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Genesis House is a godsend for men seeking recovery from addiction

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Newsrooms across the commonwealth have spent years documenting the opioid crisis in their own communities. But now, in the special project State of Emergency: Searching for Solutions to Pennsylvania’s Opioids Crisis, we are marshalling resources to spotlight what Pennsylvanians are doing to try to reverse the soaring number of overdose deaths.

WITF is releasing more than 60 stories, videos and photos throughout July. This week, you will find stories about treatment facilities and recovery.

 

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Mark Burnett, Justin Giffin and Justin Shea of Genesis House Services work on the exterior of a transitional home for homeless veterans in Uniontown. (Mike Tony/Herald-Standard)

(Uniontown) — “I’m in a better place now than what I was.”

For Zachery Leonard, that place was a seat between the pastor that rescued him from a life of sleeping in a tent in the woods and stealing to support his crack cocaine and heroin addiction and the man exemplifying recovery for him every day.

On Leonard’s left was Nathan Fox, who at 33 is nine years older than Leonard and has been leaving behind a heroin addiction for the last five months during a stay at Genesis House Ministries. The transitional home for men in Uniontown, Fayette County, works to turn around the lives of parolees, those court-ordered there and those with completed sentences.

On Leonard’s right is the Rev. Terry Sanders, who opened Genesis House four years ago after previously overcoming a cocaine addiction himself in the 1990s, letting God and family lead him into sobriety and ministry.

Sanders immediately picked Leonard up one morning after Leonard called him seeking help after being released from jail.

“If you’re looking through a world lens, it’s like the odds are against him,” Sanders said. “But none of us are as strong as all of us. He’s got a family here of recovery staff and resident brothers that want to see him make it.”

Leonard and Fox, two of 13 men who were living at Genesis House this spring, are in different phases of recovery.

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The Rev. Terry Sanders, Genesis House Services coordinator Shawn Walker and United Veterans Billeting of Fayette County Chair Ron Metros visit a transitional home opening for homeless veterans in Uniontown. (Mike Tony/Herald-Standard)

Fox is active in Genesis House Services, a construction business consisting of house members who learn and apply trade skills while generating money that helps keep the house open. Fox was recently released off of probation and has reestablished relationships with his parents, fiancée and her daughter.

Genesis House helped Cody Myers, 24, refrain from sliding back into painkillers and cocaine while losing three family members during his stay.

“This is the only place that I’ve known that I can get God and recovery in one,” Myers said.

Sanders and other staff petition in court for residence extensions when necessary, get resident court fees reduced or suspended and help structure court cost payment plans.

“Most of them don’t come with any clothes or anything,” said Georgette Lehr, an intake specialist who overcame a 21-year heroin addiction herself. ” … I’ve seen Rev (Sanders) purchase shoes and everything for these men.”

Residents helped clean up Redstone Creek to mitigate flooding problems there last year and removed debris after a tornado swept through Uniontown in February.

“All we hear is all the bad in the opiate epidemic,” Sanders says. “But we are part, and others are part, of the good that’s coming from it. We’re standing tall through it, and we’re helping to lift others up out of it.”

“I really was rescued, and I thank God for it every night,” Leonard says. “I pray, ‘Thank you for everybody here.’”

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