A Survivor Blessed by the Priceless Community

By Amy Brun, Priceless Mentor

​​When we walked with our mentee through what appeared to be an impossible situation, little did we know God was working all things out. In March of this year, one of our mentees made a commitment to herself to attend 90 Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings in 90 days. Under "normal" circumstances, this would have been difficult, but her struggles were far from "normal."

• She had just had neck surgery to fuse several disks that plagued her with pain for many years. To have surgery, she had to be clean and sober for 30+ days. The pain of surgery and the prescription meds were too much, and she relapsed shortly after surgery.
• ​Her relationship with her roommate became abusive, and she had to get a restraining order to have her removed. Without the extra income, our mentee lost her long-time residence and was forced to move. While we desperately arranged for temporary housing, she moved in with a "friend" and again found herself in an abusive situation. In the meantime, her 1991 Plymouth (with hundreds of thousands of miles on it) became dangerous to drive, and she lost her transportation.
• In March we were able to secure her temporary housing. However, without her car, attending NA meetings every day, making important doctors appointments, and searching for more permanent housing remained very difficult. She also had set long-term goals, such as getting a part-time job and starting her own chapter for NA meetings in a more convenient area of the city. These goals were basically abandoned with no reliable mode of transportation. 

This is when our mentee reached out for help in finding a cheap mechanic.​ Asking for help is a success in and of itself that we celebrate! As our mentee was reaching out for help, a young woman named Angi, who happened to be a mechanic and familiar with Priceless, reached out to our team and offered her help if any of our mentees ever needed a car mechanic. This started an amazing chain of events that could only be orchestrated by God.

Our beautiful lady mechanic willingly stepped in and towed the car to her shop, accessed the issues, and determined it to be "not worth fixing." This appeared to be another disappointment, but again God had other plans. Angi made the suggestion to prayerfully reach out for donations to replace the car and enthusiastically started the fundraiser herself.

My mentor partner and I posted it on social media and sent the request out to our friends. In a matter of just two weeks, we raised over $5,000 towards a "new" used vehicle!
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All the while, our mentee was fulfilling her commitment to herself by attending daily NA meetings. She reached 30 days, then 60 days, and with just 3 days left of her goal, we found a car!

I wish everyone involved could have been at Lithia Dodge to see our mentee test drive her new car. She was dressed like she was going to the Kentucky Derby, hat and all. She was treated with such respect and was able to sign all the documentation to make the car hers. 

With the help of all of our amazing donors, the Priceless team, and a salesman by the name of Mike at Lithia, we were able to purchase a safe, reliable car within our budget even though it was originally listed out of our price range.

​God is so good, and so is the Priceless community! It was a glorious day to be a part of God's plan. Our mentee was completely overwhelmed that people who don't even know her name would want to give her such a gift. Her exact words with tears in her eyes were, "I have never had anything so nice in my life!"

To look back at six months of heartache and despair to this day of complete joy, is to know Jesus! To know what it took to get to this place—the people that prayed, donated, and came alongside our mentee to make this happen, and to know that some of those who participated in this story are not believers, is to know Jesus! He is just amazing that way!

By the way, our mentee hit "90 NA meetings in 90 days" two days after picking up her car. She was so proud to drive it to her 90th meeting and share the joy with her friends.