Lives Changed: Recovery Testimonies from Savannah MBTC
Renita grew up in church, raised by two God-fearing parents. She knew who Jesus was and what He could do, but she had never known Him personally. She came to the Mission in August 2018, and though she had been through both secular and faith-based rehabs before, she came to see that this time was ordained by the Lord. Here she learned to surrender her life to Him and to discover who she is in Christ.
The hardest part was leaving her young son at home, yet she trusted that it was God’s will and holds fast to His promise in Matthew 19:29, that everyone who has forsaken family for Christ’s name will receive a hundredfold and inherit everlasting life. She is quick to give the credit not to a program or a ministry, but to the Lord who is at work in this place.
Ronald grew up in church and knew it was the right way to live, but as a teenager and into his twenties he wanted to do what everyone else was doing. That choice took a toll on his whole life, and for many years he was enslaved to drugs and alcohol, hurting the family and people he loved the most. At 40, through family affiliated with the ministry, he first heard about Mission Teens and completed an eight month program. But he fell back into old behavior and old company, and the years that followed brought jail, drug court, and probation. Nothing worked.
Finally coming to the end of himself again, Ronald returned to the Mission, this time at the Savannah Mission Bible Training Center. Here he is learning who he is again, learning that God loves him and forgives him, and seeking what God would have him do with the rest of his life. He is grateful for his family and for the staff who are helping him, as he puts it, finally learn how to live again.
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John Benjamin White was born in Florence, Alabama, in 1993. His childhood was normal enough, marked by his parents’ divorce but no severe trauma. When his father was killed in a drunk-driving accident, John concluded that no good God could allow such things, and he pursued the sciences into a life of agnosticism and atheism, pushing further from the truth. In college he began experimenting with drugs and alcohol to fit in. But as the years passed and others grew up and stopped, John kept climbing the ladder of addiction, until by his mid-twenties he was a full-blown IV heroin addict.
Then Jesus removed everything from his life until all he could do was see Him and cry out to Him. As John says, he never knew that to know a Savior meant that he would need saving. Now back at the Mission for a second time, he has watched God make Himself present, using the Savannah Mission Bible Training Center as a conduit for His redemptive power in the lives of every resident. Through the Word and a growing relationship with Christ, John is learning for the first time to listen to God rather than run from Him. Scripture has become living and active, convicting his sin and renewing his mind. More than freedom from addiction, God is giving him a new heart and a new purpose, and he rests in the promise of Romans 4:7-8, that blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.