Single mom reaches out to others through Real Life Ministries

After a rough start, Sarah Tiedtke has turned her life around. Now she’s helping other women achieve the tranquility a straight life can bring.

The 32-year-old single mom has had a troubled past. The oldest of nine children, her father was absent “a lot” from their Boise home and, “I butted heads with my mom, got in with the wrong crowd at school, and started drinking hard.”

She ran away from home, skipped school, was arrested and spent a year in a juvenile detention center. When released, she still couldn’t reconcile with her family, so spent another year at the Christian Childrens’ Ranch near Boise.

There, she met Jim Putman, a nondenominational Christian pastor.

Tiedtke eventually married a Boise man and with him had two children, Journee, now 11, and Jennifer, now 10.

The young family moved to the Portland area in 1997 for jobs, but then things started falling apart. Her husband was “an addict, but I don’t care to go into the details of his problems,” she says. “We’ve been divorced for four years, and that part of my life is over.”

Through friends she heard that Putman had moved to Post Falls, where he was the principal minister for Real Life Ministries, a “mega church” of some 8,000 members with a huge outreach program. That was enough to bring her to North Idaho in 2003.

Soon after her arrival she began work, managing the church’s book store and coffee shop.

And it was at Real Life that her life intersected with another young single mom with a troubled past.

Abbi Beaver is 22, the mother of 2-year-old Rebekkah. She’s from Springfield, Mo. “where I grew up in a home where marijuana and other drugs were used every day by my mother and her husband. I started using drugs, too. I moved out of the house when I was 16.”

She got pregnant while with a boyfriend with whom she lived for three years, continued using drugs and was leading what can be generously termed a hardscrabble life.

At last, she decided to escape. Beaver’s biological father lives in Coeur d’Alene, so last August she sold her few possessions for enough money to buy a Greyhound bus ticket for herself and Rebekkah.

Arriving here, she moved in briefly with her dad and his wife but “there were problems in that home, too, so my daughter and I moved out, into a women’s shelter.”

There she learned about Real Life Ministries. When she walked into the Post Falls church, she was referred to a team headed by Rex Lettau, a layman but an employee whose title is Benevolence Pastor.

For the past three years, Lettau and his wife, Luisa, have been inviting down-and-out men and women to share their home where, he says, “We try to model Christian behavior.

“We do our best to follow Christ’s example. His apostles and followers weren’t society people. They were fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes. They had problems.

“People who are down need a support system to grow, to move into a new and better life. Luisa and I try to provide that system.”

Five months ago, Lettau left his job as the owner and manager of a personal training facility and became a full-time Real Life Ministries employee. His wife took over the business.

He and his benevolence team of 15 see 50 to 75 men and women each day, referred to the church by social service agencies and word-of-mouth. They provide food, financial assistance and counseling, help their clients form personal budgets and, through hundreds of home groups affiliated with the church, try to change the relationships they’ve formed with their fellow men.

“The people we help through our ministry don’t have to join our church, but they usually do,” Lettau says. “About 15 are now involved as volunteers.”

One of those is Tiedtke who met Beaver through Real Life’s Outreach Ministry.

Beaver, who has been free from drugs since September, has moved in with Tiedtke and her children. Tiedtke’s rules are strict: No drugs, alcohol or smoking in their shared home, no overnight guests, and Beaver’s curfew is 11 p.m.

Tiedtke describes Beaver when they met: “Because of her drug use, she didn’t have much self worth, and she went through a series of jobs. But she joined the church’s Celebrate Recovery substance abuse program.”

And through the church’s young adult program, she met Jonathan Cowley, 27, her current boyfriend. After she moved in with Tiedtke she got a job at U.S. Bank’s call center through Kelly Services.

In February, a member donated a Nissan Sentra car with 73,000 miles to the church, which passed it on to Beaver.

In their shared home, Beaver is learning parenting skills and she intends to enroll in Spanish classes at North Idaho College to enhance her employment opportunities.

“I found the Holy Spirit at a recovery meeting,” she says. “And I dedicated my life to Christ on Aug. 19, 2007, the happiest and most important day of my life.”

Tiedtke plans to continue mentoring women.

“As a single mom myself, I know the challenges they face and the cycles they can get into. I hope to show them what a real family should look like,” Tiedtke said