neglecting his relationships. He...
Mike had only been married six months when his new bride passed away. “It changed how I looked at things,” he says. “I didn’t go to God. I went to the bottle instead.” Alcohol destroyed Mike’s second marriage, and he wound up living with his coworker...