Teen Challenge hosts annual spring banquet Saturday: 'Our mission is to go further'

Adult and Teen Challenge Mid-America (ATCMA) hosted its annual spring banquet with a message focused on “an open door to hope” Saturday at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau.

This marks 41 years for the organization “putting hope within reach,” according to executive director of ATCMA the Rev. James Bolin. The event, he said, “set an all-time high” for attendance.

Following dinner and performances featuring the ATCMA worship team, 34-year-old Jake Scott was the first to present his testimony to the crowd.

Scott, a 2014 graduate of the program and now staff at ATCMA, said his story is more common than what most are willing to believe.

After his parents divorced at the age of 10, Scott turned to whatever addiction he could to cope, he said, and labeled himself as atheist in searching for his identity.

Guests are seen browsing the silent auction items during the Adult and Teen Challenge Mid-America annual spring banquet Saturday at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau.JOSHUA HARTWIG

“By the age of 21,” Scott said, “I thought I had done and seen it all. ... At this point, I had done every drug I said I’d never do.”

In November 2017, he awoke in a hospital with his mother at his bedside, he said, after having overdosed for the fifth time that year. But something inside him changed, Scott said.

And in December 2017, his life began to transform for the better after coming into contact with Teen Challenge.

It was there Scott experienced his “God moment,” he said, while learning how to build “his firm foundation on God’s promises.”

Scott said the staff led by example and taught with passion, listening with empathy to his struggles, while teaching him “the way to freedom through a relationship with Jesus Christ.”

“It was the program I so desperately needed,” he said. “It was there that I found my identity, my true identity.”

Jon Kraus, 47, was up next, speaking on how his life also had changed. He graduated from the program in 2004.

“I was hopeless, I had lost everything,” Kraus said of his life before becoming part of Teen Challenge.

Kraus could take credit for one thing, he said, and that was being “a willing participant in God’s will.”

Fast-forwarding to today, Kraus said he is married to a beautiful, Godly woman, and has two beautiful daughters.

“I thought Teen Challenge was just a Christian drug rehab ... for me, Teen Challenge was a cardiac rehabilitation center, specializing in heart transplants,” he said.

Bolin said while pointing to the men standing behind him, “These are more than just men back here. They’re miracles. ... We’ve got a room full of miracles right behind me.”

He said the answer to addiction in America “is not another pill, it is not another prescription; the answer to the addiction problem is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. ...”

Bolin also told the crowd of an expansion to the local facility.

“I am proud to announce, that in approximately eight weeks, we will begin construction of our brand-new, 48-bed induction center that will be located on the campus of Adult and Teen Challenge Mid-America Cape Girardeau,” Bolin said.

With that addition, he said, more than 230 beds will be made available on the campus.

People will ask Bolin, he said, if he’s happy with what he already has.

To that, he said, “We will not stop until we have reached every addict in America looking for help. Our mission is to go further. ...”

According to the organization’s website, the program ministers to men ages 17 and older — many in their 20s, 30s, 40s and older — from all walks of life because addiction knows no age boundaries, education or social class.

Adult and Teen Challenge Mid-America oversees between 130 and 140 students during a 10-month duration, the website stated.

jhartwig@semissourian.com

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