Shamika’s Story
“My life was crazy growing up,” says Shamika, who came to Joy House pregnant and feeling lost. “There were nine of us kids. There was no child abuse, but there was stuff going on with my parents, and we got put in foster care when I was 11.” Despite the chaos she experienced at…
Eric’s Story
In a way, Eric wore a mask almost all his life. “I learned pretty early how to talk, act, dress, and look like a good Christian,” he says. “But it was just a mask. And by high school, I had enough. So I rebelled, left God behind, and went looking for a good time.”…
Dakara’s Story
“As a teenager, I was angry, confused, afraid and full of self-doubt,” says Dakara, a 22-year-old single mother with three children at Joy House. “There was no love in my family. You couldn’t call it a home. I didn’t have a father in my life, and I experienced a lot of abuse. There were a…
Mike’s Story
Mike will never forget the day his youngest daughter called him and said, “Dad, you love drugs more than you love us. You’ve got to get help.” “That just ripped me up,” he recalls. So in March 2018, he came to the Milwaukee Rescue Mission to get the help he needed. But it would not be…
Alicia’s Story
Alicia needed a new beginning, a chance to start over. She’d already been knocked down several times in her life, but she always found a way to get back up before. Now, at the age of 56, her past was catching up to her. “My childhood was really messed up,” she says. “There was…
Jenise’s Story
Jenise vividly remembers that day in 2015: She was riding a bus, overwhelmed with fear and hopelessness. She had been diagnosed with uterine cancer, and she didn’t know if she would survive. And what would happen to her 10-year-old daughter? Then she saw him — a complete stranger moving directly toward her. “I was…
Roscoe’s Story
I was angry. I was enraged at a world that was too strict, a world with too many unfair rules — a world that didn’t treat me the way I felt I deserved. I grew up in a poor rural family that worked the fields of Mississippi. My stepfather would never let me go…
Nathosha’s Story
Life wasn’t always easy for Nathosha growing up in rural Alabama, but at least it was stable and familiar. She was close to siblings, her parents cared about her and she was an honor-roll student at school. But that all changed when her parents divorced. Her mother moved the family to Milwaukee and remarried.…
Timothy’s Story
The Apostle Paul got it right: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7, NIV). I put nothing good into my life, and I got nothing good back. By the time I came to the Milwaukee Rescue Mission a year ago, I knew I needed to…
Dustin’s Story
Like many youth, as a teenager in Cudahy, Wisconsin, Dustin thought he knew everything. In high school, he was bright, popular, athletic and knew what he wanted: At 6’-7”, he had visions of a basketball scholarship and maybe more. But a serious injury in his junior year derailed his plans. “I didn’t know what…
