If you have followed the Mission for any length of time, you have probably seen Jerry’s face. Jerry came to the Mission in 2015 suffering with major depression. 

Jerry’s depression was first triggered by the breakdown of his marriage. It just “tore him up.” After the end of his marriage, Jerry went to live and care for his ailing mother. When his mother passed away, Jerry’s depression spun out of control. “We were very close,” Jerry says. “I was there when she took her last breath on hospice.”

Jerry’s depression hindered him from holding down a job. Not only did he struggled to get out of bed but he was also heavily medicated for his depression and found himself very lethargic. “I kept the house for a while but it eventually for foreclosed on,” says Jerry. He reached out to a friend for a place to stay and after awhile, that friend referred him to the Mission for help.

Jerry came to the Mission looking for a healing he hadn’t found before. “I was hoping to find a closer relationship with Jesus. I had grown up in church my entire life. My mother was a Sunday school teacher. I was at church every Sunday. But as I got older, I kinda drifted away from church and wanted to do my own thing.”

When he first arrived, Jerry was on 7 different types of anti-depressants. He joined our Life Recovery Program and through counseling, case management, vocational training, life skills and finding hope and healing through Christ, Jerry was able to work with his physician to get himself down to just one medication. 

Jerry successfully came to cope with his grief and pain. He completed our New Beginnings Program and today is a full-time staff member on the Men’s Guest Services Team and helps out at our TLC Campus. For the last 6 years, Jerry has gone from barely surviving to thriving. “I’m not sleepy. I don’t want to go to bed all the tine. I’m doing great,” says Jerry. He has grown in his faith and is now walking in his Jeremiah 29:11.

Now, Jerry has the opportunity to pour into and help other men that came through the same doors he walked through in 2015. He’s the first face someone meets when they come to the Mission for an intake. Whether it’s teaching a class or sharing his testimony, Jerry is showing and modeling to the men at the Mission that there is hope and there is healing. “Before the Mission, I was unhappy. Now, I am happy!”