Have you ever felt like you had it all? Jim did, at least for awhile.

He had suffered unthinkable pain at the hands of someone he trusted. And had received a large settlement that afforded him the best luxuries: motorcycles, cars, a house.

But it was a little too much freedom. And the drugs and alcohol he consumed to numb the suffering of his past worked a little too well.

Eventually his use took over his life.

“I felt like a leper.”

Finding himself without a job and with no where to go, Jim panhandled at local convenient stores. Sometimes he would run into people he knew.

“I didn’t want my old friends to see me looking like I did then,” he says, “and I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to see me like that, either! I felt like a leper!”

After a few years, “I got sick and tired of being sick and tired,” Jim says. So he asked his friend to drive him to the Mission.

“I had already been to treatment 26 times before. I knew the Christ Recovery Center would be my last stop,” he recalls.

Jim was scared at first. The very place he thought he’d never come, and here he was! Then on his third night at the Mission, he heard the Gospel message during a Chapel service. He felt the call to accept Jesus into his life. There were no angels singing, no burning bush.

But in that moment, everything changed.

“The next morning I got rid of all my drug paraphernalia, “Jim remembers. “The moment I accepted Christ at Chapel was the resurrection of my life. I haven’t craved drugs since then!”

“I feel free!”

Today Jim embraces his recovery through the Christ Recovery Center and is growing his faith.  He completed the education program and now gives back to others as a chemical dependency intern. He also volunteers at his church. “By helping others, I help myself ,” he says.

And all of this wouldn’t be possible without Christ’s love touching Jim through the Chapel service you provided.

“Before, I expected the bottom to fall out of my life,” Jim says. “Because of the Mission, now I have hope. I feel free!”