*Love is a powerful force*

"I remember my last days using on the streets. I walked up and down Dickerson Rd. until a car stopped for me. I got in the car, and the man asked me to have sex with him. I agreed because I wanted that next hit of dope so bad. After we finished, he dropped me off at the store on the corner of Dickerson Rd. and Hancock Ave. I saw the guy who I always bought my drugs from, and I bought dope. I went behind the store to take a hit. I smoked it on a glass stem and tried to forget what I had just done."
This is an excerpt from the book "Find Your Way Home - Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart," written by the women of Magdalene with Becca Stevens. Magdalene is a two-year residential community founded by the Rev. Becca Stevens in 1997 for women with a history of prostitution and drug addiction. Thistle Farms is a non-profit business run by these women. They create natural bath and body products. The sales proceeds go back into supporting the residents of Magdalene. Through Thistle Farms the women learn much needed job skills, and learn responsibility and cooperation. Their belief is that freedom starts with healing, and love can change lives.
Becca Stevens is an Episcopal priest, writer, and speaker. She is Chaplain at St. Augustine's chapel on Vanderbilt University. Her commitment to serve, has helped her to establish a partnership between St. Augustine's Chapel and San Eduardo in Ecuador to build and support a rural school, a nursing program for an AIDS hospice in Botswana, and a center for contemplative justice that houses programs such as a chapter of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, which serves the homeless in Nashville. She has won numerous awards such as the Frist Foundation's award for "Innovation in Action," Community Nashville's Human Relations Award, and the Academy of Women in Achievement. Becca has also written three spiritual books.
I have purchased many of Thistle Farms products because they make great gifts, and smell wonderful. I especially love their candles, lip balms, and room sprays. The products are all natural, beautifully packaged, and I know I help support a powerful community nurturing women's health. Your church can host an evening with Becca and Magdalene and hear about their journeys. It will bring tears to your eyes as you hear residents talk about their former, destructive lives. Afterwards you can treat yourself from the various products, or think ahead to gift-giving.
I encourage you to visit the Thistle Farms website at http://www.thistlefarms.org/ . You can learn more about the community, how to host a party, or volunteer. Becca Stevens is a sensitive, humorous speaker who tells her audience how she became a "thistle farmer".