Redeemed for a Purpose

When a fall from a fire escape didn’t kill him, George Boychock knew God had a plan.

George Boychock is 72 years old and has lived a harrowing life. He’s wrestled with drugs and alcohol, been in and out of prison, and faced two near-death experiences, but God finally has his attention.

“I’ve just had a rough life,” George says with an exhausted sigh.

Today, George is a volunteer cook at The Salvation Army in Carlisle, Pa., but his story begins in the coal mining city of Pottsville, Pa., with a mother and father who both drank heavily. He and his siblings were often abused, and George says his father once punched him in the eye and broke his leg by throwing him against a wall.

“I left home when I was young and just started traveling,” he says. “I got involved in drugs really bad and stealing cars. It got worse as time went on.”

George’s drug problems started with marijuana and quickly escalated to cocaine, crack, and heroin. In between doing 12 years in prison over the decades, his addictions cost him his marriage and business and put him in life-threatening situations.

His first prison term came in 1968 for car theft. A fellow inmate and handball partner asked George if he knew anything about Jesus Christ. Raised Catholic, George replied that he didn’t know much.

“He explained to me about being born again and how I could ask God to forgive me for all my sins,” George recalls. “He also told me I could have eternal life and live forever.”

New life, but old ways

Sitting in his prison cell, George tearfully invited Christ into his heart that day.

“I felt like the whole world was lifted off me,” he says. “I felt so peaceful. I was happy and I just felt really free.”

The inmate told him to read his Bible and grow in the faith, but George returned to doing marijuana and booze upon his release from prison three years later. He also went back to stealing cars, but when he got arrested again just five months later in 1971, police offered to cut a deal and make him a narcotics informant.

George thought the job would be easy until one night he was forced into a car and taken to the top of a mountain. Someone put a rifle to his head. He thought it was the end.

“They had a gun and said they were going to kill me,” he says. “I was scared. One of them asked me what flowers I preferred for my funeral.”

George doesn’t know why, but his captors stopped at a bar and drank heavily. He pretended to go along but was able to run away. He spent the next few years bouncing around towns in rural Pennsylvania.

Instead of changing his life, George continued his old ways. He was busted for stealing cars again and did two more years in prison. His longest prison stint, seven years, began in 1983 after an armed robbery of a bar where he stole alcohol and broke into the slot machines while high on cocaine.

The turning point

The defining moment of George’s life came five years ago when he was drunk and fell 15 feet off a fire escape as he was looking for more alcohol. He suffered a host of injuries and was in a coma for four days at Holy Spirit Hospital near Harrisburg, Pa. Doctors gave him just two hours to live at one point.

“I didn’t even know where I was or what happened,” George says. “I came out of the coma and I just felt like the Lord wanted me to get back in the Word of God. I just got back with the Lord. I started reading the Bible. From that time on, I’ve kept going with Jesus.

“When they told me I almost died, I realized there has to be a plan for my life or the Lord wouldn’t have allowed me to live. The devil could have taken me. The Lord spared my life for a reason. I don’t know what the reason is. I don’t know what His plan is.”

George Boychock holds hands and prays with others before his shift in the kitchen at The Salvation Army.

George believes that reason could be to start a prison ministry, as his past could help him relate to those behind bars. He is praying that God will open a cell door for him.

“That’s the deepest desire of my heart,” he says. “I really care for those people. I’ve been there. I’ve been in prison, and it’s a great time to get people and lead them to the Lord. I just feel that’s my calling. I want people to be saved. I’d love to share my testimony with prisoners and let them know that there is a God.

“My message would be to get them to understand that Jesus Christ died on the Cross for their sins and He forgives them for anything they’ve done in the past. I want them to know that they can be born again and live eternally.”

Fed by the Word

George shares that message now at The Salvation Army, where he attends church and a weekly Bible study. He also cooks the daily meal for the church’s soup kitchen and interacts with people.

“I get excited because I get to talk to all the homeless people who come in,” he said. “I love listening to their stories. I like to make people happy. I talk about my story, too.”

George tells them about his five years of sobriety through the power of Christ.

“I have no taste for alcohol at all,” he says. “I quit doing drugs. I’m really into the Word of God now.”

Captain Rebecca Smith, the corps officer in Carlisle, agreed and said George brings “love and laughter” to the church.

“George is hungry for God’s Word and is passionate to share the good news of Jesus’ forgiveness and love,” she says. “He has a reverence for God and is guided by the Holy Spirit. George encourages and prays for us as his pastors, which means so much to us.”

George has also seen more miracles, like recently finding his long-lost sisters in Pottsville. He hadn’t seen them since childhood. And he thanks God for good health and the ability to still work. For the last 50 years, when not behind bars, George has worked at Fay’s Country Kitchen, a Carlisle restaurant he once co-owned.

“Since I got back with the Lord, there’s no turning back for me,” George says. “I can’t go back. I want to tell prisoners and everyone else that there is a God. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. After my life, no one could convince me otherwise.”

photographs by Jeff Bruce