“My childhood wasn’t much,” Michael says. “My dad left when I was 10 and I never saw him again. My mom died when I was 15. I’ve mostly been lost ever since.”

Hurt, abandoned, and unloved, Michael felt he had no choice but to live on the streets, where life is cheap and often deadly. Michael remembers watching a man get shot and killed on the sidewalk. But even as he lay dead, no one around him cared.

Michael learned that the only way to survive was to stay high on heroin. “Heroin and the streets, that’s all I knew,” he says.

Heroin took a heavy toll, though. When Michael finally overdosed in his mid-30s, his younger siblings moved him to San Antonio, Texas, and into rehab. “I actually stopped using for a hot minute,” he recalls. But he soon relapsed.

“After that, everything started going back downhill,” he says. “I lost my job, my apartment, furniture. Started living in a storage unit.” And finally he landed back on the streets for good.

In December 2017, however, a friend invited him to move to San Diego. He made it as far as downtown Los Angeles. Still lost and alone, he wandered through Skid Row. “Man, I never saw anything like that,” he says. “I looked at all those tents, people smoking crack, and I didn’t want any part of that. I came straight to Union Rescue Mission and said, ‘I need help.’”

And that’s where Jesus found him.

Michael says that with the help of his chaplains, counseling, and studying the Bible, his eyes started to open, along with his heart. “I got into it heavy. Praising Jesus. That right there started changing me.”

Then he quotes Galatians 2:20: “‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ I used to be this hard, evil guy. But Jesus died for me. He saved me from my sins. And when God raised Him from the dead, He gave me new life, too. This is the longest I’ve ever been sober.”

“Thank you, Jesus,” Michael adds. “And thank you everyone who supports Union Rescue Mission. Easter never meant anything to me before. But this Easter, I’m going to celebrate my new life in Christ.”

To volunteer this Easter season visit us online here.
Thank you—YOU make all this possible!

People on Skid Row struggling with addictions and homelessness are desperate. They need hope today that new life is possible.

But thanks to you, new life is more than just a hope. When men, women, and children devastated by homelessness come to Union Rescue Mission, they receive the real, tangible help they need to rebuild their lives—and they encounter the life-changing power of Jesus Christ, who can transform their lives for eternity!

Your generous gift of $25, $35, or more today will help provide hurting men, women, and children with hot meals, safe shelter, long-term help—and hope for new life this Easter season.

So, please send the most generous gift you can today. Thank you!