“Saving One Man at a Time- Interview With Jarrod Bourgeois

James Egidio: 0:38 Hi, I’m James Egidio, your host of the 99 Relapses Podcast. The podcast that moves you from recovery to discovery through the grace and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In episode number three of the 99 Relapses Podcast, I discussed the importance of five pillars to successful Christian addiction and recovery, through the acronym S.P.A.C.E., which stands for Stabilization, Professional Help, Accountability, Courage, and Endurance all are very important in order to achieve full recovery. However, nothing is more important than having a relationship with Jesus Christ. In order to be successful in achieving full recovery from an out of control addiction, you cannot get through addiction alone. In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus talks about building on a solid foundation by. Anyone who listens to my teachings and follows, it is wise. Like a person who builds a house on solid rock, though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise, and the winds beat against that house. It won’t collapse because it’s built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teachings and doesn’t obey it is foolish. Like a person who builds a house on sand, when the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse. With a mighty crash, my guest knows what it’s like to go through an out of control addiction, and today is helping and housing men who are transitioning from inpatient rehab, jail, and prisons back in society in a loving faith filled process through the grace and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with his ministry Freedom Lighthouse for men. It is my pleasure and and a blessing to introduce my guest, Jared Bourgeois. Bourgeois. Did I say that right? Bourgeois?

Jarrod Bourgeois: 2:24 Yeah, you said that right?

James Egidio: 2:25 Okay.

Jarrod Bourgeois: 2:26That’s right. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

James Egidio: 2:28Absolutely. Jarrod please just tell the listening and viewing audience of the 99 Relapses podcast a little bit about your personal testimony through addiction and what led you to the Lord, and we’ll go from there.

Jarrod Bourgeois: 2:42 Okay I was raised in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, the Gulf Coast. Very active child. Very AD child. I played a lot of sports. I had a great family. My mom instilled Jesus in me. Learned, went to one’s when I was probably four or five years old. Learned the books to the Bible. went to church all the way up until my teenage years, and it was very difficult to get me and my brother in the church. And that, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say gave up. We challenged them a lot. Very rebellious child. So I didn’t realize when I was started rebelling against my parents’ authority over my life at a very young age that I was rebelling against God and his authority over my. And so I started using at a very young age. I started smoking pot when I was about eight years old. Alcohol about the same time. So by the time I got was 10, 11 years old, I was getting into hallucinogens and ecstasy. And in shortly pills followed that young teenage years. Found a drug called Xanax. And that one was my, one of my preferred drug of choices. I had others though, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t discriminate against other ones. I just, I wanted to escape. I had a nervous kind of social anxiety, and that’s why that drug meshed well with me. I wanted to be calm and cool. I wanted to be accepted by people and Xanax helped me feel more confident in myself. So that’s really how the enemy wrote me in there to addiction as well as, raves and music festivals and ecstasy and, the allure of a party is really how the enemy got its hooks in me and got me fully consumed by the time I was a young teenager. Addiction had completely taken over my life. By the time I was, I got to be 17 years old. I was using intravenously and went to some deep, dark and desperate places. That was, that brought my addiction to a whole nother level. Was arrested numerous times. I’m giving you a brief version of my testimony. Yeah. Sure. Dozen times, at least a dozen times, I was incarcerated for different felonies. Every time Xanax was involved, every time I got arrested, I was a criminal, but that drug made me a very dumb criminal. And, but I’m glad because it got me caught and it made me suffer the consequences faster. And today I’m not a convicted felon. Only by the grace of God, I can tell you that I, I should be numerous charges I’d have to go through armed robbery, stale of controlled substance, credit card fraud, burglary of an auto aggravated assault. I just, a whole plethora of different felonies were pending on my record. And by the time I was 22 years old, I had enough, and this was I went to treatment when I was 18, but it was just to avoid the penitentiary. I didn’t really want the sobriety in that life yet. But they did. I did have a seed planted. So for the next four years, I couldn’t go back out there and use without this severe conscience and guilt and shame. So by the time I was 22 I had enough, and I asked my mom to help me find. So she helped me find this place out in California, the Sunrise Recovery Ranch. Went there for 30 days. Loved it. Got fully involved in AA, the 12 Steps signed up for six more months of their sober living program in Newport Beach. It was called Sober Living by the Sea. Went all in for the 12 steps and working at 180 meetings in 90 days would’ve, I probably did more than that cuz there was a lot of days we were having you know. three meetings a day. While I was in sober living I went and got some college done while I was in sober living. It was the first three classes I ever finished. I had all A’s I had fa three previous semesters in college, so that was good. I started getting some confidence in myself that I could actually do this thing. I could do something productive with my life. And I got out and me and my, I met my wife out there and we’re still together today only by the grace of. as well. And so I got out of treatment and me and my wife got apartments near each other and I ended up with 10 months of sobriety and then relapse. And then I fell really hard, brought my wife with me went right back to the needle and the right back to even deeper, darker places and brought her into that carnage with. And it was there and it was in that place, in that darkness. That’s where I had an encounter with Jesus that forever changed me in my faith and my belief. And it just, it changed the whole direction of my life big time. So around this time, God had put it on my heart that he wanted me to start a treatment. and I got this meth out there that scared me so bad. It didn’t have the negative side effects with it. It was like, or I guess what, quote unquote, clean or what. And so it concerned me because the negative side effects would keep me away from it for periods of time. This stuff didn’t have any of that. And I put it up one night. It scared me so bad and I got up the next morning and now I know it was the first time I heard God’s voice flush it. and I never considered flushing any drugs before my life. I got up and I had about an eight ball left and got up and I flushed it. And if I’d knew known what was gonna happen to me, I would’ve flushed drugs a lot sooner. I went and sat back on the couch and just waves of raw emotion just started just flowing through my body. It was the best feeling of ecstasy, not the drug, just the best feeling I could ever imagine. I just started crying, just tears started pouring down my face and I didn’t know why I was crying. I wasn’t sad about anything. I looked over at my wife and she’s on the other house. We weren’t married at the time, but I said I don’t know what’s happening to me. And she said, I don’t know what’s going on either. And so after about 10 minutes of this, I went and stood up in the kitchen. And it was at that moment that I, it dawned on me that I was in the presence of God and I felt these arms come up around me and wrap around. tears are just streaming down my face and my vision’s all blurry. And I’m staring at this tile on the floor. And then I look at this tile and my vision’s all blurry, tears are just flowing, and my tears come together and my vision clears up. And Jesus is staring at me on that tile. And I wasn’t hallucinating. Like I said I wasn’t even high at the time. I wasn’t sleep deprived. and I knew it right in my heart of what was happening. God had revealed himself to me in a crazy way, and I picked up the phone immediately. I called my mom, who always instilled Jesus in me. I said, mom, you won’t believe what happened. I told her a story and she said, son, you’re 22 years old. Said, most people won’t have that in their lifetime. What are you gonna do with it? I remember like it was yesterday. You think I would’ve just got it all together and started living for the Lord right then? No, I tried to run from God from another two years and. got into, moved back to Mississippi, got into cooking, crystal meth, got fully addicted to the process of making meth. And just again, the addiction took on a whole new level. They say new level, new devil. So I went to even deeper, darker places than before, and just my life spun out of control even faster. And I was on the crash course. I knew it was only a matter of time before I was dead at this point, I had spent years prior working for a criminal organization. The people that I was dealing with and just around constantly were very nefarious individuals and everyone plotting, using, scheming, manipulating each other. And to be fair, I was doing it back to them. But I had enough of it. And I was on Xanax again and I was making some meth and I got arrested. I got pulled. while trying to go get a pair of dykes so I can strip batteries. And I was just dead set on getting those dices. And I thank God that day that I got pulled over, had all the precursors. I had a whole meth lab in my truck and I the judge revoked my bond. He was looking at my rap sheet. He said, you’re not bonding out for any amount of money. And so I sat there, it was about four or five months this last time, and I sat there and. I separated myself from those conversations. I was in there within a block with 80 other meth cooks and had us all on the same block. And I didn’t want to be a part of those conversations anymore. It just got nauseated to me. A shift happened and the way I saw that life and I started doing bible study. I started working out and I started writing, which I didn’t know was the writing part, was the beginning of these courses. Addiction 101 courses that I teach today and the beginning of studying God’s word, I was still lukewarm with my faith. Just trying, half measures, just trying to see how, still trying to live my life and see how close to the edge I could get without falling off now without I got outta jail. Maintained a sobriety and sure I was sober, but that was about it. I was still resentful. I was still bitter. I was still angry. still had that critical voice in my head and moved out, got outta jail, moved up to Canada with my wife, which is where she’s from, and my probation officer let me finish my probation o up there in a, in another country. So that was really helpful for me. I moved up to Canada. I got into hockey started lifting weights up there. I kept working out. and exercise took the place of the substances. It released all the endorphins in my brain, but I was just way overkill. I was playing hockey six nights a week. I was hitting the weights five, six days a week and I was boxing like two or three days a week. And I got a lot of injuries piled up on it cuz it was just overkill from my body. Even in, it was, this was even in my twenties, my prime. But I needed that and it was God’s way of leading me to it before I was really serious about him, it was, he was still running the show all along. He blessed me with his mother and father-in-law that loved me up there, supported me, encouraged me. Just the in-laws could love me differently, and I needed that at that moment. And no doubt God put them in my life and helped encourage me and helped me to believe in. so still lukewarm with my faith. And I knew that it was time to act on what God placed on my heart years before. And so I got into school to be I said, look I’m physically tough. I’m physically strong, okay? But I’m still emotionally weak and fragile. And so that’s when I got into school for addiction counseling, Trios College in Mississauga, Ontario. Finished at the top of my class, got went to, did my internship through the Salvation Army through their homeless adult co-ed shelter in Oakville, Ontario, called the Lighthouse Shelter, and also traveled around to different apartments for their family shelter. They had apartments that they rented out for families. And so this was just the beginning, but I was learning. I loved my teacher, Wendy. She was an incredible force, very empowering woman. She, and she planted a seed in my mind that I tried to pass on today that we needed an army of addicts. That’s the way she phrased it. We needed an army of addicts in recovery to help combat this epidemic, which was just as bad in Canada as it is here, and so I, they hired me on, I worked for Salvation Army for two and a half years, and then moved to Florida. Me and my wife agreed to live in Tampa, Florida, and I got my first job there as an addiction counselor at a methadone and Suboxone clinic can talk to you more about that topic. But God had me in there just long enough to open up my eyes. This company did a FBI about two months into that job, and I was loving it. Just the fact that I was able to work with addicts. I didn’t agree with that method of treatment. and after working there, even more so solidified my beliefs. But I knew that I loved the work either way. I loved getting to just talk and counsel addicts daily. I knew that I was in my calling and it never really felt like work for me. So I knew that it was more than just a job. Did, they did a FBI finger on every employee and they found my FBI records. And they fired me even though they knew my history, I was honest with them about my testimony. I think they let me go and it was like one of those things that was crushing at the time. I wasn’t all in for God and I didn’t see that God was working all things together for good at that time in my life. But I used that, that crushing what was, it was my perception of a crushing defeat. To further my education. So I went to Florida. I found this college online and it was called Florida College. I said, okay. They got the psychology classes I’m looking to take, so I get to orientation and it was a one of the biggest God winks I ever had. This school, you wouldn’t be able to tell. I didn’t do any further research, but this college I found ended up being a Church of Christ College and I ha I full sleeve of I’m 28 years old. I got a full sleeve going down my arm of tattoo. and Church of Christ is one of the stricter denominations in Christianity in America. This one in particular, they didn’t use instruments, but they said, you gotta take every day you’re on campus, you have to take biblical studies classes and you have to go to chapel. And I was like, okay, God, let’s see what you’re doing here, And so I was like, let’s do it, let’s do this. And so I started diving into the word and actually studying it at this point, I was fully into my classes and committed to doing the schoolwork. Had I had three children at this point too big blessings in my life, those children helped me to pull out of my selfish weight, helped me to start the process of pulling my head outta my rear end and that this whole world didn’t revolve around me anymore. That selfishness, I think is a big fuel for the addiction. Oh yeah. I wouldn’t say that’s the root cause. It’s a fuel that keeps the addiction burning a lot longer than it needs. It’s like you, you’re being selfish, but you just can’t stop being selfish. It’s a vicious part of the cycle. I think. It, so I finished up school there and my cousin passed away from a heroin overdose and we were the same age, and that, that pain from that death, I flew back here. I was a pall bearer for his funeral. And God used the pain in that death to finally pull me out of being a lukewarm. half effort, Christian and it was through that pain that I moved all in for God and had the Holy Spirit started getting poured out on me daily. And I never knew, I never took the thought further than until I was ready to hear it and understand it and received the Holy Spirit. And so I just knew that I was coming into joy and peace. and freedom and I had this chaotic mess of a merry-go-round in my head for majority of my life. And I was free from that all of a sudden. And it was by giving God my whole heart and moving all in, and I stopped holding back in my relationship with God and he started changing me. I stepped to what I know now is that I stepped into, I signed up for sanctification, the process to be made holy, to be set apart by God. And that was about five or six years ago. And I’m gonna tell you, I haven’t had a bad day since I’ve had extremely challenging days, but those ended up being some of the most victorious days in my walk with God, right? I moved back here through that pain and getting gifted the Holy Spirit. I moved back to my hometown that I painted red and caused all this chaos. And I made the front page of the paper several times for all the wrong reasons. People knew me. Here, it’s a small town of 10,000. And I had to push through a lot of fears, a lot of memories, a lot of triggers. I had to push through all that and do what I knew God had set out for me to do. And so me and my wife agreeing to move back here, that was a mountain God moved in itself. And so we did. And we moved cuz it was part of God’s plan. That’s the only explanation I can tell you on how me and my wife finally agreed to move back here and live. Is that it was God’s plan and that he saw to it that it was done. So I moved back here and I opened up escape Addiction, started counseling people. And and then about a year into that I started working on plans for the Freedom Lighthouse. Sober Living, transition Living homes for men. And I’m about two and a half years into that now. We’ve had one group of residents come through. We’re in a second group of guys now. Earlier this year, my first group of guys, one of those young men, the, my youngest guy who was 25 years old took his own life here and in almost the spot I’m sitting right now he killed himself. And so that was a lot, that was probably the biggest trial that I’ve faced in my walk with God. It was very difficult trying time, but I felt God right there with us step for. and he brought us out. He brought us into this deep dark valley and he brought us out and we’re going up the mountain now. We’re in the greener pastures. We’ve got an amazing group of guys now. Things are really just clicking, trying our best to do. Let’s just stay outta God’s way and try and keep seeking him and understanding his will each and every day. And I get to teach these guys. Something that’s a spiritual gift of mine is teaching God’s word. And I get to use that gift every day. And so I feel the fullness and the joy and the peace and the freedom and everything that God has for all of us. I get to tap into that stuff daily because I just wanna please him, because I’m serving him and I’m doing what I was designed and created to do. And I’m so blessed and just covered in God’s grace that he would bring me to that. And, not everybody finds that in this life. And I see that and it’s, I want everybody to find it. I want everybody to get to know God and understand that relationship with our father is the most important thing in his life. And if we find it and we often have to do everything to hold onto it, that it’s not gonna be easy, but it’s gonna be worthwhile. That difficult means worthwhile. And so today, that brings me where I’m at today, just trying to be the director of this. Trying to stay outta God’s way. Still doing a lot of doing more outpatient counseling than I’ve ever done. sometimes five and six people a day. And I get to, I’m coaching two different soccer teams, 10 girls my girls team and then my middle son. I’m coaching 12 boys as well. I serve on the board of directors for the Magdalene House, which is our female kind of counterpart. Totally separate organization but they do the same thing that we do for. And I get to serve God in this community and give back, right? And, really care, really take people under my wing and care for them and care about their life and really pour into people. And I think that’s, it’s the most fulfilling thing, getting to serve God. In this capacity, and by the time people come to me, they’re ready to be fed. So I get to use my spiritual gifts to people who are mostly very receptive to it and want to hear more about it.

James Egidio: 20:30Yeah. You mentioned some really important things about addiction and some elements of addiction, and I’m sure you encounter these through your ministry. But on a personal level, you mentioned rebellion. and you mentioned selfishness and with rebellion, what do you personally feel you were rebelling against that led to your addiction? When you were your addiction? Your personal addiction was outta control.

Jarrod Bourgeois: 21:00it was control. It was control. I felt like I should be the one at a very young age. I felt like I should be the one making decisions for my life and I shouldn’t be told what to do. And then, so I was rebelling against control from my parents initially, but that spilled over into teachers, principals, coaches, whoever whoever said something contrary to what I felt was just trying to reign on my. and didn’t want me having any fun. So I was just rebelling against control or essentially anybody that had something to say about the way I was living in decisions I was making.

James Egidio: 21:32 Yeah. And then you mentioned of course, selfishness and I mentioned this a lot too, and it’s, I think for the people that are listening and hearing this episode of the 99 Relapses podcast is that the selfishness is not only to yourself. but you’re selfish to the people around you. Your parents loved ones, and it’s leads to sin. It’s sin, and there’s so many elements of addiction that are sinful and it leads to a multitude of sins. And of course, we know as Christians that the solution to that is going to the cross and asking for repentance, asking for forgiveness. I think that’s the one of the takeaways here also being responsible for our addiction as well, because as I had mentioned, stabilization is important and you were involved, and I personally was involved with helping clients get through the addiction process, especially with opiates. We talked about that before we, we came on today to this podcast that, The physical withdrawal symptoms are so severe with the opiates, and yeah, they may work for a while and stabilization is good when I say stabilization from the, with physical withdrawal symptoms. But there has to be a point in time that once you go through that process of stabilization, that you have some kind of refuge in that refuge like you said. is Jesus Christ. So I think that’s important. Cuz I see a lot, what happens a lot of times, I’m sure you can agree on this, is we see in the secular programs where people are stabilized and they’ll go through a psychologist or they’ll go through a psychiatrist, and I’m not undermining a psychologist or a psychiatrist or even a counselor. but You, you can’t, at the end of the day, when you walk away from that person’s office or whatever, if they’re not tethered to the word, they’re not tethered to Jesus Christ and repentance and coming to God for their recovery, they’re not gonna make it because you can’t do this alone. And your counselor’s not gonna live with. And be with you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, though when I say the word tether, tether to the word, to the Bible, I think that’s so important to really learn as much as you can and meditate on the word, and pray on the word and get involved with groups that are faith-based, that are Christian-based to get through recovery. What’s your assessment on that?

Jarrod Bourgeois: 24:23Yeah, I think that’s critical that relationship with God, if you want, you get, that’s the foundation of rock you were talking about in scripture, Matthew seven. Everything else is sinking sand and so I’m not saying that there aren’t different, there’s no one shoe fits all unless we’re talking about Jesus then it is one shoe fits all. But how to get somebody who put on that shoe, you can’t put the shoe on for. So how to get somebody to the point of being ready to put that shoe on and submit and wave the white flag and surrender to God and his plan and his will for your life, what I call ready, surrender, commit. You have to be ready. It takes a lot of pain, suffering, and affliction to get to the point of being ready to submit to God, right? And then once you submit to God that’s a daily thing. Dying to self and going with his plan for your day is something that you. Stay committed to every single day. And that means once we submit to God, our day can go any which direction and we ought to be okay with it because we submitted to God and his plan for our day. So if we find ourselves getting frustrated, irritated we gotta go back to step one, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. We cannot resist the devil on our strength. We have to submit to God in order to resist the devil. Exactly. But the word God is mentioned this the most Go ahead. Alright, I’m sorry. Sorry. No, the word of God is probably the most important thing. That’s our daily bread. That’s our instructions for living and living out the word I think is that’s when you come into the fullness that God has planned for you is when you actually be a active doer of the word. Because if God’s not gonna pour his spirit in all these fruits out on us, so we can just do selfish things that we wanna do, it’s so that we can serve him better into a greater capacity. So I think when we start to living his word and doing his word, that’s when he really fills us up with the fruits and starts pouring his spirit out on us so that we can become even more effective ambassadors for.

James Egidio: 26:17Yeah, and I mentioned this before too as well, like I’ll read something, it says recovery from addictions comes when the pain of the addictive behavior becomes greater. then the pain of giving up the behavior. And of course this is known as rock bottom, and I’m sure you, you’ve seen it, I’ve seen it. We’ve seen our rock bottom and when it comes to, I think recovery through an addiction and getting through it with faith, through Jesus Christ. it’s so important to how do I put this? It’s so important as someone who is at that rock bottom. Like I, when they get through, when they get through that, when they get through that addiction right, and they hit that rock bottom that’s where they have to put up that white flag. My question to you is where was your white flag? Where was your surrender at your point of surrender? Do you remember?

Jarrod Bourgeois: 27:18 I surrendered to the addiction, at 24 years old, but I didn’t truly, and I surrendered that life, but I didn’t truly surrender and submit to God and his plan for my life until I was six years into my recovery. Once I was six years into my recovery. It was from beating my head against the wall from trying to do things my way and it not working again and again falling on my face over and over still getting frustrated and irritated, constantly. It was at that point, and like I said, only God’s grace carried me through those six years sober. But it was, at that point I realized that it was, there was much, so much more to this life that I was missing out on and that I had to dig deeper and through the pain in my cousin’s death and the overdose and the struggles in my marriage at the time, the enemy had really waged this war on my marriage. And it was through those struggles in my marriage. and the pain in my cousin’s death that I truly waved that white flag because I knew it. I was never gonna figure this woman out. I was never gonna say the right things. I was never gonna do the right things and trying to force her into being who I needed her to be versus who God created her to be and her trying to do the same with me. There was this stalemate going on, this constant power struggle in the relationship. And it was probably to me, doing the, working on the. Was probably just as challenging to me as overcoming the addiction. They were both extremely difficult, but I think it was, that was the true waving of the white flag and inviting God to really come in and take full helm of the wheel.

James Egidio: 28:49 Yeah. Explain to the audience and thank you so much for sharing your story. I appreciate that. It’s awesome. we get through these addictions and we get it through the Lord. Explain to the audience a little bit about your program freedom Lighthouse for men and how it how it works.

Jarrod Bourgeois: 29:04 Okay. I’m a big believer in transitional living and sober living and secondary. I’m also a big believer in primary or inpatient treatment. I believe those things coupled together equals a lot more success rates, and I think a lot of inpatient facilities are starting to adapt and just 30 days is scratching the surface. So our program will take somebody in that has 30 days clean and it finished some kind of drug and alcohol program, whether that be in, in the jail or prison, which they offer. These in jail or prison will take you straight outta jail or prison as long as you have 30 days. And it finished some kind of drug and alcohol program. And so inpatient rehab, 30 days, okay, you’re off to a good start now. Let’s lock it in. So we’re all by all means a discipleship program. We are training people to become disciples of Jesus Christ. That’s the main focus. It’s not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety is connection and it’s connection with each other that God made us to bear and share each other’s burdens to be submissive to each other. Take on each other’s burdens and to laugh together, cry together, dance together to to do the that when we put our tools together, when all the different members of the body of Christ come together with Christ as the head, we can do some incredibly powerful things together. Amen. And so that’s our focus up here as discipleship and going out into the world. I’m very fond of Paul and his interpretation in the gospel. His letters are incredibly brilliant and to me, I go, ye out into the world, come out of the old and into the new, he said, come out of that old covenant, and come into the new covenant. And that’s all about discipleship. That’s all about let telling somebody the good news. There’s people that need to know the good news out there, and that’s, we are broken. People, we are dirty sinners, but there is good news that we have hope. in Jesus Christ that he will forgive us and cleanse us from that unrighteousness. That we don’t have to tote that weight of shame over things we did anymore. We don’t have to carry that load that he did not die in vain. And that’s what the whole death and then subsequent resurrection was about, so that we could figure out everything that doesn’t work and then the old man gets, we got to get to that point to where we’re ready to crucify the old man on the cross with Christ. Romans chapter six is the context. And the new man resurrected from the dead, born again. And that, to me, that’s a daily process. Being born again and dying to yourself is something we have to stay committed to and we have to remind ourselves of constantly. There’s so many distractions. So these are, this is the main focus on what we do here is discipling men. We, we renovate shipping containers in the bunk houses for the men to live in. They’re really cool. They’re fun to work on. The guys love working on ’em. We have a thrift store and a car wash. We just opening up now. To try and help raise capital. We have a big project where we’re maybe partnering up with this other ministry called the Home of Grace over here, and they want us to build 44 of these shipping container bunk houses. And the ones they want are double shipping container bunk houses. So they’re about 1100 square feet. they fit about eight people and they want to, they want us to do a discipleship ministry, a transitional living homes for the homeless population, which most homeless people have addiction. But we have a big homeless problem over here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and we don’t have any shelters at all. So we don’t want to just make a shelter where they can just come sleep at night. We want to discipleship training program that’s gonna have them bring them off of the. Walking behind Jesus and experiencing all the fullness that comes with that. So people, guys will stay with us for six months to a year. We, we we will take ’em in for free and then once they start working, it’s a work related program. Once they start working, they’ll pay 40% of their income to stay here. And when we get their numbers up and we have more residents, I’m looking to drop that at 40% to 25 and I didn’t make that number up. There’s another ministry called Sue’s Home in Ocean Springs that’s sober living for women. And they’re they’re all Jesus Christ-centered. And they gave us that number. And then our sister house, the Magdalene House, they use that same figure. So that’s that’ll sustain us. Not a ton of people want to donate to addiction ministry cause, and I understand that. But God’s God sustains us. He gives us what we need. I’m gonna tell you. We we get to have these amazing conversations like I get to have today with you. I get to have these conversations all day, every day, and I get to teach these guys the wisdom that God shares with me and then watch them teach it to, that’s the most fulfilling part is they say fishing, catching some fish. If you ever fish, that’s fun. That’s exciting, especially when you’re lacing in a fish. but fishing for men, that would, that’s our destiny. That’s what we were all assigned to do. Absolutely. Yeah. That’s where you experience the most joy and fullness in the life, I believe.

James Egidio: 33:39 Yeah. Share with the audience the viewers and listeners where they could find your website with the website address and let them know what’s the website address.

Jarrod Bourgeois: 33:49 Yes, sir. Yeah. And then if God moves your heart and by all means, if he doesn’t move your heart. Don’t do it. But if God moves your heart and you feel inclined is to donate. We have a 5 0 1 nonprofit. It’s www.Freedom-Lighthouse.com. And there’s a easy little way to donate on there through PayPal. And then if you wanted to see more about my outpatient counseling, which I do remotely too, is www.EscapeAddiction.net. So www.Freedom-Lighthouse.com and www.EscapeAddiction.net. And you could find everything that we have going on those two websites.

James Egidio: 34:20Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the 99 Relapses podcast here. It is a pleasure having you on and a blessing. Thank you so much. You’re doing God’s work and thank you, like you said, fishing for men. It’s awesome. Thanks.

Jarrod Bourgeois: 34:32 Thanks, James. God bless you, sir, for all you’re doing. Thank you. Thanks.