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Market Street Mission is gearing up our annual backpack giveway. Last year we collected over $25,026.12 worth of school supplies and $12,876.32 in funds to purchase additional supplies that helped to fill and distribute 1,427 backpacks for local needy children of all grades. We are only able to fill the backpacks through the generosity of the community!
Here's how you can help:
Benny was born into a cold and violent home.
“My mother had an alcohol addiction and was very abusive, physically and emotionally. My father was in prison, but she told me he was dead,” he says. “She abandoned me when I was three.”
Benny grew up in a detention facility and the homes of various relatives. “I know how it is to feel like no one loves you, to feel like you’re rotten and there’s something wrong with you,” he says.
Jacob was raised in a loving, close-knit, Christian home, but when he reached adolescence, he rebelled. “I started trying to fill a void with drugs and alcohol and relationships and chaos,” he says.
Jacob entered the military after high school, and his alcohol and drug abuse escalated. The military sent him to rehab for cocaine and pain pills, but when he was discharged, nothing changed. “Anytime I felt anything I didn’t want to feel, I masked it with alcohol and drugs, or I’d just run,” he says.
Eventually, Jacob lost everything. “I had warrants out for my arrest and I was doing odd jobs so I could get high every day,” he says. “I was running from the law, but in my heart I was running from the Lord.”
Special thank you to the team at The Salad House and GR Productions!
They teamed up this holiday season, to do something big. Bigger than themselves. They teamed up to bring hope to a group of men, through the gift of food. What Joey Cioffi and Gabriel Rhodes learned is that giving that gift of hope could be the greatest gift in the world. This is their story...
Donate your old Tablet for Bible Studies at MSM!
Market Street Mission in Morristown, NJ leads bible studies for groups of men recovering from alcohol and drug addictions. In 2017, we hope to use an interactive curriculum developed by the Museum of the Bible. To do so requires that we have a computer tablet to loan to each man in the program. Initially, we will start with a group of 20. The software will run on either an Apple iPad 3 (or higher) or Android 5.0 or 5.1 tablet (Samsung, ASUS, etc) with at least 1.5 memory, 16gb of storage and a 7.9" screen. See donation form for complete hardware requirements.
Jabraun started smoking marijuana when he was only 14. “At first, it was once in awhile, but I started using more and more,” he says. “I couldn’t keep a job, and my addiction ruined my relationships. My life was out of control.”
Jabraun moved in with his mother, but he soon wore out his welcome. “I had nowhere to go. I hit bottom. I knew I needed help,” he says.
Jabraun’s mother introduced him to someone who’d been through our Life Change Program.
“The person got his life back on track, and learned how to be a productive citizen,” he says. “So I called the Mission and they took me in. I knew it was the best decision I could make.”
We are grateful for your partnership as we experience exciting results from our initiative to help families and friends of our clients affected by Substance Abuse.
Expanding our counseling services to include families of our clients has been met with very favorable responses. We believe we are more fully meeting the needs of clients to reconcile with their loved ones and rebuild family relationships.
Read about our full program here and meet David Dressler, the Marriage and Family Therapist.
When Freeman walked through our doors the first time, he wanted to change.
He slept on our Chapel floor for 30 days; he took classes, read the Bible, prayed and went through counseling; he was clean for the first time in years. But before he finished our program, he left.
And soon enough, he found himself back on the streets, hooked on heroin.
“I became a slave to the drugs again,” he says. “I woke up looking for it, and went to bed looking for it. I was homeless, panhandling on the streets, just living day to day.”
“I knew there was a better life for me. But I just didn’t care.”
Life on the streets got rougher. Freeman remembered the Mission, and the joy of being free from his addiction.
Jason was at the end of his rope. An addiction to drugs and alcohol had taken everything away. He had no family or friends, no home, no faith.
“I blamed everything wrong in my life on God,” Jason says. “Then one day, I realized it wasn’t God ruining my life, but me.”
He decided he didn’t want this kind of life anymore: the hopelessness, the emptiness, the shame. So Jason turned himself in to his probation officer and admitted that he needed real help.
When he got to the Mission, he joined our 10-month Life Change Program. And immediately, Jason began learning that sobriety was a choice. “A lot of us don’t know how to live our lives right, so we need all the help we can get.”
Believe it or not, keeping a drug and alcohol addiction going can be hard work...especially if you’re trying to hide it from your friends and family!
For a majority of his young years, Joseph was in this very situation: “If I didn’t get my drugs every day, I’d be very sick. But I had to keep doing them because I thought they were making my life – my work, relationships, and living arrangements – more manageable."
Eventually, Joseph’s world came crashing down around him. “I ended up failing my last semester of college, so I wasn’t going to graduate. I got arrested and spent a couple of days in jail. And I was stealing from my parents.”
“I knew I needed to get help...to go into a program.”
Joseph’s drug use had all but ruined his young life.