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VISALIA, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - Seventy Rescue Mission representatives from astir the federation hosted Conversations connected a Bench Thursday.
The lawsuit was birthed by the Fresno Mission, but has present dispersed crossed the country.
Visalia Rescue Mission CEO Michael Simmon joined that effort to rise consciousness astir homelessness successful Tulare County.
“This successful nary mode is expected to simulate similar this is what homelessness looks like,” Simmon said. “I’m sitting connected the seat for astir 24 hours. This is astir conscionable having dialogue.”
From 12 p.m. Thursday to 12 p.m. Friday, Simmon is welcoming assemblage members, on with a agelong database of experts, pastors and survivors, to beryllium down and inquire him questions astir homelessness.
The conversations are live-streamed connected the Rescue Mission’s website.
He says sometimes radical are lone stateless for a fewer months, but often, they unrecorded without a location for decades.
YourCentralValley.com sat down with Simmon for 1 of those conversations, asking, “What benignant of trauma is usually, successful your experience, associated with that galore years without a home?”
Simmon answered, “Physical unit against themselves oregon their assemblage oregon their friends. They're watching them, their friends, get attacked oregon die, whether that's done overdose oregon you sanction it.”
He says if idiosyncratic is stateless for a agelong time, they volition inevitably make a intelligence illness, which helium says they often medicate with drugs.
When radical travel to the Rescue Mission for help, it is not his contiguous volition to find them a location and a occupation and springiness them a database of responsibilities.
His archetypal precedence is making them consciousness loved and valued to assistance them reconstruct their consciousness of identity.
“We person this cardinal content that radical are created successful God's image. And so, due to the fact that of that, they merit honor,” Simmon said.
No 1 sings the program’s praises similar those who person made it to the different side.
Simmon pulled 1 of the Rescue Mission employees, Douglas Powe,r implicit to the seat to stock his story.
“I was looking astatine 26 years successful 3 antithetic states, and there's nary different mode to accidental it, but God wiped the slate clean,” Power said.
Power came to the Rescue Mission a twelvemonth and a fractional ago, looking for help.
What helium recovered was anticipation and freedom.
“God's with america here. And, you know, determination is much to beingness than struggling,” Power said. “You don't person to beryllium bound successful chains.”
Now, Power has joined the Visalia Mission to rescue others from the aforesaid pit.
