Dakota Smith’s story starts in a way that many people in Alabama might find familiar.
His grandfather was a Southern Baptist pastor. He grew up in church. And at age 8, he made a decision at Vacation Bible School to follow Jesus.
“I had a pretty sheltered home life,” Smith said.
But in college, that shelter began to fall apart. As he started his junior year headed toward med school one day, his parents began having serious marital problems.
“I got really depressed,” Smith said. “I started drinking to kind of cope with depression. My grades started slipping; I started missing class.”
Eventually his dad suggested he take time off and move home, but when Smith did, everything came to a head. His parents divorced. They filed for bankruptcy and lost their farm, their homes and their vehicles.
“I was on my own and had to fend for myself,” Smith said. “I started working entry level jobs and started smoking marijuana. I just felt like I didn’t have a lot going for me, and I stopped trying. I became homeless.”
From there, it was a “slippery slope,” he said, and one day he was pulled over by the police and arrested when they found hard drugs in his car. He bonded himself out, but after two weeks in rehab, he was back out on the streets.
“I had nowhere left to go,” Smith said.
Turnaround
But then someone recommended he try His Place, a one-year residential program in Opelika founded in 1986 by evangelist Rick Hagans and his wife, Kim. The program aims to help men overcome addiction and build a relationship with God. A companion ministry for women, Hosanna Home, opened in 1996.
Smith decided giving His Place a call was the best plan he had — and on May 3, he graduated from the program with 16 other men and three women from Hosanna Home.
“I’ve been sober for a little over a year,” he said. “I’m back in college and working full time at a doctor’s office. I’ve really seen a complete turnaround in my life.”
Hagans said one thing that has been interesting about the past few graduating classes is that more than half of them grew up in church like Smith did.
“In the past, many would be from a really rough background,” Hagans said. “It’s not that way anymore.”
Many of the His Place and Hosanna Home residents attended church in childhood, then “begin to experiment with drugs and the experimentation took them further and faster than years ago,” he said.
They also often begin using drugs sooner — as young as 12 or 13.
Relationships
That’s Blayden Woodall’s story.
“I started doing drugs and alcohol when I was probably around 13,” he said. “When people closest to me started dying, I started doing harder drugs.”
Then two years ago, his best friend died of fentanyl, and “it killed me with him,” Woodall said. “I started doing fentanyl. I got to where I couldn’t live life without doing it — I was doing 200 to 300 pills a week.”
But when he was arrested on drug charges, a cellmate recommended he read the Bible, and something clicked.
“When I got out, I had been planning on getting as many pills as I could to kill me. But now I wanted to do something better for my life,” Woodall said.
He went to His Place and “fell in love with it.”
“It’s gotten me to a better relationship with God and opened up opportunities for me,” he said. “I’m enrolled in school right now and just loving life. I hate the steps it took me to get here, but I love where I am. I know it’s for a bigger purpose.”
Hagans said it’s been amazing to watch Jesus change lives at His Place and Hosanna Home. He loves visiting churches around the state and sharing the stories of how God is at work.
He said he doesn’t want to sugarcoat it — it’s hard work to overcome addiction, and not everyone makes it.
“We buried 12 men and women last year who overdosed, committed suicide or were murdered,” Hagans said.
New calling
But there are many stories of those who do. Seven men who have come through His Place are now pastors. And many of the women who come through Hosanna Home see God at work in their lives in a big way too — like Shanita Wright, who graduated May 3.
Wright came from a broken home and grew up with her father. During her teenage years, she followed the influences around her down a darker and darker path.
Then at 19, she found herself in an abusive relationship. “I started dabbling with cocaine to numb the pain,” Wright said.
As time went on, things got worse — she left, then got in another relationship that pushed her to drug use. She found out she was pregnant, then found out she had HIV. Day after day, she sat in tears.
Finally she “gave birth to my beautiful baby boy … although he was born premature, he was born HIV free,” Wright said.
But then DHR instructed her to give up custody after drugs were found in his umbilical cord.
“My heart sunk into my chest, as I was upset with myself over my choices, and 24 hours later I released custody to my cousin,” Wright said.
She ended up at Hosanna Home, where she said month by month she got better. It was a bumpy road, but on May 3, she graduated.
“Within my time here, God has restored my family and my health,” she said. “I am currently showing undetectable results (for HIV) … and I visit with my son twice a month. This August, I will be two years sober.”
For more information about His Place and Hosanna Home, visit harvestevangelism.org.
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