Goodwill Rescue Mission

Our Mission

Goodwill Rescue Mission offers help and hope to North Jersey’s urban poor and dispirited.

•	For mind and body: food, clothing, shelter, training and teaching.
•	For soul and spirit: the life-changing message of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ.

Special Project

Hope Totes
Can you join us in this front-line ministry by collecting items to fill the totes?
Click here for more info.

The Straight Path Home — Yuma Hardy

When Yuma Hardy was a teenager, he dreamed of going to college on a wrestling scholarship. Instead, he wound up living a nightmare. By his mid-20s, he was hooked on drugs, dealing dope and committing robberies to fund his habit.

In 1992, Yuma’s childhood came to an abrupt end when his father and stepmother were incarcerated and the government seized their home and possessions.

“I was 16 when my folks went to prison, and that’s when I went into a rebellious period,” he explains. After graduating from high school, Yuma didn’t go on to college, as he’d dreamed—the money was no longer there.

Instead, he joined the Navy. While in the service, he married and had two children. But his marriage turned sour, and when he was released from active duty, the couple divorced.

“It was a confusing time,” Yuma recounts. “My marriage had just ended, I missed my kids, I was unemployed. So I got into the club scene.”

Soon, he was hooked on drugs. He funded his habit by selling drugs and holding up drug dealers and gas stations. “When I actually did my first robbery, I realized I found a new high,” he explains. “It was like an addiction—it was exciting to me.”

“The law let him go,
but God held him tight.”

Before long, Yuma was arrested, and while he awaited trial, he joined our Project Emmanuel Recovery Program, hoping that would help him get a lighter prison sentence. Then a curious thing happened: The law let him go, but God held him tight.

“The smoke started to clear, and I saw things for what they were," Yuma says. “I saw the life I was living wasn’t the life intended for me.”

After graduating from our program, Yuma became an assistant to Rev. Ken Thomas, program director. “It was awesome,” he remembers. “It’s an incredible thing to go to work and know you’ve helped someone.”

Today, Yuma lives in North Carolina with his wife and two of his children. He works as a machine operator in a wiring plant. And every day, he draws on the principles he learned while at GRM. He says, The Mission taught me I am an overcomer.”

Read other Stories of Hope

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