'This is what we do': Recovering addicts street preach, offer shelter to Akron homeless
Six people — addicts, alcoholics and a former prostitute — found a flyer from a recovery church in Toledo. Now, they live together in Akron offering shelter and salvation to others.
Pastor Kenneth Ivory said God called him to Akron last year when the head of Toledo Restoration Church tapped him and his wife, Peggy, to take up residence in a cramped apartment house on Excelsior Street in Akron’s Middlebury neighborhood. The couple met in the church and married after overcoming their separate battles with crack cocaine.
Peggy joined the church in 1996 when she and her 3-year-old daughter entered Women’s Christian Home in Toledo, which is run by the Toledo Restoration Church. Kenneth came around in 2003 and was ordained a decade ago.
They’ve been traveling to Akron these past three years on a mission to rescue others from addiction. Since April of last year, they’ve lived with four men from the church in what is called Akron Restoration Home.
In the morning, the men stir from metal bunk beds packed into tight quarters on the upper floors. They eat breakfast, study the Bible and pray. Then they huddle with their “spiritual mom and dad” to discuss their daily plan of feeding religion and food to homeless and addicted people on the street.
They lock hands in a circle and ask God for the power to save someone.
Then pastor Ivory loads them into a used SUV and drives them around town where they solicit donations from behind tables set up outside convenience stores. Even if they get nothing, they still hand out a snack and a flyer like the one that saved their lives.
Dorothy Campbell, a local resident who stopped into the Six Corners Deli in Goodyear Heights last week, listened to the men and their mission, then she reached deeper into her purse to scrounge for more change.
"I think it's a wonderful thing," she said. "We've got to help each other more."
Street preaching spreads word of addiction recovery
On Thursdays, the group finds a public space to grill out and play music. They speak their testimonies into a microphone and feed anyone who stops by as they preach the gospel of restoration.
Sundays are for church. The men get time on Mondays to grab a haircut or deal with personal business. Some are torn between helping family members back home and serving strangers in Akron. But they said they always choose God and sobriety.
A few nights each week, they hit the streets looking for addicts or people with family in need of help.
Back at the house, six empty bunk beds are ready for any man they come across who is willing to get better and give Jesus Christ a try. On a sign in the second-floor hallway, bold lettering reminds the men and their overnight guests of the rules: “Stay, Pray, Obey.”
“We try to get them clean and sober through the power of Jesus Christ,” said Wayne Parsil, one of the four men now serving the newfound faith that saved each of their lives.
“This is what we do,” said Parsil, a recovering alcoholic whose heavy drinking began while he was serving in the U.S. Army 40 years ago.
Women in the throes of addiction are referred to Peggy Ivory, who counsels and, if they agree, transports them to the same Toledo homeless shelter where she and her daughter stayed 26 years ago.
How the program works
The program takes no government funding, pastor Ivory explained.
The men work seasonal jobs at music and sporting venues. Their earnings and donations from the community pay the gas, electric and rent, which combined can be nearly $1,500 a month. Ivory said he’s desperately looking for more space so the men in the program aren’t living on top of each other.
A 10% tithing goes back to Toledo Restoration Church, which was once part of the former network of the United Restoration Church. The organization’s focus outside of Toledo, for now, is Akron.
Men who enter Akron Restoration Home give up their phone during a nine-month stint of sobriety and service. Few men stay that long. Most spend only a night or two, the men in the program explained.
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‘I don't have to live like that anymore’
Everyone at Akron Restoration Home grew up outside of Akron. They describe their lives before finding God as “messed up.”
Parsil, 61, is from Curtice, a township east of Toledo. James Ramirez, 32, is originally from Mexico. Tony Hudson, 67, moved from Detroit to Chicago before finding the church in Toledo. Leon Goolsby, 45, also came from Detroit.
Ivory was born and raised in Milwaukee. He moved to Philadelphia after serving in the Marine Corps. In the city of brotherly love, he spent 25 years doing “nothing but drugs the whole time.”
He said he worked as a social worker and clinician at a psychiatric hospital while feeding his addiction.
“I smoked crack cocaine and ran in the streets. And I decided to leave Philadelphia and came to Toledo because my twin sister lived there,” he said. “And it was a way out, a way out of the situation I was in in Philadelphia.
“Once I got to Toledo, I thought I was done. But I picked it right back up for about a year and a half.”
While working at nursing homes, Ivory lied to a new employer. He said he was just tired when, in fact, he’d been up all night using. He was fired during orientation.
He thought that was rock bottom. Then he found himself stranded and strung out on the streets of Toledo on a winter night in 2003.
“I’ll never forget it. I was freezing. I thought I was going to die out there. I was trying to use the (pay) phone, and it wouldn’t take the quarter. It just kept falling through,” he said. “And I started crying and I asked God, ‘If you get me out of this, I’m going to serve you for the rest of my life.’”
The Toledo Restoration Church had visited his sister’s home where he was staying. They left a random flyer, but Ivory said he didn’t think much of the organization.
But as day broke on that cold Saturday in 2003, he ran to one of them. And he’s been sober since.
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His wife, whom he met after joining the church, found rock bottom on the streets of Detroit.
“I thought I was going to die out there in Detroit in a park called Clark Park. It was just a living nightmare for me. I remember it like it was yesterday,” she said. “It was really bad, and I didn’t know where to go to get help, because I was tired of being sick and tired.”
In 1996, Peggy Ivory entered the Women’s Christian Home in Toledo.
“I met Jesus Christ and I’ve been serving him ever since,” she said. “It’s way better than it used to be, prostituting out there, getting thrown out of cars. I remember the train station, it was just awful. I got raped several times, thrown out of cars, I jumped out of cars. But Jesus Christ, he set me free. And I don’t have to live like that anymore.”
How to help
To donate to Toledo Restoration Church, visit www.toledorestorationchurch.com. To help Akron Restoration Home, call pastor Kenneth Ivory at 216-952-6937.
Reach Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron Restoration Home gives shelter, spiritual healing to addicts
