RUSSELLVILLE — Sixteen-year-old Tori said she has felt loved at Adullam Youth Outreach since the moment she arrived more than nine months ago. That feeling has made a positive difference in her life.
“I’ve been dealing with all kinds of stuff since I was 12,” Tori said in the living room of pastors Mark and Leslie Dollar, who opened the youth ranch at their home in 2007. “I was struggling with cutting myself and suicidal thoughts. I was rebellious. I’d sneak out of the house; I didn’t listen to my parents.
“When I came here, I didn’t feel the need to cut myself anymore. Before I moved in, I didn’t trust anybody. I kept all to myself. I have learned how to trust people and open up. It’s taken a long time, but I’ve learned to be honest. It makes me feel bad to lie. I’ve messed up a few times since I’ve been here, but everyone is always like, ‘We love you. You can do this.’”
Tori is one of six teenagers and young adults who live at Adullam under the supervision of the Dollars. The couple’s six children also live at the ranch. The Dollars have opened their home to adolescents who have abused alcohol and drugs or who have demonstrated violent or socially unacceptable behavior at school.
“We literally started with just kids sleeping on our floor,” Leslie said of Adullam’s beginnings.
When she and Mark were youth pastors at a local church, kids who “had rough situations at home or trouble at school” would often come stay the night in the family’s home.
“We had been in youth ministry for 20 years,” she said. “We began to see kids who were having trouble in their spiritual walk. Two boys who slept on our floor were coming from abusive homes. We let them stay in our guest house next door after the renter moved out.”
Mark said he recognized a need to “minister to and love these kids. We began busing kids in from all over the city. The biggest issue was taking them back to their home environment. They would come, we’d minister to them and help them, but it was like putting a Band-Aid on them - it would get stripped off. They were in this circular flight pattern. They needed to be dealt a new deck of cards.”
Leslie said she and Mark had long dreamed of operating a youth ranch.
“Five years ago, we looked up and saw kids on our floor, and we said, ‘This is it.’ Most other facilities will get incorporated, they’ll dream and vision and throw things on a board. We didn’t start that way. We started with an epiphany.”
Adullam, which shelters troubled teens for a minimum of one year at no charge, is run entirely on donations. Mark and Leslie said they separate their wards from peer pressure and the distractions of social networking. That means they are forbidden from using cellphones or Facebook while living on the ranch.
“I feel like television, cellphones and social networking are somewhat of a detriment to our society,” Leslie said, “especially to young people. These kids are texting each other instead of communicating face to face. I think they have forgotten how to do that.
“We help take off the weight of peer pressure and give them the tools to be successful in society. We’re here as a refuge from all of that. Right now, we’ve got kids coming to us from the juvenile system. Their parents are saying, ‘What do we do? How do we handle this?’ It has taken these kids years to get where they are now; it will take longer than a year to change their mindset.”
She said parents learn about Adullam primarily through word of mouth.
“We had two parents who called and said they love their child so much and wanted a different direction for them,” Leslie said. “That’s not easy to do. These families need help, so we gather around them and become a team.”
Abbie, 15, described her troubled background.
“I was fighting in school ever y week,” she said. “I showed no mercy. I was into drugs, and I had assault charges on me. I disrespected my mom - I’d act like I didn’t hear her and walk out.”
She said the phone was one of her biggest problems.
“I’d wake up in the middle of the night to text someone back,” she said. “It would go on all night. Now my mom has my phone. It’s in a box with staples on it.”
Mark and Leslie knew Abbie from their days as youth pastors and found out she had failed another drug test and had an upcoming court date.
“My mom couldn’t handle me,” Abbie said. “I wrote Mark a letter asking if I could move in. One day Mom told me to pack up, that Mark would be there to get me. I moved in on Dec. 5.
“When I first came here, I just felt loved. Everyone was downstairs waiting on me, and it was almost 11 p.m. and a school night. When I walked in, they grabbed my bags.”
The Dollars said Bible studies are part of the program on the ranch. Teens who live at Adullam attend public school and get counseling from the Dollars, as well as from interns who also live at the ranch.
“They learn to trust each other and help each other,” Mark said. “Their biggest challenge is finding out who they are when no one else is around.”
Leslie said the teens do chores around the ranch and learn parenting skills by participating in the Dollars’ own household.
“It brings out something in the boys that is tender,” Leslie said. “They’re also learning patience and responsibility.”
The Dollars’ biological children range in age from 1-15.
“They are learning that they don’t have to use drugs, that they can function without rebelling,” Leslie said. “They are going to have to submit to authority, whether that’s Mom and Dad, or their church, or the manager at McDonald’s. They have to learn to honor that authority.”
The teens are required to call home once a week and talk to their parents, and can visit home once a week. They are in “30-day lock down” when they first come to Adullam, Leslie said, in order to “break off all contact and focus on themselves. We’re not separating them from their families or brainwashing them. They need to be able to hear God, and feel and think again without an electronic device.”
The teens are also required to write down their thoughts and feelings in a journal.
Jason, 15, of Searcy, said he has lived at the ranch for three months.
“I used to get in trouble. I got suspended from school all the time. I’ve been through several other programs, but this one has made the most impact on me. At other places, nobody cares. You don’t make internal changes. Everybody cares about each other here.”
Josh Bidwell said he chose to live at the ranch and has been there for three years.
“When I first came, I was a cutter, a drug addict,” he said. “I was fighting all the time. I never had a dad in my life.”
Now a graduate of Russellville High School, Bidwell said he is saving money to move to Cincinnati, Ohio, to learn how to make skateboards and run a skateboard shop.
Leslie said that once they leave Adullam, teens can choose to stay on as interns, or the Dollars will help them find a place to go.
“They’re always family,” she said.
“It’s really exciting to see them grow and make good life choices,” Mark s aid.“When these kids come in, it’s like we’re taking them as an investment. You want your future return to be a lot bigger than what you bought it for. They take what my wife and I give them and run with it, dream with it.”
To learn how to donate to Adullam, visit its website, www.adullamyouthoutreach.com.
Staff writer Daniel A. Marsh can be reached at (501) 399-3688 or dmarsh@arkansasonline.com.
River Valley Ozark, Pages 133 on 08/05/2012