Adult & Teen Challenge has helped the lives of countless men and women. One such graduate is Flint Campus Director, Phil Hall. His father was an alcohol and drug addict who left his family behind with absolutely nothing. “We didn’t have heat in the house and I would use a hair-dryer to keep my brothers warm,” Hall remembers.
At age 13, Hall started drinking to deal with his life circumstances. It was one of the only things that made him feel better. He got a job and worked his way up through the organization. That was when he started using drugs. “I met my wife and tried to keep the drugs secret. I was doing pills and cocaine. I quit for a while after our first child, but it crept back in. After our third child, my wife was done with me,” he says. He tried to clean himself up and managed it for about eight months, then relapsed. At the time, he was highly successful and making a six-figure salary, had a beautiful house on the lake, company car and more. “I thought I could keep it all together,” he says. “I never had it all as a kid and I wanted it to grow bigger, but I was losing myself in the process. When you are in the state of addiction, no matter how hard you try, everything will crumble.”
After a time, a couple of family friends invited Hall and his wife to church and Adult & Teen Challenge was there. “I listened to all the graduates give testimony to the program and I thought they were all nuts!” remembers Hall. “I told myself I would never do that. I wasn’t a religious man. But a couple of months later, my wife was packing to leave. She was fed up and she was taking the kids away from my sickness. I came up with a plan that was going to save them from me and my addictions.
The plan was to go to Detroit, get high, crash my vehicle and end it all. At that time, I asked God for help. I asked the Lord to stop me. I then had an experience that, to this day, I can’t understand. I got home and called Adult & Teen Challenge that night.” Hall entered the program and graduated. He repaired his relationship with his wife and children, got a new job and re-created his life. He became a pastor and worked at Adult & Teen Challenge – Detroit as men’s director. He was then called to help those in Flint. “It’s been absolutely amazing here and it’s been the best years of my life since I graduated from the program.”
