Roy showed up at Helping Up Mission after a mini-intervention by his brother. While he’d willingly uprooted his life to take care of his aging and ailing mother, it fueled Roy’s addiction to alcohol.
When he joined our 12-month residential Spiritual Recovery Program Roy was physically and emotionally beaten. With two bad hips and walking on a cane, he was in constant physical pain and there was no letup in the emotional pain of feeling like a failure.
Since there was no place else to go, and walking away would have been too physically painful, Roy stayed! In the process, he had a spiritual encounter with the God of the Bible – and Jesus started to change his life.
That was almost 2 years ago! First he got peace in his soul then he got two hip replacements and now it’s a different Roy. Gone is the cane and the scowl!
Living and working on campus today, Roy told me yesterday that he feels a bit like “a rescue dog!”
“Once they settled in their new environments, rescue dogs run around wagging their tails all excited,” he said. “That’s how I feel! I can move quickly, walk stairs, jump and run. And I can’t stop talking to people about how happy and grateful I am.”
We’re happy for Roy and a lot of us around here know something about those feelings he has. God’s really touched us, too!
Woof! Woof!
One Dog at a Time,
Pastor Gary Byers
Deputy Director