After a Fire Took the Home for Addicts, the Residents Slept in the Pew of a Church

//video.udn.com/embed/news/571285

Without a home now, from the Newspapers, translated…

The Hualien God’s Love Shelter that’s helped over thousands of drug addicts get out their addictions caught fire, and the halfway house for youths that’s a part of the program was, nearly completely, destroyed, the twenty-four adolescent residents had to jump out of the windows to escape the fire, and now, they can only, sleep in the pews of the church, the C.E.O. of the foundation who was hospitalized due to smoke inhalation, Chang returned yesterday to the scene of the fire, she’d cried and told, that she will do the best she can, to rebuild this home back up again, and carry forth with the program to help the addicts detox, to not allow the thirty-two years’ worth of hard work become nothing.

The founder of the God’s Love Shelter, Pastor Powell came to Taiwan back in 1984, he’d set up the God’s Love House in Hsintien first, then, the very next year, moved the church to its current address in Hualien, and in the thirty-two years since it was set up, it’d helped over two thousand people, currently, the home had almost fifty people from all over who are battling drug addictions. On the early morning hours of the first of the month, the Psalms Juvenile Halfway House that was a part of the church started burning, the point of ignition was Pastor Powell’s office, and it was suspected to be an old wire that caught fire, and the fire raged to the second floor dormitory of the youth home.

Back then, all twenty-four of the adolescent residents all jumped out of the second floor windows for their lives, thankfully, there was, a flatbed close by, the youths jumped aboard the top of the flatbed, and, got to the ground, nobody was injured, but, because the C.E.O. Chang didn’t have her hearing aid on, she’d almost gotten trapped in the fire, later on, although the workers were able to pull her out, she’d still suffered smoke inhalation. Yesterday, she’d returned back to the site, and, all the important documents are, all scorched, she’d started crying; she said, that this fire had, burned down the Psalms Garden, and it’d deeply, impacted the drug detox center too, the twenty-four members of the teenagers who were living there can only, camp out in the pew of the church with the workers. She’d told, that it would take them six months to rebuild, and it would take over ten million dollars in funding.

And so, this, is a tragic event, this home for youths is now, taken, by the fires, and these people are in need of assistance to rebuild the home back up, and, in time, I know that they will be able to, so long as they keep on carrying forth the believer of the founder’s beliefs.