The healing taking place at Outcry In The Barrio is a sight to behold.

By Steve Parkhurst

On a pleasant spring day in west San Antonio, just off a main road, there rests a place that from the street might appear deserted.

Inside, this place is anything but deserted. It is full of life and spirit. In some cases, the life and the spirit are renewing.

What’s taking place on the premises here is something of a renaissance, and nothing short of a miracle.

I am at Outcry In The Barrio ministry this spring day.

This ministry, founded by Freddie Garcia, a heroin addict turned minister, turned modern day savior, founded Outcry when he was recovering from a tragic life, full of bad experiences, poor judgment and most importantly, sin.

Being from San Antonio, I had heard about Outcry and I had seen their acolytes distributing literature throughout the years at shopping center parking lots or at various intersections. Freddie and Ninfa’s (his wife) book Outcry In The Barrio is very well known and very distinguishable in San Antonio.

I was introduced to Outcry and Freddie Garcia in a new sense, by Robert Woodson in his book The Triumphs of Joseph: How Today’s Community Healers Are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods. Woodson spent the better part of a chapter describing how Freddie Garcia was at the lowest point in his life when he found a way to turn his life around, and in turn, turned around the lives of untold numbers of souls.

Then, in early 2014, on a visit to San Antonio, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan visited Outcry, along with Robert Woodson so that the Congressman could see firsthand how a faith-based, results driven organization that does not rely on the government for funding could be doing so well for so long.

Congressman Ryan is touring the country, in most cases with Robert Woodson, looking for answers to the poverty problem as the country looks back at the last 50 years of the “war on poverty.” And since his visit, Congressman Ryan is mentioning Outcry specifically. And now, having been there myself, I can understand why.

While others are content to spend more and accept lesser results, Paul Ryan is looking at the alternatives where the results are great, the spending is less and the empowerment of local leaders in increased.

Congressman Ryan deserves credit, and a following, for doing this work. For going to places like Outcry, free of media attention, just to listen to leaders talk about what works, and why. Ryan does not want credit though, to listen to him and to watch him speak on the topics of poverty and addiction is to understand that he wants to find a way to help those who really need help.

It is up to the rest of us to engage locally and find our own Outcry’s and do what we can to help. By doing this, we show strength in numbers when people are saved by a legitimate program, rather than just being lumped into a group of government statistics where the number of people in recovery programs is more important than the number of people cured or saved.

History ties loose ends together in this story, in a “circle of life” sort of way. Robert Woodson worked with the late Jack Kemp while Kemp was at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. A young Paul Ryan went to Washington D.C. and got a job writing speeches and studying policy for Jack Kemp at Empower America. The work has continued. The rest is history.

Today, Pastor Freddie has been gone for nearly five years, yet his legacy continues to grow in the ministry that he built from the ground up, as souls are saved and communities are changed.

It does not take long during a visit to Outcry to feel the power of what is taking place.

On the day of my visit two new addicts are in their first few hours of recovery. One gentleman, deciding he had sinned long enough, has checked-in to give up on heroin use. He is sleeping, but he has a prayer partner waiting by him to help him when he wakes up. That help could be in the form of a drink of water, or it could be in the form of prayer, or even just a sweet treat, as addicts crave sweets when they stop using.

A few beds away, another gentleman, also in his first hour of recovery and hope for a new life, is shaking in his bed, having just given up on his addiction to alcohol earlier in the day.

I witness prayers for each of these, and to an extent I even prayed with them. This however, is not your typical prayer. Several individuals, most of them having been in this same situation at some point in their lives, move toward the men one at a time and they gather around, and each person starts praying out loud, their own prayer. Not rehearsed. Not a form prayer. It is a prayer for that individual, and it’s a prayer that comes from the heart, at that moment.

We move outside to a semi-covered patio lined with chairs, and a gentleman standing at the front of a group of 50-60 men and women in recovery. This is a session which looks like a sermon, but it is longer than any sermon any of us has sat through in our lives, not that anyone is complaining.

Eventually, I am asked to say a few words to the group and I am handed a microphone. This was a spur of the moment thing, when I arrived hours earlier, I did not know I would be doing this. I didn’t speak for more than a minute. I was standing before a group of 50-60 people, of which about 80-85{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} were in their first 30 days of recovery, with the rest being closer to 90 days in recovery. It did not dawn on me at the time, but I wondered later, just how many of those people might have been in jail – just earlier this year? How many might have awoken from their last high – just in the past two months?

What could I say to this crowd that they might care about?

I talked about the internal community at Outcry, the people all around that facility, the way every person there was rooting for and looking out for these individuals. How on the really tough days, when it seems easy to give in and go back to getting high or drunk, there is a group of people to lean on and confide in, and pray with.

I am not delusional enough to think I changed anyone’s life. For all I know, I stated obvious truths and I was forgotten by the end of the day.

In the end, this was not about me. It was about a ministry, with a success rate better than any government recovery program can aspire to, doing what seems like impossible work.

It was about neighborhood healers, first Freddie Garcia, then current leaders Roman and Alma Herrera, and every leader at Outcry who has ever stood or sat in front of a person who could be down to his or her last breath, his or her last moment, and simply said a prayer and led that lost soul first to acceptance and then to a safe place where healing begins.

This is the stuff that leads to a renaissance.