Rahsaan Gainer

Contingent campus Staff

About Rahsaan

Hometown: Cleveland, OH

Growing up, I never had a strong faith foundation. My family wasn't very faith oriented and none of my friends were either. The only type of real source of God I had while I was younger was through my Grandmother who took me to church a few times when I was very young, which had very little impact on my life. I lived in a way that was uninfluenced by God all the way until I was an adult. As a teenager, I started to recognize that I would go through very intense depressive episodes regularly but never though anything of it. These episodes followed me into college as well, only difference now was that I could run away from how I felt inside through worldly action. Whether it was through alcohol or excessive partying, college granted me a lot of ways to run away from the haunting true sadness that I felt, and I would still face those feelings occasionally anyway. I lived this way for years through school and the Covid-19 hit us in March 2020. During this process we were forced to stop attending school, I was laid off from my job, and all of my friends moved out of town while I was still there, alone. In this loneliness, with nothing to distract me mentally, the depressive episodes grew louder and more untamed. Me having to face these feelings head on made me realize that the severity of these feelings was much worse than I thought, and I recognized that I wasn't only sad, but I wanted to kill myself. This thought followed me into the summer, where I worked a summer job, painting tools in a room for hours a day, completely alone. By then I was afraid of what might come of these thoughts so I cried to many friends for help and none of them had any answer for me. When August came I moved into a house with my best friend at the time, Noah. He was a new believer in Christ and invited me to come to church with him once. I went and really didn't enjoy it. After church though, I went along with him to hang out with a group of his friends, not knowing that during these times, they would pray for one another. Noah's friend, Juan, came and prayed for me. In this prayer, I heard of all the joy, peace and love that God had for me for free and right then I accepted God into my heart and was found by the beauty of the Gospel. Since that day, I haven't had a suicidal thought since. I've been engulfed in a loving community and God has been more than evident in my life. This helped me grow a heart for people who don't know this love yet and haven't had the pleasure of having God's people by their side. I recognize the urgency for the calling to help people to know him deeper and want nothing more than to work for the Kingdom of God in that way.