Residents from Crossroads For Her volunteer at the Storehouse Thrift Store, which is headed up by Heritage Church.

MOULTRIE – Crossroads For Her opened its doors in March 2023 with the vision: “To provide a Christian transition home for women by offering new hope, a new heart, and new beginnings.”

The ministry was started by Linda Berl and Darlene Cox after Berl saw women in a Bible study at the Colquitt County Jail who didn’t have anywhere to go after being released.

After a being open for almost a year and a half, Berl said, “We are learning what we didn’t know and making adjustments all the time.”

She said that making the adjustments over the past year has been good because they’ve learned from things they had never thought about until they happened.

“We went into this with our hearts in it and we had people to get a blueprint from, especially Crossroads Gospel Mission, but women are different then men and we have to see what works for us,” she said.

The transition home’s capacity is 12 women but Berl said they didn’t want to start with that many at first. They started with two to three last summer and are now up to seven, she said.

“This year, we’ve been pretty stable at around four to five and we’re getting ready to add two more. So, we’ll have six and maybe seven in September and that’s full for us, right now,” Berl said.

A resident of the transition home said, “It’s been such a blessing being here. Like, honestly, it has helped us out in numerous ways that people don’t even understand. Just the heartache and the struggles you go through that you don’t even share with anybody. You know, they begin to heal.”

She went on to say that Crossroads For Her had been a blessing and it had really saved her life.

Berl said that the programs were working very well and they haven’t really needed to make a lot of adjustments with them and she outlined the programs and the needs that they were meeting for the women.

“First of all, we focus on their goals. They come in and they fill out their own personal goals and we have a goals and success team that meets with them weekly,” she said.

She also said that they were expected to make progress on their goals while at the transition home.

Berl said, for their spirituality, each of the women has a mentor, a Christian woman that is mature in her faith and they have weekly Bible studies and they attend church as a group twice a week.

“I lead the group recovery classes. All of them come from, what we call, ‘hurts, habits and hang-ups’. Just like all of us. But a lot of them … drugs and alcohol and other just terrible things have happened to them in life. We use Celebrate Recovery,” she said and added that the women go to Temple Baptist Church once a week to attend their Celebrate Recovery service.

It’s a major part, she said, for the women to identify where they’ve been hurt and how to have God heal their hurts.

“Not everybody that comes in is a Christian. Weekly, they’re being exposed to the Christian God and Jesus,” said Berl, and she went on to say that some of the women had been baptized.

As far as their educational needs, computers are available for them to use. One of the residents is now working on getting her GED. Berl said they also helped the women put together a resume and get interviews for work.

However, she said, they’re not allowed to work the first 30 days of the program because they need to get used to the transition home first as it is an adjustment for them.

The residents can also go to the YMCA weekly for their physical health and, Berl said, they try to get them set up with a doctor’s office in the first month to get a complete physical.

The women’s mental health issues are addressed by Georgia Pines because, Berl said, the transition program isn’t equipped to handle all of the mental issues that the women had gone through and were still going through.

“The biggest need that we didn’t know was mental health,” she added.

Berl said, “Something Darlene and I both want to always stress is that we are not a homeless shelter or a drug rehab center.”

She said they wished that they could help those ladies who were just looking for a bed but that just wasn’t what Crossroads For Her was.

“We have to have ladies that want to be there at least three months up to a year and want our program,” she said.

She said that she knew that a homeless shelter was needed but they just didn’t have the space and it would be disruptive to the residents who were in their program, if women were just walking in to stay overnight.

Berl said that they couldn’t be a drug rehab center either because they just didn’t have the expertise and added, “We are all volunteers, except for a couple of paid staff.”

Cox serves as executive director, and Laveta Edwards has been with them since June in the role of assistant executive director.

A resident must be sober 30 days before they can be accepted into the Christian transition home, Berl said.

“We hope to eventually get up to 12 but we want to do it slowly so that we continue to be able to work out any problems that may arise and learn from those. So that we can give the same service when we are full with 12, as we do, right now, with six or seven,” Berl said.

She said that the women were coming in, as they had expected, from three areas: jail, drug and alcohol rehab centers, and from homelessness.

To join the Crossroads For Her program, Berl said, the woman needs to fill out an application, do a personal interview, have a background check, and have a drug and alcohol check.

“We want to help women who are interested in our program to transition from their hardships in life to successful independent living. Wanting God, there, at their side during this process,” she said.

Berl said that not everyone has stayed as long as they had wanted. She also said that they’ve had people that didn’t follow the rules and had to leave.

“But it has been heartening for the leadership to hear some of them say, ‘I’m still glad I was there.’ And we want to try to, if possible, to still show love to those that have left early,” she said.

Crossroads For Her is funded by donations from individuals, churches and businesses in Colquitt County and the surrounding area, plus it has received two grants.

Berl said that fundraisers are held, periodically, like the spring pickleball tournament, where, after the tournament’s expenses, all of the rest of the proceeds was donated to the organization. Another pickleball tournament is planned for October.

The semifinals and finals of the South Georgia Superstar’s Voice Competition, presented by Legendary Productions, will be held Aug. 31 and Sept. 7 with some of the proceeds being donated to Crossroads For Her, she said.

The singing competition events will be held at Withers Auditorium with the doors opening at 6 p.m. and the competition starting at 7 p.m. For more information or to purchase tickets, call (229) 985-1001. Tickets are also available at The Speakeasy on Main, Lazarus and The Colquitt Shopper.

Located at 1614 Second Ave. S.E., Crossroads For Her Ministry can be contacted for more information, to volunteer, and to donate by visiting its website at crossroads4her.com. Through the website, an application can be obtained for a woman interested in entering the Christian transition program.