Resident Stories

"A Story of Love and Redemption"

June 29, 2023

A few months ago, Johnny, a former City Mission resident, traveled to Washington D.C., as an advocate for the homeless and low-income families, and spoke with a United States Senator about continued funding to help those in need. “It’s an honor to serve the homeless in this way,” Johnny said. He is the only advocate from Washington County who is a member of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition and the Pennsylvania Housing Alliance. “Four years ago, when I was sitting in a jail cell, I never thought I’d be in a US Senators’ office one day talking about the federal budget.” People can change. Johnny is living proof of that. Five years ago, his truck careened down the highway as he led police on a 63-mile car chase. His vehicle suddenly flipped over and crashed into the Ohio River Spillway. “God pulled me out of that truck,” Johnny said, recalling the terrifying moment. “That’s what saved my life. I know that may sound strange to some people. But it’s the only reason I’m still alive.” After he was captured by police, they took him to jail, and he was immediately drawn to the Bibles on the jail pod. He joined a Bible study group, and even when all the other guys fell away, he continued to wake up at 4:30 every morning to pray, read the Bible, and worship. “It just gave me this overwhelming peace that I’ve never known,” he explained. “It was really the first time I ever had a relationship with Christ.” The experience changed him. “I started to think for myself. I decided, no more drugs or gangs on the inside. And I just started changing. I started writing sermons and worship songs.” When he got out on parole in January of 2020, he came to City Mission, and he became a new person. Johnny was born and raised in and around Washington, PA, but he moved around a lot as a kid. “I’ve never lived in any one place more than two years, except for jail cells,” he explained. He and his brother were raised by a single mom. “She worked three jobs. She did the best she knew how to do,” he said. At age 6, he suffered childhood abuse, and he kept it a secret for 20 years. “I had a good life in some respects. I was never hungry. I always had clothes, but I had this secret,” he explained. “I never told anybody. I was too scared. One day, somebody asked me if I wanted to get high. I said sure. They were huffing gas. For a split second, I didn’t feel anything. All that fear was gone, and all I wanted was to be without fear.” He was eight years old. His life of addiction had already begun. He started huffing inhalants and abusing over-the-counter drugs. When he was just 10 years old, he went away to a mental hospital. He committed his first felony at 14. When he was 16, he dropped out of high school and moved into his own apartment near Washington & Jefferson College. He got a job and paid his rent and lived on his own. His life actually started to normalize a bit. Then, he met a girl and started drinking again. “I just thought I was normal. I was drinking, but everybody around me was drinking,” he said. “And I had a full-time job, so I didn’t think there was a problem. I didn’t understand addiction yet.” Then, when he was 18, he was in a horrific car wreck that left his entire lower body broken. He couldn’t work or even walk without assistance, so he moved back in with his mom. His then-girlfriend introduced him to some new drugs that helped him at the time to deal with the pain of his injuries, but his drug use created conflict with his mom. She kicked him out of the house as soon as he could walk again. “I deserved it,” he recalled. With nowhere to live, he moved in with his grandparents. When his grandmother, who had worked as a nurse at City Mission, passed away in 2006, Johnny moved to Florida. “I was just trying to run away from my problems,” he explained. He moved in with a cousin in Florida, but eventually, he wound up homeless. And in 2009, his addiction landed him in prison. He got out for 10 months and then went back to prison for another five years. In 2016, he got married and then moved to Florida with his family in 2018. He landed a great job. But it wasn’t long before he abandoned his wife, his two daughters, and his job to go get high. Once again, he ended up in prison. When he was finally paroled in 2020, he came to City Mission. It was early on in the Covid pandemic, and we were locked down to protect our residents. It was a difficult and isolating time for everybody, but for people in recovery, it was downright dangerous. When Johnny arrived, he poured himself into helping other people. “It was a rough on everybody,” he remembered. “I couldn’t see my kids. But I made sure we always had AA meetings running and that Zoom was always setup so people could join remotely. I made sure the women always had services on Wednesdays.” During that time, he also built a beautiful fountain behind the women’s shelter and planted rose bushes to help beautify the City Mission campus. The Mission turned out to be the perfect place for his recovery. The morning devotions, chapel services, and Bible studies stoked the fires of his newfound faith. The on-site recovery meetings helped him stabilize his addiction and find meaning and purpose in helping others. The Mission also connected him with a local therapist to address his childhood trauma and mental health issues. Since 2020, he has continued to stay clean, go to therapy, and take his medication. Additionally, the Mission provided a safe place for him to rebuild relationships with his wife and two daughters. And over time, he was able to reunify with his family. Today, they all live together, pray together, and worship together. Johnny has learned how to be the husband and father that they need. In September, Johnny and his wife will be renewing their vows. “My wife has endured,” he said. “Our story is a story of love and redemption, and together, that’s what we’re trying to give back to the world. God is guiding our family. All people are God’s people. So we just love everybody. All love, all ways—that’s our family motto.” When Johnny was preparing to move out of City Mission, he needed a job, so he connected with our Career Training and Education Center. He filled out 116 job applications before he finally got a job. “All people saw was who I was on paper. They couldn’t see beyond my past,” he explained. “But who I was when I was using and out on the street was completely different from who I ever was clean. I’ve never been violent. I was more of a coward than anything. Being at the Mission taught me how to be a man.” When he finally got his first job, there was much rejoicing at the Mission. At last, an employer saw who he was instead of who he used to be, and they gave him a chance to prove himself. It was a retail job, an industry he had zero experience in, but he worked there for just under a year before landing a job for an oil and gas company, where he worked there for one year, starting out as a shop hand and working his way up to valve technician, responsible for millions of dollars worth of inventory. Recently, City Mission hired Johnny as our new Work Readiness Coordinator. “I needed more fulfilment in my life,” he explained of his move to this new job at the Mission. “I love working in treatment. I love having the opportunity to just love people unconditionally until they can love themselves. God didn’t save my life and carry me through all these situations in my life for me to not give back and help others.” Johnny is a new man. He has a new life. He rebuilt relationships with his familiy. He surrounded himself with good people. He worked hard to make himself a better man, a better husband, a better father, a better son, a better friend to those in need. “City Mission saved my life,” Johnny said. “It taught me how to be a man so that I could in turn be the man for my family that they deserve. It taught me how to value myself and love myself and in turn helped me to love other people. City Mission not only saved my life, but they helped me put my family back together.” Give today to City Mission, and help residents like Johnny turn their lives around. Visit www.citymission.org

"Eternally Grateful"

May 17, 2023

Four years ago, Joe almost died. He was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. His pancreas was on the verge of exploding. The emergency room doctor told him if he had waited another day, he would be dead. “That was an eye opener for me to say the least,” Joe said. A week earlier, he got into a heated argument with the woman he was living with, so he left his home with nothing but the clothes on his back and all the cash he could carry. For the next week, he holed up in a hotel and nearly drank himself to death. “I probably would have, if I had more money,” he admitted. But he wasn’t exactly drinking liquor or beer. He was drinking mouthwash. The woman he was living with before he moved out had introduced him to drinking mouthwash, because it was so inexpensive and easy to access. “That was the beginning of my rock bottom,” Joe explained. After a weeklong bender at the hotel, he started feeling sick. The manager of the hotel took one look at him and called 9-1-1. “At the hospital, they took every fluid out of my body and tested it,” Joe recalled. Eventually, he was diagnosed with acute alcoholic pancreatitis and stayed in the hospital for seven days. After that, he checked into rehab…on his birthday. Ironically, it was on his eighteenth birthday, forty years earlier, when he took his first drink. He never had much adult supervision growing up. His parents were in their forties when he was born, so for the first three years of his life, he was raised by his older sister, who was only sixteen. His siblings were both grown and out of the house by the time he was in kindergarten, so he was raised for most of his life as an only child. “I was on my own for most of my life when I was growing up,” he explained. “It made me become very resourceful for myself. My parents didn’t want to be bothered, so I found my own way. And I found ways to entertain myself.” He worked hard at school and was a good kid, but when he turned eighteen, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He couldn’t afford college. So when his best friend showed up on the night of his birthday with a bottle of whiskey, he went along for the ride. They spent the night in a cave in the woods and got completely drunk. “That was my first step down the road to alcoholism,” he said. After graduation, Joe joined the Air Force and served a full term of active duty working in electronic communications, maintaining cryptographic equipment that scrambled and descrambled highly-confidential print messages and voice communications. To do this work, he had to gain top secret security clearances. “I could have walked into the White House and shook hands with the President if I wanted to,” Joe said. After the military, Joe floated through a host of other jobs including security at a college campus, being a mechanic at a quick oil change shop, a fabricator at a steel manufacturing plant, and a salesman for an insurance company. He also got married at one point. Tragically, his wife passed away from ovarian cancer only a few years into their marriage. All the while, Joe was using alcohol to escape the everyday problems and stressors of life. “I was basically killing myself for forty years,” he said of his alcoholism. “I felt like the alcohol helped me function, but in reality, it was hurting my functionality. I felt like I could do things better, but really it made things worse. It was hiding emotional pain – from my upbringing, from life in general, but it’s the aftermath of drinking where you pay for a few hours of feeling good. The problems you are trying to hide from are still there. The best way to deal with problems is to hit them head on.” After rehab, Joe finally decided to hit his problems head on. With nowhere else to go, he came to City Mission and lived for nearly four years at our Crabtree Kovacicek Veterans House. During that time, he transformed his life. He got himself sober and connected to veterans’ services. “City Mission gave me an opportunity to take a step back from the world, to concentrate on myself and get my life back together,” he said. “Get the mental health treatments I needed. Go to meetings. An opportunity to refect on myself and stop beating myself up like I was 40 years.” At our Veterans House, Joe was surrounded by men he could talk to who understood his struggles and could relate to his problems in ways he had never really experienced before. “I can discuss veteran problems with the guys here that other people just don’t understand,” he said. “And I feel a lot better about being a veteran now than I did before I got here.” In additional to case management, recovery services, and emotional and psychological support, City Mission helped him with the fundamentals of independent living, like getting his Driver’s License back. “That was a big step for me to independence,” he said. “I didn’t like having to count on other people to take me everywhere. Tomorrow, I’m even going to look for a car of my own.” The Mission also helped him get a job that he loves at a local manufacturing plant. “It’s the kind of work I was born to do,” he explained. “They like me, and I like them, and I like the work I’m doing.” Now, Joe is working on moving out on his own, but he will never forget what the Mission has done for him to turn his life around. “I am eternally grateful to the Mission for giving me the time and resources to get myself back together again,” he said. I’m not stuck in my past anymore. Now, I just focus on what I have to do next.” Joe is not alone. Nearly seven percent of Pennsylvania’s veterans live in poverty, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates there are nearly 1,000 homeless veterans in Pennsylvania alone – though the number is likely much higher, since veteran homelessness is complex and difficult to track. City Mission is proud to provide food, shelter, resources, and hope to those who served our country. They served us. Let’s serve them. If you are or know a veteran who is homeless or in need, please call City Mission at 724-222-8530. If you would like to donate to our ministry, please visit https://give.citymission.org/for/citmis/info/preheader

Our Residents' Journeys

Our mission is to serve our residents. We continue to be amazed by their strength and courage, and we love to see God working in their lives! Read some of their stories and learn about their journey to the Mission and on to independent living.

"A Story of Love and Redemption"

"Eternally Grateful"

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