By Ronnie Mosley, CapturingGrace.org
I sat across from Serhiy, 23 years old and carrying more than most men twice his age.
There are moments in these interviews when you can feel the weight of someone’s life before he ever says a word. This was one of those moments.
He first connected with Last Bell when he was about 16, during his second year of trade school. A teacher brought students into a classroom where Ilya and Katya were meeting with them. What he found there felt unlike the life forming around him, calm, safe, steady. No alcohol. No chaos. Just good people and a place where he felt comfortable.
He kept coming back.
He remembered the Carpathian camps, time in the forests and by the rivers, picnics, laughter, and the sort of memories that stay bright even when so much else becomes difficult to hold onto. He told me he still remembers those good things, even though the injury he now lives with has left his thoughts twisting at times, making it hard to find words.
Without Last Bell, he said, he likely would have been lost.
“I would probably be drinking somewhere,” he told me, “just a lost drunk person laying outside.”
Photographer and storyteller Ronnie Mosley visited Last Bell for three and a half intense days at the end of March. He conducted several interviews with our clients in order to tell their stories. Discover the story behind Capturing Grace and how the life of Ronnie’s daughter Christina continues to inspire this work at capturinggrace.org/about-us.