Becoming Sam West

Sam West grew up in one of the richest communities in all of Canada, and after graduation from the British Columbia Institute of Technology it seemed a whole life of successes was ahead of him. Instead, he plummeted all the way to skid row after developing an overpowering addiction to drugs. After years of trying to get clean and failing Sam worried life as he once knew it was gone forever. He seemed destined to die a lonely death on the mean streets of Vancouver. But after a street shooting and a narrow escape from certain death, he finds himself at the base of a mysterious and singular mountain to which he had always been drawn. Exhausted and malnourished Sam climbs, leaping from perch to perch, and getting drenched and bitterly cold in the mountains of British Columbia. When he stumbles on an unusual shelter, he also finds a different kind of salvation: A Bible in the lap of a dead man. The book was open to a chapter titled Ephesians 4. I read the first line: "As a prisoner of the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." I felt something a little like being short of breath. As if I just read something of tremendous importance. From deep inside him, healing begins. Sam would cast off his old self, that of the hopeless drug addict, and find his new self. That through God, he would become Sam West.