When Joshua learned that the woman he had been living with for three years was attacking and abusing his young son, they had to leave.

“Once I saw it myself, I assumed she had been doing it before then,” he says. He knew he had to find a safe haven for himself and Gavin. Though he is now clean and sober, before he became a father, Joshua did drugs and lived on the streets for a time, sleeping in the back of a truck.

“It was rough,” he remembers. “I couldn’t do that to my son.” A “come to God” moment. “I had been smoking crack for about a year to a year and a half. I was sitting in the crack house, and I heard this voice in the back of my head that wasn’t just a thought. It was completely new.”

“The voice just said, ‘Stop.’ So, I put the pipe down, walked away, laid down on the couch and fell asleep. Then my mom helped me get out of there, out of that house, and set me on the road to recovery. It wasn’t until later that I realized that voice was God.”

Then last September, when the domestic violence occurred, your support made it possible for Joshua and his son to find safe shelter at Faith Mission.

“Everything’s been really good,” says Joshua. “We have a roof over our heads.

Everybody watches out for my son. We get three square meals a day and it’s reintroducing me to religion because I fell away for a while.”

And to partners like you who make Faith Mission possible, Joshua says, “I’d definitely say a big ‘Thank you.’Anything they contribute is a huge help to all of us here.”