24 hours

I rolled up to the Rescue Mission in Winchester, in the state's northern corner) around 4:15 in the afternoon to begin my 24 hour stay. Two men with long, greasy hair, tattoos, and lit cigarettes in their mouths sat at the front door. We eyed each other, but didn't say anything.

The Rescue Mission opened in 1973 when founder Morris Whitaker took over the former chicken slaughterhouse and furniture warehouse and turned it into a shelter for homeless men. The old brick building has on the front a mural of a lighthouse illuminating the way for a distant ship off in the ocean. The painting was done for free, just like many of the meals, furniture, and vehicles have been donated to the mission over the years.

I wandered in the side door. Inside the lounge a man slouched on a couch watching TV with a dreary expression, his beard grayed, his ragged clothes hung loosely on his body. I asked for someone in charge, and he lifted up his shaky arm and pointed to a door; his lips moved but he could barely speak beyond a whisper.

I walked through the door and met Jimmy DeMartinis, hustling around the kitchen in his large t-shirt and shorts, his long hair in loose ponytail as he barked orders in his thick New York accent getting ready for dinner. DeMartinis has been the director of operations for the Mission for about four years.

Before he came to Virginia, he was a successful builder and single father to his son, Justin. He moved to Leesburg in 1990 and ended up taking a job at Hechinger's. When it collapsed, he got involved with the Rescue Mission, eventually using his construction skills to finish the upper level, add air conditioning, and add insulation.

Jimmy introduced himself quickly and took me up to Pastor Lee Stone's house, which was just up the street. Pastor Stone spent 16 years as a dairy farmer in upstate New York before becoming a Christian and eventually moving to Hagerstown to work as a manager at a rescue mission there. When Morris Whitaker left for Oklahoma in 1978, Pastor Stone took over.

Pastor Stone, who appears a bit feeble but still pretty sharp, sat on his couch with his walker in front of him and a large Bible on his lap. The room was full of bookshelves stocked with religious titles. A cat prowled on the furniture.

Surrounding Pastor Stone were eight men who were part of the New Life Ministry at the mission, a four-and-a-half month program devoted to teaching the men the Bible and life skills that will enable them to get a job and adapt to the real world. The men were large, rugged, tattooed, and they too had open Bibles.

There was Jeff, who had seen a great deal of success with his wife in Florida with their construction and mortgage business. Three years from retirement he was told he was in the final stages of cirrhosis of the liver due to heavy alcoholism, and the news drove him further into drinking and even cocaine addiction. He eventually went to jail and signed everything over to his wife before they divorced, then moved to West Virginia to be with his son. But he couldn't control his drinking. He sat in his chair, his right arm in a sling due to an accident where he broke his shoulder, his glasses perched on his nose, and tried to absorb Pastor Stone's teaching.

Also in the room was Adam, another recovering alcoholic. He was born and raised in Winchester in a Pentecostal family, but got involved with the wrong crowd and was a full-blown alcoholic by the age of 15. He has been in and out of jail ever since he was 17 with charges ranging from unlawful wounding to assault and battery. When he first came to the mission, he didn't like the rules, but eventually warmed up to the place and now hopes he'll be able to quit drinking and move on with life.

Pastor Stone asked the men how they thought God could increase their faith. Lance, a large African-American, looked up from doodling on his notes and said he would like to see God increase his faith by getting him a job in the week he had left with the New Life Program. "Do you believe God can do it?" Pastor Stone asked.

"Yes, sir," Lance replied.

"You know sometimes God lets us go down right to the last day," Stone said. "Now, if he doesn't open up a job, what's your reaction going to be?" Stone then led the group to a Bible verse that talked about not worrying about the future. When the study was over, it was after 5:30-time to head down for dinner.

Inside the large dining room the men sat at tables with clean but unusually sticky table mats. The Opequon Presbyterian Church youth group served dinner that night; there were probably more teens present than shelter clients.

The men conversed loudly with each other so they could be heard over the air conditioner and each other. The smell of food and body odor hit my nostrils as I sat down and received my plate of meat casserole, salad, and a roll. The food was cold, but, as I'm sure most of the men were thinking, food is food.

Pretty soon, two men sitting by me began to talk about whether or not God existed, one of them adamantly claiming God could not be in control based on the experiences he had gone through. Tyrone, who lost faith in God and Christians, said he had once been a pastor before his church began to ostracize him for his teachings. He sat across me explaining his life's woes as he chewed his food and looked at me with his bloodshot eyes.

Tyrone was part of the Overnight program, which gives the men up to 30 days to have a place to shower and rest at night. What was he doing at a Christian-run mission if he had been so disillusioned by Christians? Surviving. "If this was a Muslim organization, I'd be doing the same thing," he said.

After dinner, there was another Bible study led by Rich Brito, the pastor of Community Impact at Fellowship Bible Church in Winchester. He had them read passages from the Gospel of John and then asked them questions about what it meant. Even though the room was full of grown men, it almost looked like a kindergarten class room: some were eager to understand what the teacher is trying to say, while others sat picking at their ears and wondered when it would be time to go to bed.

The Bible study concluded. Brito asked if there were any prayer requests. Brian, one of the two men involved in the Working Man program, a program designated to help men with jobs to save their money and eventually afford transportation and a place to live, half stood up in his chair. "Pray for the spiritual and the physical and the jobs for everybody," he stuttered.

After spending some more time with the guys, I went off to my room. The walls were bare and a little scuffed, the floor was linoleum, and there were dressers and a place to hang my clothes if I needed them. There was a faint smell of cigarette smoke in the air. The bed had clean sheets, but was slightly uncomfortable. I thought about lying on the other bed with five mattresses piled on, but figured I might feel the pea underneath it all.

The wake-up call came at 5:50 the next morning, and everyone dragged themselves to the breakfast table. There was another Bible study, and then some of the men went off either to work or look for a job. The rest who stayed prepared to mow the lawn of the Mission and Pastor Stone, but not before another Bible study.

This one was led by Mike Hoisington, who has been hosting morning Bible studies since Pastor Stone suffered a stroke a year ago. Afterwards, Hoisington stayed for a one-on-one mentorship with Clark, another New Lifer. Clark, a large man in his 60s, sat and answered questions in his calm voice that was slightly muffled by his large, grey mustache. Clark's wife died of a heart attack during the winter because the ambulance was not able to make it through the snow. This caused him to slip deep into depression, and a combination of drugs, alcohol, and head trauma caused by a car accident had severely impaired his ability to think.

Hoisington sat at his table, looking intensely through his large glasses and typing notes on his Dell computer as he interviewed Clark, his orange thermos within his reach. "If you could ask God a question, what would you want to learn?" he asked.

"I would want to learn just how to be happy and to feel good about myself and to get on the right track and not fall back in my ways," Clark replied. Eventually Clark described the chills he got when he read the Bible and thought about God.

The chill was an excitement from God, said Hoisington. "See if you can capture that moment," he said, because when you focus on God there's no confusion. The mentoring lasted for 30 minutes.

After a while, Jimmy showed me around the place. Jimmy has seen sex offenders, murderers, and mentally unstable people visit and re-visit the Mission. Most of the men, according to Jimmy, come to seek God because the weather is not very welcoming. "You're here because you needed a place to be to hopefully get foundationized and move back on," he said. "We don't want you to think that, 'Oh ok, you're here just chill out and stay forever.'"

Jimmy told me how the Mission is able to run on $50,000 a year and relies on church support and donations. The Mission is currently working on turning an old warehouse building into a woodwork shop. The equipment has already been donated.

Some of the men see success, including one who is currently seeking his second master's degree. According to Jimmy, the Winchester Rescue Mission has a success rate of about 10%-12%, while other missions have reported a success rate of 2%.

After my tour of the Mission, it was time to depart. My 24 hours were up. When I first arrived, I realized how out of my comfort zone I was. But within the walls of the old building I saw men who strive to make up for their mistakes and become part of a society they've been cast out of. As Jeff told me, sometimes God has to bring you to a low point before you recover. "[It's good] any time you can sit back in a safe environment, regroup, get some clarity back where you can think and put God first," he said.

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