Amy G – A mother/daughter is welcomed home:

Fifteen months ago, my phone rang, and the call changed my life. On the other end was Teresa, the House Manager from the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake’s Women’s Facility. She told me the Mission was willing to give me another chance to connect with God and experience a changed life.

It was February 2020, just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and I was living in cheap Las Vegas hotels or on the streets, using sex to get drugs and money. I was at my lowest when that call came in, like a miracle.

I traveled back to Salt Lake and rejoined the New Life Program. I had been in the program a year earlier for a few weeks, but my ex-boyfriend had convinced me to move into a sober living house in Vegas with him, where we both soon relapsed and plunged back into meth and heroin addiction.

For some reason I kept in touch with Teresa and we would talk every so often. But I was encouraged that, nearly a year after I had quit, she said the Rescue Mission would welcome me back.

When I returned, I had no relationship with God and little idea of who He was. But I decided to focus on studying and soon learned about what He did for us in providing forgiveness through faith in Jesus. I learned He had the power to help keep me sober. I began attending Capitol Church and developed friendships and community there. I also attended mid-week Bible studies at Calvary Chapel and learned more and more about God’s love and forgiveness.

As I learned, my heart changed, and I found my relationship with God helped me stay sober. When my relationship with God was on the right track, I began to focus on my relationships with other people. I had hurt so many people because of my addition.

I started using drugs heavily in 2017 after a series of friends passed away. I always hung out with people who partied and used drugs, but I often stayed sober or when I did use drugs or drink alcohol did so in what I considered moderation. But when my friends would overdose or lose their lives because of drugs, the pain grew in me and I looked to meth and heroin to stop the pain.

As I started using drugs on a regular basis, I lost a good job with a large national finance company. Then, because of neglect that came with my addiction, my son (who is now 13) went to live with his aunt. Soon I had lost my car, my house, and was living on the streets. My father and other family couldn’t bear to see me sleep on the streets so they would give me money for hotels. But as I kept taking advantage of them and using them for money, even they cut ties with me. Little did I know that this would help me hit bottom.

There were a few times where I tried to end my life (once I purposefully flipped my car while traveling at a high rate of speed on the freeway). I walked away with just a tiny scratch and, looking back, I truly feel like God had His hands on me protecting me from myself.

It was after six months of sobriety at the Rescue Mission that my son came to visit me. He had been so hurt by me abandoning him and didn’t really know how to express that pain towards me. So, he ended up treating me really poorly at first.  I am happy to report that he treats me so much better now. I think he is learning how truly sick I was and that I needed help.  I hope he is finally able to trust me again.

My dad is trusting me as well and is willing to have a relationship with me. In fact, this month I will go over to my dad’s for an overnighter visit (something that hasn’t happened in years) and my son is going to come and sleepover as well. It will be the first time I will be sleeping under the same roof with both of them in as long as I can remember.

Beyond restoring my relationships, God has provided me with a great job. I have a lot of experience in customer service and when I was able to enter the job phase of the New Life Recovery Program, I applied for a job doing telephone customer service for a large, national supplier of glasses, contacts, and eye exams. During my first interview I told the women interviewing me about my past and how I had achieved sobriety. The women shared how the same thing had happened to her brother. He was clean and sober now and was doing well with his business.

Praise God, she hired me. I love being able to work and support myself again. I am saving money so I can move into the Hope House, the Rescue Mission’s transitional home for women. I told my son that when I move to Hope House, he will be able to come and sleep over anytime he wants. The only question he asked me was whether the house has Wi-Fi or not (Ha! Teenagers).

After staying several months at Hope House and stabilizing into a more normal life, I hope to get my own apartment with room for my son. I want an extra room so that if he wants to live with me permanently again, he will be able to. Or if he just wants to visit sometimes, I want to have room.  I don’t want to pressure or force him, since he has a fantastic aunt who loves him and has been taking care of him all this time.

I have paid off all my fines and am ready to get my driver’s license and hopefully a car. During my addiction I lost most of my teeth, so another goal is to save up to try and get dentures or new teeth. And who knows, if I achieve enough stability, I may even jump into the dating pool again and try to settle down with a husband and family.

I can’t thank you enough for supporting the Rescue Mission. I was alone and in a deep dark hole in Las Vegas, when the Mission’s love and compassion touched me and allowed God to change my life. I know if it wasn’t for your support, the Mission could not exist and could not help people like me experience a changed life. I thank you, and my family thanks you. This change has meant the world to all of us.

Melissa M:

Five years ago, my life seemed OK. I lived in Elko with my husband and our three children. We made a good living and seemed successful. But in 2017 addiction took a greater hold in our lives. We were soon divorced, and my husband took guardianship of our children, as I worked to get sober.

But without connection to family, my addiction grew worse and I was selling drugs and using sex to get drugs and money. I was mired in a terrible life in Nevada. I felt I needed to get back to my children, who had since gone to live with their grandpa and aunt in Lehi, Utah.

I traveled to Utah to see if I could reconnect with my family, but I was really in no shape for a homecoming. I was not taking the prescription medication I needed to manage my bi-polar disorder and was using illegal street drugs, such as meth.

I was homeless and when I had a severe depressive episode, I was hospitalized. As I recovered, the hospital staff asked me if I had a place to go when I was released. I really had nowhere but as I was lying there, a phone number came into my mind. It was a phone number I had called a few times before to seek help when I was homeless. It was the number to the Rescue Mission’s Women’s Center.

I asked the hospital staff to call the number and when the Rescue Mission answered I told them I needed help and a place to stay. They agreed to give me a chance on their New Life Program, and so I arrived at the Mission on May 14, 2020.

The biggest thing I had to accept in joining the program was that it was 13 months of my life. I thought, “what’s going to happen to my children. What about the few belongings I still have. How will this impact my future relationships with everyone knowing I had been in a long-term recovery program?”

But God gave me the strength to commit. It was hard to tell my family about my decision. It embarrassed me because although they knew I had struggles, I don’t think they realized how bad my life had become until I told them I was joining the Rescue Mission’s program. Still, being honest about how broken I was was a huge first step for me.

As I worked through the New Life Recovery Program, I found that it was filled with counselors and staff and other program members who genuinely cared about being my friend. It seemed like they wanted to have a real relationship and even friendship with me, not just work through a series of counseling questions.

I found that real companionship can blossom and even grow during recovery. It was not 13-months of constant struggle, it was enjoyable at times, too. I say “at times” because certainly there were difficulties and frustrations. I was challenged to get to the bottom of my issues. To forgive those who hurt me in the past and, in turn, accept forgiveness for the wrong things I have done. And, most importantly, to truly accept Jesus and what He did by providing eternal forgiveness for us on the cross.

I love attending my home church of Calvary Baptist and learning more about Jesus. I need that connection to my church because I need people in my life who will encourage me to stay close to Jesus. As God has changed me over this past year, He has also been faithful to restore my relationships with my children and family.

My children view my word as trustworthy now. They believe the things I tell them and trust that I am able to follow though. They are thriving living with their aunt and step-grandfather in Lehi.

One way God has blessed us is that I never lost custody of my children. They are under a temporary guardianship now, but I will be able to have full custody again when I graduate the New Life Program. .

I am currently saving money so I can get a small apartment where my kids and I can live together. When I moved to the employment phase of the New Life Program, God provided me with a good job at a Maverik Country Store just a few blocks from the Rescue Mission’s Women’s Center. After two months I was promoted to shift lead. Maverik is a good, stable company with great benefits, so I feel blessed to work there.

I am hoping to be able to transfer to a store in Lehi or somewhere in northern Utah County when I graduate because I would like to move there so my kids and I can be close to the rest of our family who have been so instrumental in rasing them.

Even as I look forward to living with my kids again, I know I need to take everything slow and not forget to take steps each day to seek the fellowship with God and His people that I need to stay sober. My mental health is doing so much better and, with the correct prescription and sobriety, my bi-polar disorder is well controlled. I know God’s healing has been a part of that as well.

Please pray for me as I make the transition out of the Rescue Mission’s New Life Program and work to reunite with my children, who are 12, 9, and 4. I feel like as long as we are together and have God in our lives, that is all that matters. Thank you for supporting the Rescue Mission and giving me another chance to be a mom and a sober person again who knows Jesus.

Stephanie H:

It was just when the COVID-19 pandemic became a real thing in the U.S.—March, 2020.

I was all by myself in a cheap motel, not knowing what to do. My husband and I had been using meth and heroin on a regular basis for about three years. In 2017 we lost, in close succession, both my parents and his father. It was at that point that we turned from using drugs recreationally, to using them just get through our daily grief.

We were struggling to hold down our jobs and keep the place where we were living. And just as our money and job situations grew tenuous due to our drug use, we were both arrested for shoplifting and arguing with a security guard at a local grocery store.

The judge released me pending a court date, but my husband’s judge wasn’t as lenient, and he remained incarcerated. Even though I was released from jail, I had lost my job and our housing.

Our children, who are all young adults, had left Utah to live with other family members in Idaho and Nevada since they had had enough of our drug use. I was all alone. The only thing I had that was worth anything was a ring, so I pawned it. I used the money for drugs and a few nights stay at a cheap motel. On the fourth night at the hotel, I called my husband in jail. I told him I had nowhere to go. I had called around to some “help lines” looking for places that might give me a place to stay, but hadn’t found anything.

For the first time that I could remember, my husband told me that I needed to pray and ask God for help. My husband usually doesn’t talk like that and it impressed on me that the only option I really had was to plead with God.

So, I sat alone in that hotel room and asked God to do a miracle. The next morning, I got a call from a woman at the Rescue Mission’s Women’s Facility. She had gotten my contact information from one of those help lines and she listened to my story. She told me that if I wanted help and a pathway out of addiction and into new life, I could join their New Life Program.

 I felt the invitation was an answer to my prayer. I jumped at the opportunity and am glad to say that decision has changed my life. At the Rescue Mission I learned that God had forgiveness for me when I trusted in Jesus. I learned how Jesus had given his life for the wrong things I have done.

Before coming to the Mission, I wore my past shames around my neck like an anchor. Back then, I was afraid to have a relationship with my son and stepdaughters because I had neglected and mistreated them so many times before. I didn’t trust myself to be a good mother or a good friend to anyone and it made me isolate and turn to drugs all the more. But when I experienced God’s forgiveness, it allowed me to forgive myself and removed the anchor from my neck. I felt free to have relationships with people again.

I have been sober for almost a year now and a couple months ago was able to begin the employment phase of the New Life Program. Despite the job market, God blessed me with a job at a medical supply company and I am now starting to save money for housing.

Another blessing is that my husband, who has since been released from jail, has joined the men’s program at the Rescue Mission. It’s amazing to see his transformation. He is a guy who was in a gang at age 13 and is tattooed from head to toe. But now he talks differently, he acts differently, and he feels different. I can’t believe the great relationship we have together as a sober couple who both know Jesus.

We are going to church together at New Creation Church in Sandy. It is a great church body and we are welcomed and at home there. We have new desires and hope our lives can reach other people for Jesus and help them to have faith in Him.

Our children are happy with us too. We have three children who we call our own, but none together. My husband’s two children are from another relationship and my son is from another relationship, but we feel like we are one family. Before, when I was still using, I would try to tell my children how I would change or how things would be different someday. Now, I don’t need to tell them anything.

Instead, they can see the change that has happened. I don’t need to convince them. My son has told me two times in recent weeks that he is proud of me. Those are the first two times he has ever told me that he is proud of me.

My husband has recently moved to the job phase of the New Life Program on the men’s side. Please pray that he will find work. He is a good worker and has had successful jobs in the asphalt business in the past, so I think God will provide for him.

As I look to the future it seems brighter than ever. One of my goals is to get my driver’s license and then purchase a car. My husband and I would like to go visit our children and will need a car for those visits. We are also looking to rebuild our credit and get into a house again. The judge on my case has said that if I continue to do well, she will drop my charge from a felony to a misdemeanor, which should allow me to qualify for even better jobs than the one I have now.

 I love customer service, solving people’s problems and taking care of them. So, I would love to get back into that kind of work, but it is hard for people to take a chance on someone with a felony in their background, so please pray for me about this. I can’t thank you—the supporters of the Rescue Mission—enough. Without your support and God’s enabling, this Mission would not be here, and I would never have found the help I needed.

Thank you for providing a place where desperate people like me can find a changed life. Your support has meant the world to me.

Terresa W – A Grandmother gets off the Streets:

Before I came to the Rescue Mission Women’s Center, I don’t remember knowing it existed. I don’t recall looking for it, nor do I remember dialing the phone number, but I do recall asking them for help. I had been living on the streets of Salt Lake City for the past year and was at rock bottom. I had been robbed at knife point, slept behind dumpsters, used sidewalk curbs as pillows, and done things I thought I would never do to ensure I was safe.

But, at my absolute lowest point, I remember being on the phone with someone at the Rescue Mission. I remember pleading for help, and I remember a kind voice on the other end of the line saying they would help me. When I arrived, they told me they wouldn’t force me to change the lifestyle I was living but that they would teach me God’s truth from the Bible. And as I learned God’s truth from the Bible, He did change me.

God took away the shame and guilt I was feeling. My previous view of God was that He demanded obedience and perfection. In fact, two years earlier I had joined a church where I was taught that God expected perfection from people. But by studying the Bible at the Rescue Mission, I found a different God.

I saw a God who had abundant love and forgiveness. The one true God is a God who could and would forgive me, not only for my past, but for my future mistakes as well. These realizations took away the guilt and shame of my many past sins (and the sins I knew I would inevitably commit in the future). I realized that if I found my worth in Jesus and what He did for me, I would experience joy, instead of pain and shame; and I did!

With a new belief and identity in Jesus, I felt less violent. It is difficult to admit, but I have been a very violent person. I have numerous assault charges and have often resorted to violence when I was angry or scared. I knew no other way to douse my anger or protect myself. Since fully turning my life to Jesus I have only had one violent episode, when I threatened another member of the New Life Program here at the Rescue Mission.

That threat was the turning point in my recovery. As a consequence of my threat, I had to leave the Rescue Mission for 48 hours and decide if I really wanted recovery and a new life. I was sobbing as I packed my bag for 48 hours away from the Mission. I felt mistreated and picked on. But then God changed my heart. I realized I wasn’t picked on, I was the problem. While I was forgiven for my threat, I still needed to accept the consequences for my actions. When I returned to the New Life Program I felt changed and have not had another violent incident since.

When I was on the streets, violence was all around me. One time I was robbed at knife point. The thing that stuck with me about being robbed was not the fear, it was the fact that I wasn’t scared. I had grown so accustomed to the violence and abuse of street life that having a knife pulled on me didn’t faze me.

Living on the streets for a year had made the crazy and unimaginable seem normal. Sleeping behind dumpsters had become acceptable. That’s a scary place to be, where things that would’ve shocked you previously become commonplace. You find yourself willing to do almost anything for basic safety and human needs. No person should experience street life, but many, in the deep fog of addiction, accept it.

I hadn’t always been homeless. For much of my young adult life I was sober. I had five children, went to college, and had some normalcy, even as I sometimes struggled with substance abuse and abusive relationships. But the shame and guilt I felt over my past mistakes led to increased drug abuse. My addiction grew out of hand and I ended up on the streets, estranged from my family and friends.

I thank God that He led me to the Rescue Mission, where I was excepted and learned how much God loved me and wanted to create me into the woman He wants me to be.

Today, I am trying to rebuild my relationships with my five children and 13 grandchildren. Because of my struggles, I have only met three grandkids, but I want to be a loving, sober grandmother to all those babies.

God has provided me with a good job at a uniform shop where I clean and repair uniforms for various companies. It’s not necessarily a job I want to keep for the rest of my life (my goal is to eventually have a job where I can help others off the streets) but, for now, it allows me to provide for myself as I get used to working again.

In a couple of months, I will graduate from the New Life Program. I am hoping to move into the Mission’s Hope House, which is a transitional housing unit for women who are getting off the streets. At Hope House I will have the structure I need as I make the jump back into “normal” life.   In my preparations to leave the Mission I am doing the things I know I need to do to stay sober. I go to recovery meetings, attend church on Sunday, go to Bible studies, and talk with my accountability partners, including my community mentor, Bette Jean.

My great church family at Capital Church has made a huge difference in my life. A few weeks ago I was baptized into God’s true family of believers. No, I am not perfect, but I realize I am forgiven because Jesus was perfect and sacrificed Himself for me.

I want to share a special thank you to the Rescue Mission’s supporters. I am amazed that this place receives no government funding. When I was at my lowest point, the Mission gave me food, safe shelter, clean clothes, and loved me through addiction counseling. This was all provided to me at no cost, because of the generosity of the Mission’s private donors, like you.

I thank you and praise God for you and His provision. It has been amazing to experience a complete life-change and I feel gratitude to all of you who helped make it happen.

Terresa is currently the Live-In Manager at the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake - Women’s Center

About the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake Women’s Center

A safe place where women and women with children can find safety from abusive relationships, counseling for addiction, and the love of Jesus. The Women’s Center is home to our New Life Program for women and provides homeless and low-income women access to emergency shelter, food, clothing, job placement, and more.

Learn more at RescueSaltLake.com

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Named one of the "Best Golf Courses You Can Play in Utah" by GolfWeek Magazine, Thanksgiving Point Golf Club opened for play in 1997. This 7,714-yard Johnny Miller Signature Golf Club cradles the most spectacular gardens in Utah, and creatively uses the Lehi natural mountain desert landscape to enhance the overall golf experience.

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