Teen Challenge alums tell their addiction-recovery stories

Teen Challenge International of Mid-America held its annual donors banquet Saturday night at the Show Me Center.

Thousands filled the hall as the Teen Challenge Mid-America Choir performed inspirational music before several people testified as to how Teen Challenge helped them turn their lives around.

First was Brady Boyce, 23, of Ohio, who as a child saw his mother struggle with alcoholism.

He later would become addicted to opiates and become homeless and later suicidal.

He said at first, he resisted accepting the gospel, but the support of Teen Challenge staff helped him.

Jeri Hill presents the keynote address at the annual banquet of Teen Challenge International of Mid-America on Saturday at the Show Me Center.Fred Lynch

"I no longer confuse love as a pleasure or feeling," he said. "[Love] is what [Christ] has done for me. It's God."

Orin da Bellamonte, a former drug addict, said he had a jailhouse epiphany that led him to accept Christianity.

"It was there that God began to work in me," he said. "It was at that Teen Challenge that I was able to work it out."

Keynote speaker Jeri Hill, wife of the late evangelist Steve Hill, spoke about her and her husband's ministry. She, like many of the men in Teen Challenge, had a troubled childhood.

She said she was born after her mother was raped at 17.

The Rev. James Bolin, executive director of Teen Challenge International of Mid-America, speaks at its annual banquet Saturday at the Show Me Center.Fred Lynch

She once turned to drugs, but while enrolled in Teen Challenge, she eventually turned to God.

"He changed my life," she said. "He transformed me."

She said even though some people get skeptical -- often new pupils are withering skeptics -- but asserted Teen Challenge does good in the community.

"Someone told me once, 'You're brainwashed,'" she said. "I said, 'I needed my brain washed.' ... Once Teen Challenge gets into your spirit, you can't let it go. It's a family you can't let go of."

She then offered the audience members a challenge of their own.

"Are you doing everything you can to reach the people around you?" she asked.

The Rev. James Bolin, executive director of Teen Challenge, said thanks to donations, the program has been able to do some impressive things in the past year.

"If we get much bigger, we're gonna need more room up here," he said. "Our vision is to expand. Our goal is to try to reach every drug addict in America and in the world."

Teen Challenge has added 40 beds to the 300 it already offered, built a prayer tower and constructed a staff room -- all debt-free, Bolin said.

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