3 min read
Volunteers Providing Welcome
UGM’s volunteer case managers stand on the frontlines of ministry, offering listening ears and wise counsel to men and women in crisis.
2 min read
Genevieve Gromlich, Content and Communications Manager
:
Mar 31, 2021 2:13:37 PM
“The Lord your God is in your midst. A mighty one who will save.” (Zeph. 3:17) Jesus entered human history to take our sin and shame to the grave, to make a way for us to know the nearness of God.
Lust, violence, pride. No sin is too great for the blood of Jesus to wash away. On that, we build our hope.
Having endured a horrific childhood, Robert entered adulthood ill-equipped, but eager. He pursued an education, started a successful business, married, and bought a house in the suburbs. When the marriage started to struggle, though, he and his wife turned to cocaine, neither of them knowing how to cope. “And one day she didn’t come home.”
“I wasted so much of my life. I just didn’t think it was possible to change.”
Robert’s life quickly fell apart. “I got on Tinder. I was sleeping around. I was basically a womanizer, hurt a lot of families. It’s shameful.” That lasted two years before he read a few passages in a Bible he found and started wanting something different. He stopped using, stopped sleeping around…but things kept getting worse. “I lost everything, my job, my will to live…everything.” For months, he slept on the streets of Spokane's South Hill, wrapped in burlap sacks, wishing to die. “I wasted so much of my life. I just didn’t think it was possible to change.”
And then someone on the street suggested UGM. “I was highly skeptical, and I remember saying, ‘God, if you want it to happen, you’re going to have to make it happen.” He took a few steps and there on the ground was the $2.00 he needed for a bus pass. He arrived at the Men’s Shelter thirty minutes later.
“I will never again have to be alone.”
“It’s been painful, but God has become a parent to me. He is the perfect parent. Turns out I just had this God-shaped hole, and I’d been packing everything I could into it, and of course nothing had worked. I tried to fill my life with relationships, but now I have the relationship I need. I will never again have to be alone.”
When hope is built on money, health, politics or people, it can be swept away as quickly as a sandcastle caught in a wave. But hope built on Jesus Christ cannot fail. That is why UGM offers faith-based Recovery programs and counseling. As Phil Altmeyer says, “We are not here to keep people homeless. We believe God has something so much better for them.”
Partner with UGM to support men and women pursuing life change.
3 min read
UGM’s volunteer case managers stand on the frontlines of ministry, offering listening ears and wise counsel to men and women in crisis.
2 min read
We are a forgetful people. We forget how broken the world is in which we live. We forget how much we are loved by a good God. We forget the sinister...
2 min read
Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. “The Lord your God is in your midst. A mighty one who will save.” (Zeph. 3:17)...
Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. “The Lord your God is in your midst. A mighty one who will save.” (Zeph. 3:17)...
Volunteers make up the bulk of UGM’s case management teams. At the men’s shelter, that’s Joe, DuWayne, Howard, Roy, Dennis, Greg and Dana – all...
More than food, shelter or even the air we breathe, we need Jesus. That’s why the gospel is the cornerstone of UGM, holding up everything we do and...