“I found out who they were and went to sit outside their trailer and kill them. That is when God got a hold of me and I knew I needed to get away from it all,” recalls Raymond.

Raymond had been a drug dealer for as long as he could remember. He taught his sisters to sell drugs and now one of them is dead because of it. The ironic thing is that, four years earlier, Raymond left the drug and gang scene. He states, “I ran out of reasons to call it honorable. There is no honor in dealing drugs. I used to lie to myself and say, what we were doing was good. We would go out and look for child molesters and bad people, but we ended up being the bad people. It just flew over my head that the drugs we were pushing was fueling all these peoples’ behaviors and causing more violent acts. I got out of prison and I left my neighborhood, I left my gang and I started walking with Christ.”

“I have three sisters. My older sister and I had problems because she got addicted to drugs. Last January she was murdered. It was part of the reason I came to the mission. Two days before I came to the mission, we had a community march in her memory against drugs and alcohol. My other sisters and I rallied the community because she was brutally murdered in a drug related hit.”

Eventually, Raymond found out who was responsible. Furious, he faced the temptation of revenge. He continues, “My parole officer mentioned Rescue Mission Alliance Victor Valley and told me to leave all the other stuff behind. I trusted in God and came out here and it saved my life. It saved me from taking revenge and ruining a whole community. All of my work for my sister would have been for nothing. Now, I’m representing Christ. The Lord says to be still and know that I am God. He says, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’

“I go to the outreaches here and see my sister in them. I feel responsible for my sister, but I also feel I am helping when I help people like her. This is a new season. They’ve caught the killers.”

Raymond’s journey found, not only, justice but joy as well. He says, “I love to interact with the community and make a difference. God showed his love to me by bringing me here and I get to share that love with others. It’s a long way from my old life where I was hurting people to now be out there loving them.”

Thanks for giving to the mission and doing your part to change lives in our community!