I was having health problems and was unable to work for a time in my life. I was near homeless, sleeping on relatives' floors, yet I felt the pressures of looking for a job and finding an apartment. I realized during this experience that homelessness could happen to anyone. I did not own my own car and public transportation in my area only ran certain times during the day. This made it very difficult to have the flexibility required for some employment. I also tried to apply for governmental assistance to help me until I could get back on my feet. I was greatly disappointed by the blocks and obstacles I met within a very uncaring system.

Thanks to the love, care, and generosity of the Homeless Is Not My Choice ministry, I am no longer sleeping on floors but have a warm, stable, and beautiful home. I am eating nutritious and delicious food and am regaining my health. I am also learning many skills to be of service to my brothers and sisters. I am enjoying learning the arts of baking and cooking, herbology, and being a caregiver for the elderly.

I am very grateful and blessed for the ministry of Homeless Is Not My Choice in my life.

In 2002, I found myself homeless and living in a domestic violence shelter with my young child. Years before, I had had the courage to break away from a violent relationship but my son's father still had a very controlling hand over us. I had reached out for help in many ways, but the uncaring and greedy system failed to protect us, and the day came when he brutally assaulted both of us. I know personally the struggles of becoming suddenly homeless and not knowing what to do next.

It was a great blessing to me at that time that I was in touch with some of the staff from Homeless Is Not My Choice who gave me much support and encouragement. They shared the same vision that I had of actually creating a society where domestic violence and homelessness are unheard of. As soon as I was able to, I moved and joined the team of Homeless Is Not My Choice. Ever since, I have had so many opportunities to improve my life and to truly heal. I receive spiritual counseling and direction, live in a beautiful home, eat all-organic and nutritious meals, and have been able to expand my vocational skills, including becoming a CNA. The greatest gift is being a part of a team that truly serves the whole, where no soul will ever be left behind.

It can be challenging for a person to keep their dignity while experiencing homelessness. I will be forever grateful for the loving support of Homeless Is Not My Choice during my most trying hours.

Words are inadequate to convey my indebted gratitude to this ministry. When I found them I had no money, no home, no prospects, and little hope. Not only was I given beautiful housing and delicious, home-cooked food, I was given purpose, family, identity, individuality, and vocation. Without the tireless love and service of the people here at Homeless Is Not My Choice, I would be in dire straights, certainly homeless and probably dead. Not only do I have a home now, I have dignity.

I became involved and have been working with Homeless Is Not My Choice since 1992. Previous to that I lived on the edge of homelessness for many years. I was incapable -- and unwilling -- to conform to or be a part of the system that is destroying the planet. So I lived as simply as possible, often in tipis and yurts, in rural or wilderness areas. I knew the constant stress of having very little money in a world that demands you to pay for everything. I lived off the discards of others, anguished over how to buy good shoes for my son, and lived for years without the benefit of adequate health care or any kind of material security.

My years with Homeless Is Not My Choice have blessed me in more ways than I can describe. I am a productive member of our community and have been given opportunities and support to develop skills and talents that I did not have before coming here. Now I can say with dignity that I am an experienced schoolteacher and tour guide, a folk musician, a published author, and coordinator of personnel & transportation for our multi-faceted ministry. I left the world of heartlessness under evil leaders and entered the world of caring community and wise eldership when I made the decision to engage with the opportunities provided by Homeless Is Not My Choice.

I grew up, as too many do, in a family with an alcoholic, abusive parent. In my schooling, I found myself unable to apply myself to a system training me to not only be greedy and selfish, but to serve corporate interests of powerful people who excelled in these ugly traits, discarding other people as if they are used junk. I dropped out of high school twice, in reality to make a definitive statement to myself and to others. In many ways my life was falling apart, and I could no longer comply with the demands of society.

This left me in circumstances of wandering... looking for my right destiny and vocation. At that time, I was quite unable to hold down a steady job. I wanted nothing to do with the system, yet I had to survive somehow. I stole food when I had to, to get by. I began searching for a bridge to my dreams. That was when, by God's Grace, I found Homeless Is Not My Choice, and thankfully they took me in. Since then, I have learned so much at the feet of very benevolent elders, who I found I could really trust, which I never had in my life before this. Without the guidance of these elders in my life, much of my real healing (and continuing healing) would have been impossible. I owe them much for this — and for coming along when they did. I shudder to think where I would have ended up without them. I have received much true education with Homeless Is Not My Choice, both vocational and spiritual; I have learned many skills and trades, becoming a productive member of society, and finding the opportunity to give back to others in need, as I was.

Since then I have been given the opportunity to write music, sing and play in a band, and sing in a professional choir. I have learned landscaping, sound engineering, farming and farm management, animal husbandry — all the while living in a family environment with trusting, loving relationships and friendships, being around and helping to teach children.

Without Homeless Is Not My Choice, I would not be nearly the man I am today, and would never have been able to maintain a stable relationship with my recent bride. I am so grateful to Homeless Is Not My Choice, and those wisely steering the loving arms of hope it has extended to not only catch so many in need, but to bring true healing, self-respect, and true love back into their lives. We all are in need of help sometimes.

As a child I grew up in the foster care system. At one point I became completely homeless. I suffered abuse and starvation, and I lived in fear. However, I did enjoy success as a horse- and wild-animal trainer and I also had a military career. Despite my outward success, within I was still that frightened homeless child. I can fully recommend the Homeless Is Not My Choice program because they don’t tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear in order to make changes necessary in your inner self. You are given such love and upliftment, which helps you gain stability and success in all areas of your life, as I have now done.

As a young child living on the beach with my mother in Hawaii, I began a lifetime of feeling lost in a materialistic society that made no sense to me. Throughout my formative years, no matter where I lived — whether in Southern Georgia where I moved to at a young age, or in the mountains of Wyoming where I often spent parts of the year — I found I could not deal with the impersonal educational system that was basically the same everywhere. Feeling more at home in nature and struggling with an alcoholic stepfather, I sought counseling at a young age but became more disconnected as a young teenager as I was at that time given a diagnosis of bipolar and put on medication.
Always having sense of destiny and higher purpose, I eventually found the genuine ministry and service of Homeless Is Not My Choice. I have since gained self-esteem based on love and service for others and the value of giving of one's self to serve another. Thanks to the love and care of both the Personality Integration Rehabilitation and the Homeless Is Not My Choice programs, I have also learned that solving many of the problems I have faced in life must start from looking within. My strengthened sense of service and purpose has helped me to use the valuable skills and vocational training I have received to now bless others.
I am especially grateful for my beautiful family and for the continued personal and group counseling that is provided for us. All this in a beautiful EcoVillage and sustainable-living community where my lifestyle can match the ethics I hold in my heart. I can honestly say that Homeless Is Not My Choice saved my life and has been invaluable to me as I've trained under their guidance to become a school teacher, artist, singer, cook, and actualizing human being who has found much hope and vision for the future.

Would I be homeless if I weren’t here in this program? And was I homeless before I came here? Well, I never considered that I would have ended up being on the streets because of always finding a job with the many skills I had and the way I was brought up with the work ethic: “A man isn’t a man if he doesn’t work.” But I was very lonely without a higher spiritual family, feeling quite alone because my biological family did not really give me the higher spiritual family that I needed, and thus I felt empty — I guess like a homeless person would feel on the streets.
Life wasn’t perfect growing up or making a living and I was wanting to be an artist, so I had to compromise in many situations to earn an income and still manage to do a little art. I struggled finding the right job to support my ambition and dreams of doing art. When I chose to quit my postal and landscape jobs and spend my whole time on a project called “The World Peace Trail Project,” I took a leap of faith — with The URANTIA Book in one hand and the Scriptures in the other. I lived on the road, sleeping in my four-wheel drive Chevy Blazer, promoting and researching the peace project.
So yes, for one year I was without a home. But having faith in God, I got through and was led to the Homeless Is Not My Choice program. Finding a group of people who treated me like family was the greatest gift. I didn’t quite understand, in the beginning, why I felt so connected to many of the people here. I soon would learn about the concept of cosmic family and that my soul is not from this earth (which I never felt like I was anyway). And when I found Homeless Is Not My Choice, I heard very clearly from that same Voice that led me through all the muck and hardship, “You are Home, you can relax now, you are Home.”

I’m 60 years old and a classic alcoholic who has come to the end of his road. If not for this place, my next move would have been my last: death from bad choices in addiction.

I grew up in Connecticut in an upper middle class household with five brothers and sisters. My father, a brilliant man and alcoholic, moved us to Indiana when I was 17. I got a degree at Indiana University and moved to California, where he died at age 53 from acute alcoholism. From there I started a successful 35-year executive career in media with major companies like CNN and NBC Universal. I raised two beautiful children with my then wife, but my growing addiction destroyed all of that. I moved from having a functional life up until my 50s, to eventually having a life of complete despair and hopelessness from these choices.

I was stuck and out of control, economically and spiritually bankrupt. By the time I was 58, I was weeks away from homelessness with no clear way out of the situation I had put myself in. My vicious addiction to alcohol and false identity based on material attachments had literally torn my life apart. My anger, fear, and resentments had put me in a Godless life that was dissolving right in front of me. I ended up in a rescue mission in another state. It was there I discovered Homeless Is Not My Choice and the Personality Integration Rehabilitation Program (PIRP). They graciously accepted me.

I thank God for His mercy, compassion, and divine intervention, leading me to this place and program. The PIRP and Homeless Is Not My Choice healing ministries saved my life because they literally healed my mind, body, and spirit (soul). I am a hopeless alcoholic when left to myself, in a state of mind of false attachments, addiction, and despair. The PIRP program solved these issues and taught me new ways of thinking that focused on spiritual trust and faith of God our Father. I now have hope and am learning how to ‘Walk in Faith’ with Him. I learn new things every day here. I am more actualized and prospering in new spiritual ways, focusing on serving others — an orientation of service rather than self-assertion; doing what God wants, not what I want.

The Homeless Is Not My Choice ministry has provided me a home with a family of great people who truly care about my wellbeing! The two programs work side by side, supporting all areas in which I need to grow and heal. For me, addiction and homelessness started with wrong thinking and a bad attitude and choices that created a distorted state of mind. The leadership here clearly knows that and have the experience with God to truly heal. I am safe and trust them, getting better each day.

I now walk in faith, never to return to the choices I made in the past. I am free, sober, productive, and with a home. With family. I am grateful, to me this place is a miracle.

The high road is hard to find, but you will find it here.

I left home when I was 12 — not in the literal sense of losing my home and family and being out on the street, but in moving away from my childhood home to a foreign country, which marked the beginning of a gradual process of alienation and a loss of the feeling of having an established "home" and "family" that I still, to this day, am dealing with the effects of.

I was 19 when I physically left my parents’ house, although I had left emotionally long before that, which I believe now was mostly due to my family’s spiritual disenfranchisement: the faithless agnosticism of my father and the divided loyalty of my mother between her husband and the Catholic Church. I was almost completely spiritually directionless, and I had few life skills or preparation for the real world, so when the rubber met the road, I was almost completely unprepared for the challenges that I would be facing in making a living on my own.

It wasn’t long until I found that I was really unable to be “on my own”, and that without my parents’ financial assistance, I would have been out on the street — and I was never far from it. When I did have a place to live, most of the time I slept on the floor because I had no money for furniture and barely enough money for food and utilities.

Along with this experiential and financial poverty came a paradoxical sense of entitlement that had been instilled in me by the Great American Dream: that I was supposed to have everything I wanted, that life would be easy and free, so why wasn’t it happening for me? I was unconsciously deeply resentful of not getting what I thought I was supposed to have and found it very hard to stay in a job for long. The kind of help and guidance I needed, especially of a spiritual nature, was absent, and after hitting the hard bottom of deep despair, discouragement, and disappointment, I was able to find Homeless Is Not My Choice ministry and I wasted no time in getting there.

It was more than just a shelter for the homeless, but a holistic healing/training program that worked to root out the causes of my emotional dysfunctions and gave me a solid environment in which to grow and bring out the talents that I would have in no way been able to manifest otherwise, due to just trying to survive. That was 20 years ago. Over time, due to the tremendous patience and love of dedicated ministers, I was able to gain new perspectives about life and what it means to have meaningful and exciting work, and to grow in self-respect and self-confidence. I was given the opportunity to develop my talents in music and technology in a way that I never would have had otherwise.

Most of all though, I was given a consciousness of dignity that had been lost in my early years, and I gained spiritual understanding of ministering to those in need. I have learned the value of sacrificing my own selfish desires for the good of others, and my children are raised with these high spiritual values. Whereas before I was in pursuit of my “self,” according to the values of the dominant culture, I now pursue things of eternal value, even the Fruits of the Spirit which are: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

My debt to all the staff and the Homeless Is Not My Choice ministry — who took me in and gave me a life to live despite my ingratitude, confusion, anger, and selfish entitlement — is enormous, and one I will be forever grateful to repay in service and love to all of those people who are in the same boat I was in, giving away freely what I have been given.

When I found Homeless Is Not My Choice I had spent the last of my money renting a trailer and had been camping in the Arizona desert for weeks with a torn up tent. I had left my home and family in Ypsilanti, Michigan because I felt trapped. My family had wanted me to pursue modeling, find a husband and get a degree. I had been in school for 6 years on scholarships yet was unable to graduate because of prejudice against environmental studies students. I couldn't imagine just trying to make it for myself in a world that was (and still is) falling apart.

I couldn't make sense of what was happening in the world, I also felt that I needed help to see how I could personally change because I felt very damaged. I had a lot of social issues but didn't want to be put on the antidepressants that I had been put on as a teen.

When I enrolled with Homeless Is Not My Choice, all I had was a computer and a tent to offer but I was relieved to be invited into a caring home in a beautiful sanctuary called Avalon EcoVillage. I was able to receive healing benefits from the Personality Integration Rehabilitation Program and still receive insightful support whenever I need. I am so grateful not only for a home for my head, but a home for my heart and soul, and a purpose in life — all thanks to the incredible souls in charge of Homeless Is Not My Choice. I am now a teacher and coordinator of children's schools, work in the beautiful gardens, and have a loving family. I am blessed to have good healthcare, all-organic meals, and many privileges that I never could have attained on my own. I receive free training and education in many areas, yet I don't have to compromise any ideals for a better world as I now have the blessing of trying to live up to those ideals by healing myself.

If it was not for "Homeless is not my choice" I would be either dead, behind bars, or just plain old homeless. I was unable to make money in the current monetary system. I knew that I had a higher calling, and even though my bank account was dwindling I was unable to force myself to get a job working for a corporation that I did not believe in.

Before I found "homeless is not my choice" the only honest job I could think of with my prior military skillset was a sanitation worker. Believe it or not I even had trouble finding a job opening in this field. I have been homeless in the past and I was getting close to losing the current apartment I was renting when I found "homeless is not my choice". Through the leadership of Van of Urantia I was able to find meaning in my existence, and a positive pride in honest labor. I owe my life, dignity and fulfillment to Van and this program.

A few months before I found Homeless Is Not My Choice ministry I had lost everything. I had a nice three bedroom house with a pool, a big flat screen television over the fireplace, a nice car and a dog. The company that I worked for was no longer in business and I had no means of income. I ended up sleeping on the couch of my cousin's apartment while the money I had left rapidly decreased. I applied everywhere but there were no jobs available. I became completely broke before I finally found a temp job mopping floors at a factory. I was living paycheck to paycheck and could not get ahead.

At this point I was living out of a duffle bag on the verge of becoming completely homeless because my cousin moved from his apartment and I could not uphold the rent on my own. Then I got fired from my temp job and I was stressing out. I did my research and found the Homeless Is Not My Choice ministry and they welcomed me with open arms and a genuine smile. I will be forever grateful, God bless!

Growing up in the lower middle class in the small city of Flagstaff, Arizona, I was blessed to have a single mother who was able to take care of all my medical needs and able to provide enough decent food for a small family of four. Though my material needs where somewhat met my spiritual needs where neglected. Because I had no spiritual elders in my life to teach me to be a true lover of people and life I fell into a near suicidal depression. Ultimately because of this I chose to drop out of high school. I was also unable to hold down even a minimal wage job, without getting fired or quitting.

Looking back I was lacking the values necessary to realize that disappointment and discouragement are part of life. We have a choice between debilitating depression and persevering joy. I did not realize this until I found the Homelessness is Not My Choice Program sponsored by Global Community Communication Alliance (GCCA). With hours of onsite job training and spiritual counseling I am now able to hold down a job that I love and I am learning the values that are essential to being a productive member of society. I can honestly say that without this program I could have very well ended up homeless or dead, and for that I am eternally grateful. I am now a full time volunteer for GCCA in hopes that I can help bless others with all the skills and values that this program has blessed me.

I was a spiritual orphan earlier in my life. The family I was blessed to grow up with were awesome. We were there for each other and many have a relationship with God. Yet I couldn't find actualization nor contentment until contributing to the meaningful work I have found here. I could see enjoying bohemian wandering adventures around the world or settling down to the grindstone to make a family and home, but I would be lost from my higher calling. The staff at Homeless Is Not My Choice are experts in helping people actualize their gifts and finding their higher meaning in life. No matter what work or service I tried, I never felt it was worthwhile until being blessed with the environment and structure for success that this ministry has provided for me.

Homelessness-Is-Not-My-Choice really put an interesting twist on my life. Before I was adopted by this heartwarming and dedicated organization, I was never able to find out to what, whom, and where I belonged. I spent several years couch and job hopping, lived on the streets of Germany at times or lived back home at my mom’s. Not that I didn’t love my mom, but living back home, trying to be an adult man standing on my own two feet, always brought additional shame to my life. I was very much unregulated, partied a lot and consumed massive amounts of drugs. I lied to myself and thought I had it all together. Everything around me constantly crumbled and I blamed everyone else and civilization as a whole. This added a lot of anger, resentment, and fear to my life, which I needed to compensate for by doing more drugs. I was on a path to self-destruct.

This wonderful program of Homelessness-Is-Not-My-Choice, and all its sub-programs such as the Personality Integration Rehabilitation Program, horsemanship, animal husbandry, gardening, carpentry, mechanics, cooking, one and one coaching and counselling, truly saved my life. It taught me so many things, such as how to live responsibly and respectfully with other human beings and nature, how to live healthfully and take care of my physical vehicle – the body, how to build and take care of a healthy environment, how to build a deep relationship with the Universal Creator, which I’m no longer ashamed to call God, and how to move into my personal destiny using my God-given talents.