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Living on the Streets… Mark Had Given Up Hope
“I had made the choices that put me where I was. I told them, ‘I’m not afraid to die.’ And they turned right around and told me, ‘Yeah, but you’re afraid to live!’”That conversation was a big turning point in Mark’s life.
Today, Mark’s still not afraid to die, but for entirely different reasons!
The first time Mark joined our Christian Discipleship Program, he was here just five months before he decided to go out and “chase a job.” “I fell on my face again,” he says sadly. “I tried to do it on my own.” But this time, Mark knew exactly where to turn.
He came back into the program with a completely different attitude.
“I realized that I had to give up everything and not cherry-pick what I wanted to keep to myself and what I wanted to deal with. A lot of fears had been holding me back, fears of failure that I had to deal with.”
“Now I can go out and do God’s work!”
The second time around, Mark faced his fears. He graduated from the program and the State of Montana offered to reinstate his license to practice nursing.
“Now I can go out and do God’s work in my profession. This time, it’s not going to be about how many toys I can have, but what good I can do.”
Mark has a vision of himself pulling up to the Mission and saying to the guys here, “Okay, let’s go shopping.”
This Mark is a long way from the man who used to drive by the Mission and “have pity on the people who were down on their luck, who had made bad choices.” “I thought the Mission was the bottom of the barrel,” he says with a smile. “Today, I want to have a t-shirt made that says, ‘Praise the Lord, I’m one of those guys!’”
To read the most recent issue of The Beacon, click here.
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