Meet Lester   

This Memorial Day season we like to take the time to remember the veterans that have served our country. The Curtis Center houses 30 homeless veterans. Lester is one of those vets.

When Lester was 17 years old he enlisted in the National Guard and only a year after leaving the guard he was drafted into the Army. Lester drove a ration truck while serving in Vietnam. After returning from the war he married his sweetheart and enrolled in Chadron State as a business major. Until one year and ten days later when he was suddenly widowed, his wife was killed in a tragic car accident.

Lester found himself running. Running and drugging to escape the pain in his heart. For decades Lester ran, he "rode trains" finding work as he went but he was careful to remain unattached so he couldn't get hurt. Once, he met a girl and settled down for a while and they had a couple children together. But things started to get tough and once again Lester started to run. This time he "rubber-tramped" meaning he lived out of his van.

Lester battled for years to get clean and sober and stay that way, but it never seemed to stick, the pain of his past was too great to bear. Then in 2009 Lester was riding trains again but this time when he jumped, he landed wrong and ended up breaking his back and neck in 5 places. After a long stay in the hospital he was discharged with nowhere to go, so he came here to the People's City Mission. Eventually he moved into our transitional housing unit, the Curtis Center.

Since coming to PCM, Lester has received the medical care he needed to heal. He has learned to take responsibility for his choices and to choose to seek the help he needs to do right. He has started to make amends and reconnect with his children. He's achieved sobriety and even established financial stability.

Lester said "something was leading me here, apparently it was God." He has learned to turn things over to God through prayer and meditation. Lester said he always felt unworthy of a relationship with God, but now he sees God as being loving and accepting. Lester is no longer running. His life, good or bad, has led him to be right here today, being the man he once only wished he could be.

Meet John   

John has only been staying with us for awhile in the Curtis Center, but already his life has been changed. 

John is a vet and a former rodeo cowboy who travels around the country doing construction and handyman jobs. He ended up here in Lincoln for a while and had recently been diagnosed with skin cancer on his back. Again.

His general practitioner referred him to a specialist who would look at the cancer on his back and schedule a time for surgery. John had 4 surgeries previously to remove skin cancer on his back; twice in '04 and once in '07 and '09. 

This time the doctor said the procedure would be worse because the wound on his back would need a skin graft from another part of his body. Due to the previous surgeries, there was very little left in that area on his back to stitch back together. Needless to say this pain was not something he wanted to go through again and was looking for any way out.

John was scheduled to see the specialist last Monday the 16th. Before he went John asked two of the Curtis Center staff Rich Gervais and David Lewis to pray for him. As they prayed John said his "back felt warm." 

The specialist took one look at the spot on his back and told him nothing's there. There was no reason to do surgery and the specialist sent him home. The only indication that there had been something there was an indentation in his back where the cancer would have been.

John has been healed and his telling his story to "let people know miracles do happen." Amen! 

Run 4 the Homeless

Giving in Unexpected Ways          

Our community blesses us in so many unexpected ways, and we love the opportunity to give back in equally unexpected ways.

When the free clinic opened 2 years ago, the Lincoln community donated so generously that we were given multiple doctor examination tables, dentist chairs, crutches and other medical supplies that the Clinic would not be able to use. We saved them for a day when we could. An unexpected story came up for the extra medical equipment to find a home.   

Pastor Tim Springer and members of the Milford Mennonite church come to the the Mission and serve meals on Wednesdays. The church is also very involved with a ministry called Water for Haiti that works to get clean water to the Haitian people as well as helping them to rebuild their lives. Pastor Tim went Haiti in February of 2011 and is working on returning this next February. The church was so inspired by Water for Haiti that they purchased a cube truck and they're in the process of filling it with donations to send to Haiti. Jerry Owen, the assistant director of the Mission found out about what the church was doing and offered some of our extra equipment. We gave a child's sized wheel chair to the church that Pastor Tim says would really bless one of the orphanages in Haiti. 

The church hopes to have the truck filled and sent to Haiti in July. Pastor Tim says this, "shows the spirit of the Mission as you give to the poorest in the Western Hemisphere." Pray for the church that they would be able to fill the truck and bless the people of Haiti.