This morning I woke up in my room in the men’s dorm at Foundación Cuidad Refugio thinking about how crazy it is to be sleeping in a rehab where I’m not the one being rehabilitated. During all of my years of drug abuse I only went to rehab once. I spent two weeks in a rehab facility in southern Georgia back in 2005. After that experience, with some outpatient help I was able to go two and a half years clean from drugs. If you know my story, I slipped back into an even darker place when I relapsed. Ultimately it took God coming to my rescue four years ago and saving me from myself to enact real change in my life.
Two and a half years ago, while on my original World Race, my team was sent to live in a rehab facility in Eastern Europe. To read about that experience, go to my blog post entitled AIM Sent Me To Rehab. During that month we rarely had anyone around who could translate for our team, so I struggled with not being able to share my story with those men who I was living with and working with. That circumstance was out of my control and we were able to share God’s love with those men in other ways without being able to use words.
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Now here I am in Colombia living on the same floor with 25 men who are all recovering from a hard life of living on the streets and hardcore drug abuse. I’m with an all female team this week, so they are all living in a separate area. On the floor below me there is a homeless shelter where there are usually 50-75 men who are currently battling their own demons and trying to stay sober enough to be allowed to stay in the shelter for the night. This time around there are people who are working for the ministry who speak English and can help to translate.
While my main focus is the team I am with, there have also been some cool opportunities to pour into these men. Because of boundaries set up by the ministry, the women on the team don’t have much interaction with these men. Generally when people are in the early stages of recovery and the drugs have recently been removed from a person’s system the body tries to compensate for the lack of the sensations the drugs brought by becoming sexually heightened. It makes sense that the ministry would be intentional about not making this time any harder than it already is. Because of this, I have access that the rest of the team can’t have. I have spent some time working alongside these men, hung out with them some and stumbled through my broken Spanish and their broken English, and I was even asked to speak at their church service this past Saturday night.
Every man in the rehab program, and any man who has been staying in the shelter for longer than a week, are required to attend at least one church service a week. Saturday nights there is a service that is dedicated especially to the homeless since most of them don’t want to come to the Sunday morning service because they feel ashamed about their clothes not being nice enough. At this service there is thirty minutes of worship followed by a message. I was asked to share my testimony as the message for the week.
If I’m being honest, I don’t love public speaking, but I was pretty excited to be able to share with these men even though I was real nervous. I spent the worship time at the beginning of the service praying that God would bring me peace while I spoke and that at lease one heart would be softened by my message. When I went to the front of the room to speak, the fear left and I was able to share my story clearly. I spoke of the hard times. I spoke of the anxiety and depression and shame. I spoke of how during those years I couldn’t believe that God could possibly love me. I spoke of the voices that told me that I was a worthless failure and I should do the world a favor and kill myself. I also spoke of how when I was at the end of my rope, God came in and saved me. I spoke of how God proved to me that he never stopped loving me. I spoke of how he loved them, regardless of how bad they had screwed up. When I thought I had finished the men all cheered and praised God and I thought I was going to go back to my seat.
As I was about to walk off of the “stage”, one of the missionaries at the ministry asked me to do an alter call. Crap! I had never done an alter call before. What was I supposed to say? I simply reiterated to the men that God loves them and asked if they would like to receive His love. I asked them to come to the front if they did. I had prayed for God to soften the heart of one, so I was hoping that one would come up. There was a pause and in my mind I didn’t think anyone was coming. Then one stood up. Yes! The a few more. Before I knew it there were nineteen men standing in the front of the room ready to “cash the check”. A few of them were from the rehab program and a lot were men from the shelter. It was amazing!
I led them in a simple prayer, then had an opportunity to encourage them to seek out discipleship. I told them the importance of having people in their lives who could help them walk out their faith and shared what my life has looked like in the last few years since I started following Jesus. I pray that each of these men accept the discipleship opportunities that the ministry offers them. I pray that they are able to resist the voice of the enemy telling them that the decision that they made that they made that night wasn’t real. I pray that each of these men becomes kingdom people, walking in freedom and sharing that freedom and love with others.
When I walked into that room last Saturday night, I had no idea what God was about to do. I wish I could say that every time I fight through the fear and took the microphone masses of people come rushing to the front to accept Christ. The truth is that the Lord does what he does and my part is simply to be obedient when he is calling me. More often than not, like in the parable of the lost sheep, he sends me after the one and that’s a beautiful thing as well. I’m super blessed to have spent this last week in this rehab with these men and to see real fruit from my time here. I pray that God keeps sending more people to this dark country to share the light.
As a squad leader I must raise $6,500 to cover expenses on the field and two debriefs later in the year after I have returned home. I would be honored if you would pray about supporting me financially. There is a link to my support account at the top of this page. There are options for one time donations or monthly recurring donations. All donations to this account are tax deductible in the United States. As always I would appreciate your prayers for myself and for Y Squad as we take this journey this year. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. Love Y’all!!!
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