We took one look at Melissa and called an ambulance.
She was covered in painful abscesses … the result of an extreme heroin addiction. Her sores made it excruciating to sit or lie down.
She’d been living this way for two horrible years.
But thanks to caring friends like you, our triage team for new guests came to her rescue… recognizing and responding immediately to her medical emergency.
After a 4-day hospital stay, where doctors bombarded her with antibiotics, Melissa came “home” to us here at Gospel Rescue Mission … and began a new life.
She urgently needed a new life. As a teen, she was a frequent runaway, so her mother finally packed her off to live with her biological father. He taught her to smoke meth. She married young, and when doctors prescribed pain pills for her husband, she took them herself. Her addiction finally drove him away — but Melissa couldn’t quit.
“I was buying pills on the street,” she remembers. “I was taking about 20 pills a day.”
When it got too hard to find pills on the street, she switched to heroin. At age 37, she was pumping the drug directly into her veins. She overdosed twice. But her addiction just kept raging.
Jobless, she began shoplifting, trading stolen goods for drugs. Homeless and dreadfully ill, her bloodstream became grossly infected. The abscesses emerged. She was in torturous pain, and utterly lost.
But Jesus still loved her. And your generosity, your willingness to give to this Mission, offered her something she had almost given up hope for: HEALING.
“Gospel Rescue Mission saved my life,” Melissa says. Then, with her physical condition on the mend, we tended to her spiritual condition.
Melissa had never known a thing about God. “I found Him here!” she says. “It’s been the most amazing thing ever!”
That high she used to get from drugs? It’s nothing compared to “the high that I get from God!” she exclaims.
Melissa loves our chapel services and Bible study groups. You helped restore her relationship with her youngest daughter, age 7, who loves going to church with Mommy. On Easter Sunday, the two attended service together; Melissa figured her daughter wasn’t really paying attention — but then “she told the other kids about Jesus!”
Melissa has new life, by God’s grace. A restored physical self, a restored spiritual self, a restored sense of hope for the future.
“I got clean — and wish I’d done it sooner,” she says today. “I didn’t know being clean would be so wonderful!”
Melissa is in our recovery program. When she finishes, she’ll pursue her high school diploma and then food-handler certification. Her deep-down passion is to help others: “I want to share my experience, strength, and hope with other women who have kids, women who are suffering from addiction. If I can do it, anybody can. I want to share how wonderful it is to be clean. And how we can change our lives by walking with God.”
Your love — expressed through your generous giving — set her miracle in motion!
Tomorrow, when we open our doors, someone else in Melissa’s situation will appear. Someone beaten up by life. Seemingly beyond hope. Desperate for help. Sure, they may be hungry, and we’ll provide a hearty meal. But this ministry is about more than a meal. This is about the whole person – mind, body, and soul … the person God created, the person Jesus died for.
When you give to Gospel Rescue Mission, you’re ministering to the whole person. And I am so grateful. This work couldn’t happen without you.I hope you’ll stand with us again, to share God’s life-transforming love with others in need … physically and spiritually.
Thanking God for you,
Lisa Chastain
Chief Executive Officer
P.S. “I used to think there was no hope or no life beyond my addiction,” Melissa remembers. Things are different now! “I’ve never been as happy as I am now,” she says. “I love waking up in the morning!” That’s God at work — thanks to your generosity. Please help release God’s love in the life of another desperate soul, by giving today. Thank you again!
