I almost lost all hope, lived on the streets and thought only about drugs.

Greetings, my name is Sergey. I was born in Russia and came to Israel in 1998 with my wife and two little children. Two years later, because of my alcohol addiction, I left my family. In 2001, I fell in love with an Israeli woman 11 years younger than me. At that time I did not drink, did not smoke and worked at a good job. We started living together and had two daughters. After the divorce from my first wife, I kept in touch with my first family and the children often visited me, already in the new family.

In 2010, I started drinking alcohol again, this time heavily. Scandals began happening in the family. We did not want the children to see me like this, so we sent them to a boarding school. I was very upset and switched from alcohol to drugs: as they say, nobody will notice in the family or at work (there is no color or smell from the drugs). It was self-deception. Because of my decision to use drugs, I lost contact with all my children. Because of my addiction, nothing stopped me. I served three times in prison for various crimes and ended up on the streets. Eventually I started visiting Aviv Center in Tel Aviv, where they gave me food and clothes. I had known nothing about healing from the Lord. In September 2018, I turned to Leonid, one of the Center’s volunteers, for help and went to his rehab, but my heart was not ready and the next day I left rehabilitation.

In 2019, I woke up one morning and understood: I had money, I had drugs, I had “authority” – but there was no peace in my heart. And then I recalled Leonid’s look and his words about salvation: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved, and your house”. I really wanted to return my family, children, work and connections with all my relatives. Everything had been lost. That same morning I met my wife, the mother of my girls, she is a drug addict too. She told me the bad news about my youngest daughter. She said to the social worker: “Dad will not come to see me anyway”, and then she cut her wrist and as a result was placed in a hospital for mentally ill people. I immediately ran for help to Aviv Center, and I was not rejected. I was dirty, in unclean clothes, unshaven… I was very ashamed of my condition. I said that I was tired of my old life and that I wanted to go to a rehab center and be healed.

I turned to the Lord and prayed, and asked Jesus Christ and God the Father for forgiveness for all the pain I had caused to so many people. I had many sins. Thanks to the Lord, my legs stopped hurting. Two months later, my eldest daughter came to see me, she is 27 years old already. Thanks to our Lord, my relatives (father, aunt, sister) have already visited me several times. The relationship with my mother, whom I have not seen for many years, also improved. Today I can say for sure that I am alive only thanks to the Lord. I am so grateful to Him for that! I am so grateful that He exists. He has given me a large family of brothers and sisters in Christ. I almost lost all hope, lived on the streets and thought only about drugs, not about family or work. Through Aviv Center the Lord gave me a new life and a new path. During my stay in the rehab “Hazara Le-Haim” (in Ashkelon), I have seen many living testimonies that brought my heart a great hope and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.