Community Care Programs

A new beginning for Genesis Joyner and her daughters Serenity, Trinity and Destiny. Thanks to volunteers and donors of MLM, the family is back together and moving forward.

A New Beginning with Help from MLM

Genesis Joyner is an MLM consumer who agrees she probably epitomized the word “lost.”

“I lost my vehicle,” she recalled. “I lost my home. I lost my job. For a while, I even lost my kids.”

Genesis quickly notes her problems were “partying, alcohol and drugs.” But she knows exactly when things started to change.

“May 24 2008 was my day of reckoning,” she explains. “I was sitting outside a shelter, very ill, unable to move and with no money. My children weren’t in my care. It was bad, but now I know I had to go all the way to the bottom to start back.”

Genesis still smiles when she remembers what happened next. “I told God that if you don’t do something, then I quit. But he said, ‘I have a surprise for you.’”

Out of nowhere, a couple walked up and asked about her problems. They took her to a shelter for battered women. Although she wasn’t battered, they took her in. “I wasn’t battered, except by the devil,” she says today.

Genesis’ recovery was far from an overnight event. She spent two weeks in a mental hospital, with symptoms that included depression and an inability to eat. Later, she moved to a shelter but her time limit soon expired.

Fortunately, someone directed her to Metro Lutheran Ministry where the next chapter in her life began. “They told me about the things that were possible,” she said. “I learned to be independent.”

Genesis is especially grateful for her MLM caseworker. “He was an awesome man of God, and so is everyone else there,” she explains. “They found this apartment. They helped me move. They got me bus passes to get to a job. They even adopted us for Christmas.”

“Us” includes Genesis’ daughters who are now back with her: eight-year-old Destiny, six-year-old Trinity and one-year-old Serenity.

This might seem like the end of the story, but Genesis believes the miracles continue. She hopes to generate work from home utilizing her experience as a legal secretary—although an initial lack of equipment seemed a major obstacle.

“I didn’t have anything to work with,” she said. “Now I have a whole office center thanks to a woman who had a computer she wasn’t using. Then one day I walked out and there was a printer sitting on the trash. You bet I believe in miracles.”

It is also obvious that Genesis has a good work ethic, working from the age of 11 when she first began delivering papers to retail and administration. She also hopes to minister to men and women who, like her, have been battered mentally or physically, although her first priority is giving her children the lessons she missed.

“God taught me that if I don’t teach my children, they won’t learn to love the right way. No one taught me that. I’d always had those qualities, but had never used them until I got to know God.”