NOVEMBER 5, 2009 ISSUE
Freedom Farm Ministries Hosts Celebration Banquet
Local Rehabilitation Program Has Directed 489 Participants to the Arms of Jesus to Break Addiction
A number of the 489 men who have participated in Freedom Farm Ministries program since its inception three years ago stand onstage during the celebration banquet. Robbie Collie, FFM executive director, addresses the crowd. Photo by Corinne Saunders
One couples’ vision has, over the course of the past three years, forever affected the lives of 489 men who, as former drug addicts, have sought help in the form of Freedom Farm Ministries—a nonprofit organization based in Ashe and Watauga counties that offers a three-step, faith-oriented rehabilitation program.
Robbie Collie, a longtime cocaine and heroin addict, moved to the area eight years ago, participating in Hebron Colony Ministries’ program to end his chemical dependency.
He subsequently had a vision of a three-step program to not only help other men put a stop to their addictions but also to help re-integrate them into the workforce and world, using the Bible as the basis for the program. He and his wife Rita Collie founded Freedom Farm Ministries (FFM) in 2006.
The Safe House, also known as the Arms of Jesus, is located on an isolated, 36-acre farm in Ashe County. The Arms of Jesus represents the first phase of the program, providing a place of refuge for those in serious trouble with drug addictions.
“We get referrals from pastors, parents [and] parole officers,” said Stephanie Davis, administrative assistant for FFM. “Literally, their life is in danger,” she said of the men who are referred.
The second step of the program is the Restoration House, which is also located in rural Ashe County. Men who have already made a yearlong commitment to the entire program enter into a regimented schedule at this site, focusing on their past, present and future, and allowed no television or tobacco products and little time away from the cabin.
The final phase is the Discipleship Living Center (DLC), where men are encouraged to continue in their spiritual growth while re-integrating themselves back into society by reentering the workforce and receiving pastoral counseling for personal issues, as well as for mending broken relationships with family.
During the Freedom Farm Celebration Banquet, which took place last Friday night, three of the eight men who participated in a silent presentation hold up signs representing their lives before participating in Freedom Farm Ministries’ three-step program to break addictions. Photo by Corinne Saunders
Participants also take “borderline seminary” classes during this phase, Davis said. Her husband Eric Davis is director of the DLC, and together, the two couples comprise the four main staff members of the nonprofit, she said.
A celebration banquet, held at Alliance Bible Fellowship on Friday, October 30, served about 300 people, according to Davis.
The celebration featured live music, dinner and desserts, speeches and a silent presentation, in which men stood on the stage holding up signs with their longtime problems written on one side and then flipped the signs over to reveal messages of hope and rehabilitation on the other.
Hod Verble, a 25-year-old program graduate whose sign read “Relapse” on one side and “God’s Grace” on the other, spoke after the silent presentation.
“The best day in addiction doesn’t compare to the worst day in Christ,” Verble said.
Verble struggled to break out of a cycle of relapsing into drug use, he said. He went through “several secular programs” and relapsed each time, and, after entering into the FFM program, he stopped participating in program activities “and it wasn’t long before I was using again,” he said.
He found the drug use more unsatisfying that time, he said, and ended up calling Robbie Collie.
“He was so glad to hear my voice,” Verble said, adding that Collie encouraged him to come back to FFM, and he did and was finally able to overcome his addiction.
Other men who have been through the program have similar stories to tell.
“I was dead in addiction—lost—but I found a new purpose in life in Jesus Christ, and Freedom Farm helped put that purpose in me,” said Willie Johnson, a former crack cocaine addict.
Men hold up signs reflecting their lives after participating in the Freedom Farm Ministries program at the celebration banquet. Once they flipped their signs over, their families joined them onstage. Photo by Corinne Saunders
Johnson is from Goldsboro, and although he would try to stop using the drug while living there, people who knew him would flag him down when they saw him around town, he said, and the cycle would continue.
Johnson began a rehabilitation program through Bethel Colony of Mercy, and “they referred me here,” he said. “This is my safe place. I don’t have that here,” he said of the temptation to fall back into use through people who knew the addiction waving him down to sell to him.
Johnson, who came to FFM on April 29, 2008, moved into his own apartment last week. He now holds a job and remains clean.
“It’s not me that’s done anything,” Johnson said of breaking the addiction. “I couldn’t do it. It’s Jesus Christ that did it.”
The Safe House can be occupied by 20 men, the Restoration House has room for nine to 10, and the four DLC houses hold five to six men each, bringing the program enrollment to 48 to 50 total men at a time, Robbie Collie said, adding that this is an ideal number where personal relationships can still be forged with each participant.
“[FFM] is the only Christian Safe House in the U.S.,” he said, adding that it boasts the only discipleship program, which is a part of the third phase.
“Most turn into a halfway house,” he said of other rehabilitation programs. “Drugs and women start getting brought in, [but] this is a pure ministry of God. Four hundred and eighty-nine men have come through FFM in three years.”
Rod Fries, one of the estimated nearly 100 current and former participants who attended the banquet, came to FFM in July.
“I’m going to be 62,” Fries said. “I had a 40-year addiction to alcohol.”
Fries, originally from Philadelphia, Penn., had attended a number of AA meetings before, he said, but was never able to stop drinking before he enrolled in the FFM program, which he heard of through a friend who had a relative complete the program.
Fries regularly slept under a bridge or outside a BI-LO store in Gastonia before coming to FFM. Fries had lived with his daughter in Gastonia for a time, but because of his ongoing drinking, “she’d had enough of me,” he said.
“This has been a transformation,” Fries said of his experience with FFM. “A total, 100 percent transformation. I can’t say enough about Rita and Robbie. I can’t say enough about the program. Once I turned my life around, I don’t wake up in the morning and walk on rose petals, but it’s been different.”
Fries has committed to stay in the program for at least one year, he said.
Since coming to FFM, Fries, who has six children, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild, has begun improving relationships with his offspring. Renewing the relationships is not something that can happen overnight, but Fries has found the small steps forward encouraging, he said, adding that some of his children came up to attend the Woolly Worm Festival a few weeks ago.
During the banquet, Rita Collie announced that an anonymous donor gave the former Boone Church of God property, located on Highway 421 near the Highway 105 Bypass to FFM. The organization will use the property for office space and classrooms, and it plans to put computers in to give program participants opportunities to pursue their GEDs and apply for jobs online, she said.
Among other speakers at the celebration banquet were John and Janice Branstrom, parents of an FFM graduate, who shared their experiences with their son’s addiction and enrollment with FFM. Janice now serves on the board of directors for FFM.
Rita Collie encouraged attendees to fill out cards on the tables to sign up to receive the FFM newsletter. The cards also provided options of getting involved in the ministry by pledging to pray for or donating to the nonprofit.
For more information, call 828-964-2914 or click to www.freedomfarmministries.org.
Community Interest
News & Notes
Events
Arts & Entertainment
