In partnering with Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission, your gift does more than provide nourishing food and safe shelter. When you give, you’re helping homeless neighbors like Jason rebuild their lives.
After his mother suffered a stroke when he was six, Jason’s parents painfully divorced. Years later, she married again, and Jason enjoyed what he describes as a “pretty spoiled and chill home life.” He did well in school and graduated with excellent grades.
Jason began smoking pot at 16, which he says, “quickly led into the party scene.” The partying escalated during his college years and Jason soon found himself addicted to oxyContin and later heroin. His addiction even led him to deal drugs as well.
One night, after working his shift as a waiter, Jason was robbed and beaten. “I got four broken ribs, 10 staples in the back of my head. Praise God that I'm not dead,” he says. While recovering, he discovered he’d been fired from his job and wound up homeless.
While homeless, Jason was approached by the Mission’s Search + Rescue team, and after staying connected with one of the volunteers, decided to enter the Mission’s recovery program.
While at the Mission, Jason “soaked up” all that he could, and developed a relationship with Jesus for the first time in his life. Accountability with others was crucial to his recovery.
Today, Jason has been clean for more than 10 years, is married with 4 children, and is in a church community that has “blessed [his] socks off”. If he could encourage newcomers at the Mission, he says he would tell them, “Stay focused. I looked at my time in the (Mission), the year there as a cocoon to metamorphosize into a butterfly … and then blossom out. Use the time wisely … God is so good.”
