When Allen was 4 years old, his father was killed in a car accident that left his mother severely disabled. “It was tough growing up,” he recalls. “By the time I was 16, I had learned to numb my feelings by drinking and smoking marijuana.”
He later married, but his destructive behaviors prevented him from being responsible for his family. He and his wife separated and he returned home to care for his ailing mother. When it became necessary to place her in a nursing home, he fell apart.
“I felt I had lost the most important ladies in my life,” Allen shares. As his addiction and despair escalated, his life spiraled downhill, leaving him virtually homeless. “I knew if I stayed like this I was going to die,” he explains. He called shelters and treatment facilities asking for help… until someone suggested Bridgeport Rescue Mission.
Allen joined our New Life Program and was empowered by our faith-based curriculum to embrace personal growth and change. “For a lot of us, our emotional maturity is low due to the drugs and alcohol,” he explains. “The courses help us look at our childlike behaviors and to grow up and mature.”
Allen’s grateful for your gifts, which have given him and others this life-changing opportunity. “Without the people who give to the Mission, we wouldn’t have a second chance,” he says. He explains that your giving also allowed him, and allows program residents like him, to share those second chances with others while assisting with the Mission’s many outreaches.
“The Mission has a homeless shelter… a food pantry and Mobile Kitchens… and offers clothing,” he explains. “So everything people donate to the Mission is passed on to someone else.”
For Allen, his growing and deepening relationship with God has given him hope for a future of joy and meaning. “Until I got to the Mission, my use for God was more on rainy days. Today, I acknowledge His presence… I thank Him… and I will continue to study His Word so the change in my life is permanent.”