The water heater had been leaking for a month. A quarter inch of water covered the living room floor, and Ashley’s baby boy was just learning to crawl. To keep him out of the water, she kept him in his high chair or his bouncer, hour after hour.
“I can’t not let my son crawl or walk,” she remembers thinking. “I’m worried about him touching that water that’s coming through the hallway.”
When the landlord finally pulled the water heater out, black mold covered the wall behind it. Ashley, Jesus, and their children packed what they could carry, left everything else behind, and checked into a motel.
It wasn’t the first time the family had faced a hard season, and it wasn’t the first time they had turned to Fresno Mission.
Where It Started
When Jesus and Ashley first came to us, they were in a fragile place.
“We were scattered,” Jesus remembers. “Honestly, we were broken and scattered. We had no direction.”
For Jesus, the weight was personal. Steady work had been hard to find, and without a job or a vehicle, he couldn’t provide for his family the way he wanted to. “Being in the shelter as a man made me feel less than,” he said. “I felt my job as a man was to provide, as a parent, as a partner. No one would take a chance on me.”
Faith felt distant too. “I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to talk about it,” he admitted. “It was like, ‘Yeah, sure. Christian, okay. Thank you.'”
During that first stay, Ashley was expecting. Their youngest son was born while the family was in our care, and to this day our staff call him “the mission baby.”
Eager for a place of their own, the family moved out quickly. “We jumped on the first place, which we shouldn’t have done,” Ashley said. That place was the apartment that would flood.
Coming Back
Leaving didn’t end the relationship. From the motel, Ashley called Richard Lopez, Director of Family Center, and Natalie Franco, our housing navigator, and asked to be put back on the waiting list. Then she kept calling. “We couldn’t turn anywhere,” Ashley said,
“but we went to Fresno Mission because we knew that if they could, they would help us.”
About a month later, the call came: You’re next.
“We were joyous,” Jesus said. “We felt blessed, because we knew they didn’t have to take us in, but they did.”
Doing It Differently
This time, things were different. Before the family moved back in, Richard sat down with both of them and was honest about expectations, including how they communicated with each other. “It’s a transitional tool,” Jesus recalls him saying, “so the experiences you get here carry on to the next level of your life.“
They took it to heart. The family leaned into every resource available: one-on-one case management; Faith & Finance classes with Lisa Martin, Career Readiness and Academic Coordinator; and marriage counseling with Pastor Mark Snee.
“The resources that they provided to us — honestly, it blew me away,” Jesus said. “They take your one-on-ones. If there’s issues, they know how to give you the case management very patiently, calmly, humbly, and thoroughly — listening to you, your issues, without cutting you off, allowing you to vent and open up so that they can help you with those things and lead you to certain areas in your life. You collaborate and they work through that with you.”
Ashley admits she didn’t think she needed the finance class. “Then when I actually took it, I was like, well, maybe I do need it.” Together, the couple paid off more than $4,000 in old utility debt that had quietly been blocking their housing applications.
Their relationship grew stronger too. During their time with us, Jesus and Ashley were officially married, and even asked Natalie and Donna, their case manager, to be there as witnesses.
“Our communication is a lot better than it was when we first came,” Ashley said. Jesus added, “It shows our kids how far we came.”And it was here, on the third floor of our Family Center just before Christmas, that the mission baby took his first steps. The family was settling in for the night, watching a movie together, when he stood up in nothing but his diaper and started walking!
A Chance to Work
Last November, Jesus joined Fresno Mission’s team in the food service warehouse at Searcy Center. He still remembers his interview with Savannah Marquez, Director of Food Services. He told her how hard it was to believe in himself and that he just needed a chance.
“She said, ‘Well, my brother, if you don’t believe in yourself, I’ll believe in you, and I’ll give you that chance,'” Jesus said. “It was enormous for me.”
Today he drives the Mission truck Monday through Friday, picking up donated bread and pastries from local grocers and building relationships with vendors along the way. He credits Jesse Mendoza, warehouse lead, for continued mentorship. His day now starts at 3:45 a.m. “The first thing I go for is my Bible,” he said. “I pray, I read, and I get my family up.”
Home, and Beyond
When apartment applications kept falling through, Jesus encouraged Ashley to try for a house. She didn’t think they could afford it. “He goes, ‘Just try. It doesn’t hurt to try,'” she said. Their first application was approved, and the family now lives in a three-bedroom home.
Natalie walked with them through every step, and she hasn’t stopped. “She diligently gave us references, led us in directions that we didn’t know, and communicated with us about saving money, about financially spending your money as well,” Jesus said.
Now that the family is settled, Natalie is still the first call when something comes up. “If something’s going on and I don’t understand it, we reach out to Natalie,” Ashley said. “She’ll go over it with me so I can better understand.” Ashley is also preparing to return to work for the first time in years, and Natalie has helped her start the process of enrolling their son in Head Start.
For Jesus, that kind of walking alongside is what made growth possible. “We didn’t have the knowledge or the tools at the time. There’s a difference when you’re aware of something and when you’ve got it,” he said. “Like, I can notice something’s there — okay, that’s a light switch — but now, how am I going to turn it on? What’s common sense to you might not be common sense to me. And so that’s why working as a unit, in a group, allowed us to grow. Your strengths ain’t mine and my strengths ain’t yours, but together we can make a powerful community and make that community sprout like a real oak tree.”
That is the kind of community Fresno Mission works to be. Like the roots of a tree, we are woven together beneath the surface, holding one another up so that no one stands alone. Jesus felt it from the first day, from the front desk to the kitchen staff, who greeted him with handshakes and hugs long before he was an employee.
“It’s not an institution. I want to make that clear,” he said.
“It’s a family. When you walk in those doors, you’re embraced.”
Jesus describes the change in their lives with an image from Scripture. “It’s like pottery, the clay pot. It takes time. You’ve got to shape it, you’ve got to mold it. That’s where this process comes in.”
“Everything that I’ve ever strived to receive came through this process,” he said. “I don’t say this as a cliché. I’m telling you straight from experience.”
Ashley agrees. “We came a long, long way. We look back and we’re just like, this is crazy. But we always remind each other that we couldn’t do it without God.”
At Fresno Mission, we know the road back isn’t always a straight line. Sometimes people leave, and sometimes they come back. Like a little boy taking his first steps, they may fall and get back up. What matters is that Fresno Mission is here to break the fall and will never stop answering the phone. For Jesus and Ashley, that commitment led to lasting change: financially, spiritually, and in their marriage.
When Ashley called from a motel room, someone answered. That’s what your support makes possible.
