It is no secret of psychology that our childhood circumstances pave the way for the social and personal patterns of our life. This is why the crippled pieces of Arsen’s adolescence seem to doom him to a life of coping and brokenness. His parents were married and divorced before his birth and, unfortunately, his father chose absence over involvement in his own son’s life. Arsen remembers a childhood layered with anxiety, depression, and anger; in his own words, he “withdrew into his own world” to get through the days. He began his drug use at the age of 11.
Eventually, his mother would move to a new town and Arsen would develop friendships that led to harder drug use, theft, and mafia involvement. He lived on the street, hustling and gambling to survive, only becoming more violent and destructive. “I beat a guy so badly I paralyzed him,” Arsen recalls, “but one day, a friend told me about an ex-mafia boss.”
This former boss, a man named Gagik, was a local Teen Challenge director. Arsen and Gagik made contact and, after an invitation, Arsen joined a Bible Study that changed his heart through time and consistency. Fifteen years old and longing for a new chance, Arsen accepted salvation with hopes to gain the love and peace so evident in Gagik’s life. Not only did a miraculous transformation happen within Arsen’s soul, but the unthinkable would continue unfolding as Arsen’s mother found Christ, his grandmother received Christ, and the paralyzed young man suffering from the choices of Arsen’s past received physical and spiritual healing. The doctors said he would never walk again, but God faithfully pursued Arsen’s attention and trust with the miraculous and unthinkable.
Today, Arsen is a new man. He studies at the Bible School of Teen Challenge, assists in the operations of the rehab, and loves God with all his heart. Arsen was born into conditions that experts and counselors would call doomed and dysfunctional, but the grace of God abounded. Gagik’s influence has supplied an earthly father figure for this sixteen-year-old and played a role in healing and fixing his eyes on Jesus. Most importantly, Arsen knows the true heart of his heavenly father, and every other broken life circumstance is made whole through this relationship. Teen Challenge is privileged to come alongside men like Arsen with practical tools, a loving community, and the life-transforming power necessary to bring the dead to life again.
