I want to share with you to not boast, but to inform you and the public of our passion to serve those with mental health illnesses. HTRMM's mission specializes in counseling services with individuals who suffer with mental health illnesses. This has been a personal passion of mine as I myself have suffered with episodes of Major Depression. I also have family members who also struggle with mental health illnesses. There has always been a stigma around mental health illness. I know for me personally I struggled with it feeling like I was alone in the suffering and had no one, not even the church that I could share my struggle with. I thought that I didn't have enough faith or that I wasn't doing something right on my journey with God which was the reason I suffered with mental illness. This is how Hometown Rescue Mission & Ministry was founded in wanting to give a voice to those suffering in the silence with mental health illness. The ministry wanted to break the stigma surrounding mental illness, to educate the community about mental illness and let those suffering with mental illness know that there is help for mental wellness regardless of income, background or situation.
Hometown Rescue Mission & Ministry (HTRMM) was founded as a Christ centered church with biblical truth and serving everyone with love. To date, with
the partnership of Hometown Realty Group and Hometown Pastoral Counseling Group, PLC, I can offer faith
based individual, marital and family counseling services on a sliding fee income scale so that no one will be
turned away. The work has included counseling services for those suffering with
many levels of mental illnesses. Specialized services include disorders such as
anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma, and addictions. My clientele even includes work with formerly incarcerated felons, at risk youth and letter writing
to those currently incarcerated and one individual who is on death
row. The cumulative total of counseling services gifted since 2016
to the present is $47,814 which equates to 598 sessions.
Since graduating from graduate school with a Master in Counseling and
Master in Divinity, I have been persistently working toward fulfilling 4,000 hours of
sitting with counseling clients that is required to sit for the License
Professional Counseling (LPC) Exam in order to become licensed. I am currently licensed as a “Resident in Counseling” being supervised by two LPC’s, Harvey
Yoder in Harrisonburg at Family Life Resource Center and Vic Maloy in Richmond
at VIP Care. I am hoping within the next year that I can make it a
reality of finishing those hours. It has been a long journey, but I know it is all in God’s timing.
The
reason licensure is so important is because God is calling me to
establish a non-profit, Harvest, that will work with non-violent at-risk
adolescents that typically go through the court systems that ends up in
juvenile detention and/or eventually incarcerated that becomes a statistic to
our ever growing systemic judicial system. The hope is that Harvest will be
an alternative to the current judicial sentencing where the youth will come out
to our farm to do individual therapy, group therapy, learn life sustaining
skills, do hands on labor working on the farm, in the gardens and even with the
livestock. Harvest will be a place of healing and transformation in
creating a place to belong and be loved which most likely the at-risk youth
have been neglected of with no guidance or love or a missed diagnosis of a mental health disorder. God has put on my heart
to break this generational cycle in order to help the youth find what their
purpose and meaning is so that they know who they are in Christ. I am so excited to begin this next part of my journey, but God has been working on my patience and total dependence upon Him. God gave me this vision in
2011 where I audibly heard Him say, “I was going to start a church, but it
was not going to be like what I knew or thought church was.” The at-risk
youth, Harvest, will be the church. The ministry will need to construct a building,
install a septic and drill a well so that we have space to do our work with the
youth.
Other
work that I have passionately facilitated in the community through HTRMM is
educating the public about pathways to mental health. In February 2019,
the ministry organized a two day suicide intervention training (ASIST) for
pastors in the Church of the Brethren denomination. The ministry is looking to expand
this training open to all faiths. In the near future, they are hoping to
offer a two day ecumenical summit called, “Pathways to Mental Health”
addressing the whole person mentally, emotionally, physically and
spiritually.
So please, I ask that you plan to attend the Benefit this Saturday on July 25, 2020 at Back Home on the Farm. It will be a fun filled family day with lots of amazing food and gospel music. One hunderd percent of the proceeds goes to our ministry. I personally thank each and every volunteer that is a part of the benefit that Sam and
Suzanne so graciously organize each year. Your support is a part of God’s
plan where He revealed to me that it is going to take a community to build
this, support this, volunteer for this, provide finances and resources to bring
this to fruition. I also ask for continued prayers for not only myself,
but my family and the ministry. We are constantly confronted with attacks
from the enemy. So we know, we are on the right path and know that God is going to make this all happen.
God bless each of you and your families!
With love,
Pastor LaDawn
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