Love Them to Life to aid families in coping

There will be a drug conference to help those who are dealing with addiction and to help their families to learn to cope.

The Love Them to Life conference will be hosted by and held at the First Baptist Church of Proctorville and from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 24 The church is located at 627 County Road 411 in Proctorville. The conference is endorsed by the Tri-State Bible College in South Point.

Chad Shaffer, a member of the First Baptist Church and a missionary to the addicts, said the church is expanding its ministry of helping the addicted. He added the conference is
being held for a mixture of reasons, but mainly to reach out to the community during the drug crisis.

“We don’t want it to be a church thing, as such,” Shaffer said. “The goal of this conference is to reach out to the addict, to the families of addicts, and the churches that may not have any type of program and might not know how to start a drug program within their church assembly.”

He said that the hope is to have a class at Tri-State Bible College within the next couple of months that can help train people to become recovery coaches.

“I think it is going to be a win-win for the community, for the churches that want to become involved and Tri-State Bible College,” he said. “We want to help, especially the families of addicts.”

Shaffer, a former West Virginia State Trooper, said he arrested and jailed a lot of people on drug charges.

“For some of them, being locked up is the answer,” he said. “But for the majority of the people, that is not the answer.”

He has done a small anti-drug discipleship in the Huntington, W.Va. area for the past 15 years. He said he finds that many programs enable addicts, rather than helping them get clean. He said faith-based programs are more successful and can be done at less cost.

“It seems like the Tri-State is really suffering and we see God’s timing to bring this conference in and hopefully, get a lot of people off of drugs and they can get on with their life,” Shaffer said.

The speakers at the conference, Joe and Cherri Freeman, have a website called lovethemtolife.com. He spent 38 years as an addict before getting clean and sober. She wrote a book on how families can deal with addicts called “Beside Still Waters.”

“I think this will be good for everyone, but especially mothers. They are just struggling,” Shaffer said. “I recommend this for anyone and everyone. A lot of people don’t know who to reach out to or how to reach out. This is for the families, this is for the addicts. People are hurting.”

For information or to register, call 740-88-6905 or go to www.fbcproctorville.com. Registration deadline is Friday.