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.

Donald Frink

“I came to Goodwill Rescue Mission the first time for the wrong reasons,” Donald, 33, admits. “I’d been drinking and I needed shelter. I decided it couldn’t hurt to know God. And I needed a place to get away … drop off the map for a few months.”

That first visit in 1995 lasted over eight months. Then just three weeks from graduating GRM’s discipleship program, Project Emmanuel, Donald left the Mission, got a job and an apartment — and started drinking again.

“It took five years to get back here,” Donald says. “To get my full attention, God had to allow me to be beaten down. I had jobs in catering, construction and tax preparation, but my life was a void. Every time I turned around I thought about the Mission. I had no peace. I had to come back.”

October 16, 2000, Donald returned to Goodwill Rescue Mission and Project Emmanuel. This time, he says, he came for the right reasons. “I needed God and rules to live by,” he explains.

A 10-year-old friend had introduced Donald to drugs and alcohol on his eighth birthday. Now, 25 years later, Donald tackled his life-long addiction with the help of Mission staff and God. “By then I knew I needed Him,” Donald says. “I learned to be in submission to Him and by submitting to Him, I could be in submission to others, too.” Feelings of alienation and rebellion fell away as Donald studied the Bible and dived into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. “And this is not a puppet thing,” Donald insists. “I check on what I am taught. Everything I need to know is in the Bible.”

During Donald’s nine-month commitment to Project Emmanuel, he worked diligently in the Mission’s mailroom and used GRM’s learning center to study for his GED (high school equivalency certificate).

Donald graduated from Project Emmanuel in mid June and is now part of the Mission’s 13-week Bridge Program, which if successfully completed, makes him eligible to become a resident assistant to a staff member. “I’m not all the way there yet — I still have issues to deal with,” he says. "But today, it hurts me inside if I do something I know offends God.”

Please pray for Donald and Project Emmanuel members who have given their full attention to God and to serving Him. Ask God how you can minister to them through Goodwill Rescue Mission.

Read other Stories of Hope

| | |