You Are Loved | Mitchell walked out of jail and straight to church

to share people's incredible stories in the hopes of encouraging you to keep going, no matter how hard it is, and to show you how loved you are by your Heavenly Father. You are about to hear Mitchell's story. All Mitchell wanted was to feel the love of a family and to be accepted. The only people who seemed to accept him, though, were those living in addiction. This led Mitchell down a path of joining gangs, stealing, fighting, and doing drugs. After crashing into a pole and being charged with a DUI, Mitchell got arrested. Due to a strange series of events, which I have no doubt was the Lord, he ended up in a jail where he could watch church for free on a tablet. When it came time for his release, he asked to stay in jail one more day. Watch to find out why. Tell me a little bit about yourself. To start it off, who I used to be and who I am now are two totally different people. Who I used to be was always looking for acceptance, always in search for family. I was that person who was cool with this gang, I was that person who was cool with this gang Just to get along, I was always looking for acceptance. I found it. I found my sense of family in the wrong habits of things, drug use, women, gangs, just street life. Each aspect that I grew into were all for the wrong reasons. It was mainly all searching for family and what my sense of love was at that time. So where did that searching in the wrong areas, where did that lead you in life? Well, it led me to a lot of disappointments, led me through a lot of disappointments. My sense of love, my sense of acceptance was attention and the attention that came from, it was always bad. I didn't ever have the good attention. So I never got a pat on my back for getting an A. I never got a pat on my back for winning something or for doing something good. I always got a spanking for doing something bad or I didn't get caught. And then I got that, when I didn't get caught, I'd tell my friends, so-called friends, about

it and we would laugh and have joyous times from it. For the most part, my acceptance was where I found most of my trouble because the people that I was accepted by were people who fell in line with addiction. For the longest time, I would have never called myself an addict. I just did it because everyone else was doing it. The journey of where I was and where the person that I was at one time was trouble. I was stealing things. The people that I hung out with were stealing things, was always in the gangs. Some marijuana was one of the first things that led me down the road of drugs. Then it just progressed as the days got more, but everybody wanted that bad boy. So that's what I tried to do. I tried to fit into what I felt society wanted. That's where I got the attention. It was never good attention. So you said you're a different person today. Tell me what led up to your change. So after so many years of joining this gang and joining that gang and in and out of jail and in and out of prisons, I got into my thirties. Things that I had always vowed that I would never do was use needles and things of that nature. Well, I met this female. And that's what she did. She used needles, methamphetamine, things of that nature. And it took me down a really hard road. So I was looking for acceptance. And I said the first charges that I ever caught in Sevier County Jail was trying to feed her. I was in Walmart. And I was stealing the stuff to make tater tot casserole. Yeah, and I got caught. And my book bag had tater tots, hamburger meat, cream of chicken soup. Those were my first charges in Sevier County. Well, those charges in Sevier County led to find out that I had warrants in

Georgia. When I got released from prison in 2014, they had lost my paperwork for my probation. So I took off. I was like, okay, I ain't got no probation. I'm gone. So I went and hung out in Oregon for two years. Well, things didn't progress good there. So I come back to try and help take care of my dad. And then I ended up meeting this girl. But as that progressed, I lost a lot of what I had already at that point. Just those little charges. Everything that I had built for a year or so, I lost because they got those charges. Sat in jail for seven days. I lost my job. I got an eviction on my apartment. It was rough. Well, that just spun everything else out of control. Those charges I battled for over two years in and out of jail. Bouncing from house to house, I ended up becoming more homeless than I was anything. But as that progressed, I ended up coming to a point where I got to the end of myself. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I just I was running the roads doing a bunch of stupid things. And then finally, I got over it. So in a progression of things in the end of 2019, I had a lot of things that I was fighting. A lot of spiritual essences that I didn't understand that I was opening doors to by doing the drugs that I was doing. But as I ended up leaving for work for whatever reason, I think I was going to go take a shower. I was homeless living at the scrapyard. Left from there. I don't even know how I got as far as I did. But somehow, I pulled over in Dollar General Market parking lot and had ran into one of the light poles. Passed out behind the wheel. Somebody wakes me up. Well, he wakes me up and I'm startled. I realized what I was doing. I was crashed into the light pole. So I backed up and I pulled out and just

drove off. Why he let me drove off, I have no clue. But apparently, the place that I needed to go take a shower was to the right. But I made a left. So I made a left and I went about a quarter mile down the road. So in Sevier County on Chapman Highway, you have Sevier County and then you got an eighth mile section that's Blount County and then from there is Knox County. So I ended up falling asleep, I guess, back behind the wheel and I crashed into a tree right beside a realty place. Well, I didn't go to jail that night. They took me to UT Hospital. But apparently, they had charged me with a DUI. But they didn't take me to jail that time. So I didn't even know that I had those charges of a DUI. So I ended up getting out of there and went back into the same old lifestyle, what I was doing. Still over myself, over everything that I was doing. Well, I went and stayed with my dad because I was bouncing around. Didn't have no place to stay. But end of 2019, beginning of 2020, I felt like something clicked in my head. I felt like I heard a trumpet go off. I don't know exactly what took place. That was right before the COVID thing had just started. So I had a desire. I knew God had a plan for me. I knew he had a plan for me. So I told my dad. I told him I wanted to try and figure out somehow to get to court because these charges had been over my head for so long. He's like, well, you know you're going to jail. I was like, yeah, well, I need to go do this. I need to find something out. My plan was to try and go and seek help.

I was going to go in there and try and see if I could get into some type of program or if I could get some help in some way. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I went in, went to jail just like I had assumed to the minimum security. It was misdemeanor, violation, probation stuff, so I was in there. I ended up coming across a book. I believe it was The Unforgivable Pardon or I'm probably misquoting it, but I'm not sure. I read that book and it was really good. It was about a drug dealer who turned his life around. He come and encountered God. At the end of his story, he had encountered Billy Graham. Billy Graham had told him that he had wrote a contract out with God. That intrigued me. I didn't know where it would go, but I've always felt, because I love to write, I do write poetry and things of that nature, but I felt putting pen to paper made it more substantial. I don't know how it did, but I didn't know, so I figured I'm going to try it. I wrote out a contract with God, asking him, giving myself to the Trinity, to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to be used as a tool for their glory to show and to do as he sees fit. That night, I'd done it with such a sincere heart. The way that I worded it out, the way that I wrote it, I felt this burning inside of me. I didn't know really what it was, but I felt real good about it. That night, I was laying down and I actually tried to pray. As I started to pray, I was asking God what to do, what the next step was. How was I to know that he was with me in the essence of where I was going? I just started seeing these things that I had done. Visually, it's hard to really explain, but it was like a movie playing in my head of things that I had done. I felt the remorse for them, so I thought, repent.

That's what I heard it echoing in my spirit, repent. I repented for each thing that was brought in front of my eyes. The next day, I had such a fire in me to read the word. I understood it. I didn't know. I understood it. It was phenomenal. It was phenomenal. That progressed. The things that I had, right after that, I fasted for like three days because my idea of fasting at that time was to fast for something. I wanted God to move in my life, so I wanted to go into a program or something because I knew I couldn't do it myself. I couldn't do it. I was praying and I was asking God to show me. I was reading his word while things progressed. At the end of my three-day fast, I had a lady come in and give me an interview for a program. I went through. The interview was good. I thought everything was good. Two weeks later, it goes by and they tell me that my application got denied. I'm like, wow, well, it turns out I have such a violent history. They were like, we can't accept you in. Things progressed. I ended up getting released. After I got released, I stayed sober for probably a month and a half, reading the word daily. I was preaching to everybody I come in contact with. I was just sharing what God was sharing with me. Everything went good. My dad invited me to come to his place and help him do something one night.

I went to his place and I took a girl with me. A lot of stuff progressed. I ended up doing some crack cocaine with him after staying up for three days working, not doing anything. I was staying up trying to help him work because he was only doing scrap metal and working at night. Things progressed from there and me and him ended up getting into it. He stabs me in the gut with my own knife. A lot of other in-between, but it's all circumstantial stuff. From there, I ended up living off of Chapman Highway at Floyd's Market in Floyd's Market parking lot. I lived in Floyd's Market parking lot for six months, living in and out of vans and cars. I actually built me a little house off of the side of one of their fences that was there. It was crazy. I did that there for the longest time. I actually come to the end of myself again when I was being attacked. After I got back in the habit of hanging out with certain people, doing drugs again, I got right back into the same routines. The night that I ended up getting caught and put back into Blount County Jail, I was out wandering the streets. I had eaten some Xanaxes, and I had done a lot of the stuff that I shouldn't have done. I don't even really remember fully what I was doing, but in my head, one of the girls that I was hanging out with needed help. She had no food. The place that she was at, she was stranded. I had a book bag on my back that had like three cans of beef stew in it and things of that nature. I was coming to her. Somehow, I ended up in Blount County.

I was on Highway 411. I was just walking towards where I thought was going towards her, but apparently, I was going into Blount County. At that time, I got this weird idea to check people's mailboxes as I was walking down the road. You don't know how many people actually leave mail in their mailboxes. At three o'clock in the morning, I was like, what? I started peeking through them like an idiot while somebody seen me doing that, and they called the law. Well, the law searched my book bags. They searched everything on me and then found out I had a warrant for that DUI. The DUI where you crashed into the tree in that tiny little section that was Blount County. I had never been to Blount County a day in my life until I went to Blount County in a police car to Blount County Jail. I get to Blount County Jail, started watching Rio Revolution services on the tablet. It's the only free thing on the tablet, right? Yes, ma'am. That's what I thought. It was very, very encouraging. It put me in a place. I didn't know about Rio Revolution Church at that time, but watching them services, I just had a draw. I was like, I need to go there. I ended up getting released from Blount County Jail. I had some charges. I finished all my charges in Sphere County. I finished all my charges there in Blount County, and they were getting ready to release me. When they released me, they were going to release me at like 10, 30, 11 o'clock at night. I had somewhere to go, but not anywhere that was good that would have kept me, and I felt

the drive to go to Rio Revolution Church. I asked them if I could stay another night there at Blount County. They're like, no, you have been released. You cannot stay another night. I was like, well, I don't want to go out there, because I'm—he's like, well, that's fine. You can stay in—they let me stay in the visitation room, or rather where they have visitation where the kiosks and stuff are. They fed me, let me stay there. They gave me a pillow and a blanket, and let me hang out in visitation. I left the next morning. I waited until about 8, 30, 9 o'clock, and then I walked over to the probation, because I knew I had probation left over, because it was an 11, 29 probation. I was like, I have to have probation left over from the DUI, so I'm going to go over here and report in, and then find out where this church is at, and I'm going to go to that church. I go over there, and they tell me, nope, you're free. You're a free man. You can go do what you want, so I'm like, all right, well, how do I get to this church? They said, well, it's that way. They said, it's about five miles that way. You can't miss it. It's up on the left. So I started walking, and as I get up there, as I get close, I want to try—I'm tired. I want to try and find some place to sit down, and it starts raining, and the Holy Spirit is just kicking me, like, go, go, go. I come to find out later that if I would have stayed—if I would have sat and rested any longer than I would have, Dion wouldn't have been there at the time. So the way the Holy Spirit has worked everything together, once I got to the church, I knocked on the door. Dion was—

I opened the door, and we got to talking. She was the first person that I met at Rio Revolution Church. Dionne is awesome. She is very awesome. She helped me to plan out and figure out what the next steps were. We reached out to True Purpose, and at first they were telling us they were full. They didn't have no beds. They didn't have anything. So we got in the middle of prayer. We sat there, and we both started praying. In the middle of our prayer, we got a text message that said, they'll put me in a closet somewhere. It was just the way God worked it out. So I ended up going to True Purpose and learning the spiritual essence of God, learning the biblical principles that I'm grounded on now. So the person that I used to be, I used to be a people pleaser, someone who wanted to be accepted in every aspect. I tried to be gang members of three different types of gangs. I went to prison just to be accepted in some area. Now I am a son of God. I push forth every day to—I get up first thing in the morning, I put on my armor, my shods of peace, my belt of truth, my breastplate of righteousness, my helmet of salvation, my shield of faith. I keep up at all times. He is—the enemy's always searching, always trying to find that open door he can get in. So suiting myself up, studying my word, for that is the sword that we use to defend ourselves. As Jesus used the word of God, we are to use the word of God in any type of temptation. The struggles are real. It isn't an everyday thing still. It's a decision we have to do each and every day to not live the ways of the flesh, because

the ways of the flesh are so drawing, because it's here now and it's immediate. So when you were sitting in Blount County Jail, watching Real Revolution on the tablets, did you ever think that one day your story, your testimony, was going to be shared on those same tablets? That just—I'm in awe. That's amazing. What he is doing and how he is doing it, it is—I'm in awe. And this is—so all the circumstances of each time that Pacer has shared my story off that pulpit, and the lives that I've seen, and the people that I've seen do the same thing that I have done, and the turnover rate of the success that God has used that in their lives and used that from that is just—I'm in awe of his glory in every aspect. It's amazing. It is. It is. So if you could say something to those people that are watching it, that are in the same place that you were just a—how long ago was that, just two, three years? Three years ago. Three years ago. If you could say something to those people that are in that life where you were just three years ago, what would you like to say to them? Surrender. Submitting and surrender. He said, trust in the Lord with all of thy heart, with all thy mind, and all thy soul. Lean not on your own understanding. Acknowledge him in all your ways and he will direct your paths. So surrenderance. Each day I get up and I surrender my day. I give my day back to him. However he wants to use me, however I can be used better. So if I leave anybody with a scripture, I'd leave them with Luke or Matthew 10, 39.

He who finds his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it. So if you want a life, if you want something, Jesus wants it more for you than you do. So following him is a daily, daily surrenderance. I love that you just wanted so badly to be loved and accepted, and then you discovered that you were loved and accepted by your Creator, your Heavenly Father. But then beyond that, he blesses us beyond measure because he's brought... you to a church, to a program, he's brought you a wife, all who love and accept you, right? And so he took your desire that you tried to satisfy yourself through the world and said, when you surrender to me, I can give you exceedingly abundantly more than you could ask, think, or imagine. And I love that. I've wanted family my entire life. It's always been a draw. I love being able to communicate and be able to, I'm an open book. I always have been. I've been more so now because I'm not ashamed of my actions. I'm not ashamed of my decisions. But in the aspects of family, his family is so vast and it's so encouraging and so loving. When you can walk in to a building and not be ashamed or not feel any type of way besides love, it is beyond the greatest thing in the world. That's awesome. It's such a great testimony. It's such a beautiful picture of restoration. And I love just this circle of where you were, who you used to be. Like you said, who you are today are totally different people, but God's using who you are today to reach who you used to be. And it's just such a beautiful picture of his love and his grace and his mercy. And so I'm glad you're not ashamed. I'm glad you're willing to share everything that you went through because there are going to be a lot of people watching that relate to where you've been, relate to how you were feeling and can see this awesome picture of restoration and can surrender and achieve that too. Yeah. So thank you so much for sharing that and for that verse and everything else and just for being with us today. It's my pleasure to be part of his story. Amen. Thank you so much for watching. Wasn't that an incredible story? Mitchell's passion is such an inspiration and how he is living his life today is amazing. The verse he quoted is so beautiful that I wanted to share it again. It's Matthew 10 39. He who finds his

life will lose it. And he who loses his life for my sake will find it. Mitchell spoke about two places I wanted to mention. The first is true purpose, which is a fantastic organization helping men and women lead lives of lasting sobriety in order to fulfill their God given purposes. The other was the church he walked to from jail. That was real revolution church where you are welcome regardless of the choices you have made in the past. They are a church that preaches the gospel, makes disciples and serves the community. Also join us next week to hear another incredible story and be sure to subscribe or follow so you never miss an episode. Most importantly, I pray you know that no matter how far you have run from God, it is never too late. There is always hope because you are loved.