Community Builder: ‘Tree with a Testimony’ helps women battling addiction

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - A storm caused a tree to fall on a house in Columbia last spring near St. Andrews Road.

The building could have sat empty, but one man had a dream to fix it up as a home for women battling drug and alcohol addiction.

Pastor Lucky Detty, with Reconciliation Ministries, with the help of his congregation, recently opened the Nixon Home in honor of Dr. Wendel and Judy Nixon.

“We partnered with Celtic Works, Inc.," Detty said. “They are a commercial and residential builder, They actually pulled the permits, but they actually allowed us to do a lot of the work. So we changed all the windows, we put in new doors, all the flooring, the electrical work.”

The house has a beautiful interior design and enough room to house seven residents, plus staff. However, in April of 2018, a tree fell on the house.

“One of the residents had been in his bedroom and went out to go speak with someone, and while he was outside the tree fell on the very area that he had just been resting in," Debbie Pittman, who works at Reconciliation Ministries, said. “So the fact that no one was hurt when that huge tree was amazing.”

Volunteers say Detty helped carry out the vision to open the home to help women who suffer from drug and alcohol addiction.

“I know this, last summer almost every waking hour when he wasn’t on campus or in his office or basically living side by side with the men, he was working here,” Pittman said.

During the grand opening for the home, Detty thanked everyone for their support. He was also named as the latest WIS Community Builder by Matt Mungo.

"I am here because Pastor Lucky has been nominated and chosen...for his work with the less fortunate in our community,” Mungo said.

Detty wouldn’t take all of the credit, though.

“I’m very humbled to be recognized,” Detty said after receiving the award. “It’s important for me to say I don’t do this by myself. The men, women and the other staff members -- they do just as much work. It takes a community of believers, I believe, to come together and to offer a safe place where men and women can realize the things that they have done are not who they are.”

Detty said the ministry offers a 9- to 15-month treatment program that is free for the residents. The ministry pays about $18,000 per person per month. To contact or donate to Reconciliation Ministries, click or tap here.

Know someone who should be our next community builder? Nominate them by clicking or tapping here.

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