We recently received the following thank you letter from a previous client. Because you choose to support Mission House, we thought we would allow you to meet some of the faces of Mission House. Meet Tony:
"I started coming to Mission House to get help. I’d been hanging out on the street using drugs and alcohol. My health got bad but I didn’t know it was that bad. I had trouble breathing.
I was laying in the back of Mission House and was having trouble breathing. I was breathing really bad and could have died but the people here – some of the homeless guys knew I wasn’t breathing right and came and told a lady named Jane and Frank, that I wasn’t breathing right, that it stopped. When they came out, they wanted me to go to the hospital. I didn’t want to go and was refusing to go. One of the counselors named Jane started talking to me. I was holding her tight. She told me, “Tony, get in that rescue wagon you’re not breathing right.” I got in that rescue wagon and next thing I knew I was at Baptist Beaches in that room, tied down, with mittens on my hands. I didn’t know where I was. I was sedated bad. Next thing I knew, I had a tube in my mouth and had been for 9 days. I could have been dead because when the machine breathed, I breathed-if they turned the machine off, I’d have stopped breathing. If it wasn’t for that lady, Jane, and me listening to her, I would have been dead. I was down on my luck, sleeping outside and I was told by someone, a professional, that I wouldn't be helped by them at Mission House ‘cause he told me that “they don’t help black people.” That bothered me, but Mike, told me that wasn’t true because if it wasn’t for these people, I’d be on the ground and they are caring. When you ask them for something, they will help you no matter who you are.
I stayed at Baptist for 2 months fighting for my life. When my family came to see me, they saw me in the emergency room – they called the funeral home and were making arrangements for my funeral, they thought I was in that bad a shape. But God put his hand on me through a lady named Jane to find me and get me to the hospital. I learned God is always around to help you and this lady has been in my life and I think about her all the time. I feel better, I’m drug-free, I don’t smoke cigarettes, don’t drink or do drugs. I’ll never forget what she did for me and Baptist Beaches – the best doctors, the best care – the nurses - everybody. They treated me just like I was a rich man. I stayed in that hospital and they cleaned me, cleaned the waste off me and it hurt me because I couldn’t do that for myself. Miss Jane kept coming to the hospital to see how I was and to see how I was and see that I was all right. I want people to know about Mission House – I found that it’s not just for homeless people but to save lives and this life, they did save."