When Deakon’s grandmother Trudé first heard about CherishAbility, she had been searching for support. Raising Deakon, who has always known her as Mom, felt lonely much of the time. While social and special education services seem to emphasize what Deakon can’t do, Trudé has always seen what he can do — and she yearned for a community of Christian Scientists who could help him discover his God-given ability.

One year later, Deakon, 20, is a regular at CherishAbility programs. This time last year, he was preparing for a series of firsts: leaving home to join CherishAbility’s Vocational Training Program — a residential work experience set against the Colorado Rockies — where he would hold a real job and work alongside a crew in which he was the newest and youngest member. This June, as he returns for his second session, a lot has changed. But perhaps nothing has changed as visibly — or as beautifully — as Deakon himself.

“He came back more grounded”

Last summer working in the lodge crew at the A/U Ranches, Deakon scraped plates. He cleaned the pots and pans. He learned the Hobart (a commercial dishwasher), and he learned it well. He roomed with coworkers, held a schedule, and started every day with group Bible Lesson study. “It was awesome,” he says with a smile.

“He loved it,” Trudé adds. “He wouldn’t stop talking about it when he came home.”

But what Trudé noticed went deeper than the job skills. When Deakon returned, his actions were more deliberate. He was quicker to offer help. The cuts and scrapes or bugbites that used to be a big deal — weren’t anymore. There was healing, deep down. “He came back fulfilled,” she said. “More grounded.”

She traced it directly to the people around him. The Vocational Training Program draws participants who return summer after summer, and that continuity matters. Trainees like Jeffrey and Austin — now seasoned veterans of the program — don’t just work alongside newer participants like Deakon; they show them the ropes. It was Jeffrey and Austin who taught Deakon how to run the Hobart, where to put everything once it’s clean, and how to perform cabin chores. “They were overall wonderful role models of hard work, kindness, responsibility, and showing a desire to make a positive impact for others,” says CherishAbility Program Director Rebecca Creighton.

For Deakon, it was like having a new set of big brothers and sisters — what Trudé calls, without hesitation, “positive peer pressure.” “It works,” she says. “It really works.”

“It’s always been there”

What strikes Trudé most isn’t what Deakon learned at camp. It’s what the experience brought forward. A few months after the vocational program, Trudé and Deakon returned to the A/U Ranches, this time to join CherishAbility’s Adaptive Family Camp session. Trudé recalls watching Deakon reunite with his fellow vocational training alumni, seeing him light up around his peers, laughing, and swapping memories of that shared summer. “What I see in Deakon,” she says, “is allowed to come through when he is invited into [CherishAbility] groups and programs. It allows him to be [more himself]. He doesn’t know who he wants to be yet. But God knows who he is. And Deakon is finding out.”

She pauses, and adds: “It’s always been there. But now it’s been allowed to open,” like a flower.

For Trudé, that opening is no small thing. She described the landscape Deakon navigates — school programs that don’t expect much, peers from all kinds of backgrounds and rules, a culture around disability services that sometimes mistakes accommodation for care. By contrast, CherishAbility offers something rarer: a community that expects the best, built on shared spiritual values and a loving atmosphere, where Deakon doesn’t have to explain himself. “It’s very comfortable,” she says. “It’s unfortunately something I don’t feel here in school programs.”

“God is love”

Ask Deakon what he’s most looking forward to right now, and he doesn’t hesitate: going back to the Vocational Training Program camp this summer. He signed himself up for two sessions with the lodge crew (itself a new level of initiative). He keeps his CherishAbility staff shirts folded in his drawer and wears them to his school job site. He texted CherishAbility staff himself to make sure his application went through.

Ask him his favorite thought about God, and he answers easily: “God is love.” Approaching life beyond school, Deakon is thinking about the future — a job at AutoZone, maybe, or a hardware store, something that lets him work with his hands. He builds with Legos. He fixes things. “If it’s badly broken, I can’t fix it,” he says. “If it’s easily broken — I can get it back to ship shape.”

Trudé laughs appreciatively. “He’s come a long way,” she says, “from all the things people said he couldn’t do.” And then, she adds: “He’s got a big heart. That’s his core. All he has to do is grow from that.”

At CherishAbility, it’s our greatest joy to watch that happen.

Postscript: Just before this story went to press, we received a call from a proud Trudé. Deakon has been accepted into a vocational training program through his school in partnership with a local resort, where he’ll spend the next year training in hospitality — work that could open doors well beyond the program. Trudé was clear about where it started: his experience with CherishAbility made this possible. We couldn’t be more thrilled for him. Ship shape, indeed.