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Reverend Trish Mikulan
Assistant Executive Director
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law
but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when
you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves,
you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you
are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience,
which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that,
though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly
obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.
You have been set free from sin and have become
slaves to righteousness.
I put this in human terms because you are weak in your
natural selves. Just as you used to offer parts of your body
in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.Romans 6 verses 15-23
Reverend Trish Mikulan is well aware of what it is like to be a slave to sin, and now that she has turned her life around through the awesome power of the Holy Spirit, she has become a full-fledged Spirit Warrior and a slave to God. Trish was born in 1965 in Warren, Ohio. Her father Richard and mother Joyce were very supportive and good parents. She was raised with faith and her father was a Catholic and her mother was a Baptist. She went to Catholic Church as a youngster and for many years as an adult. She went to school at Devon Elementary, East Junior High, and Warren Harding High. Drugs were as prevalent then as they are now for the teenagers, and by middle school Trish was caught up in the web of substance abuse. She feels very fortunate that she really did not get into much trouble over it, and was a very active youngster who started working part-time jobs by the age of 14. Her 92 year-old grandmother Angie has always been an important part of her life and was always a very helpful and spiritual person who had a strong gift of spirit and prophecy. Although she did great in school and was a very active and helpful person to many, she feels that she had too much of a physical appearance/ image problem and had a dark side that she kept to herself. She explained that when you live a sort of split life and compromise your values at a young age, it can lead to devastating effects later in life, as it did in her own life. Being a work out addict came natural to her, and she loved physical activities. She was a driven person in many ways, and actually had her own apartment ready and waiting by the time she graduated high school so she could move out and take on the world.
Trish went to college at Youngstown State University and got a four-year degree in Fitness Management. She worked several different jobs at a nursing home and a health club while going to school and also had a boyfriend with three children she helped to care for. The nightlife and substance abuse was also part of her life and she explained that she lived a sort of double life. She said that it was sad in a way, because she seemed to always end up in abusive relationships and would always think she could fix the other person and it never really worked out. After YSU, it was on to a scholarship and graduate school at Slippery Rock University where she got a masters degree in Therapeutic Recreation and a minor in Psychology/Counseling in one year. When her boyfriend at the time moved back to Warren she went back also and had trouble finding a job in her field, so she worked at a nursing home. She also became involved in female bodybuilding and actually competed on American Gladiators. She admits that she was way too hung up on her looks, and it was usually to please the man she was with.
Eventually Trish moved to Pittsburgh and worked at a senior center in the Hill District, a very tough part of the city. She was the only white employee and was determined to fit in. It was during this time she was introduced to crack cocaine and she loved it and the euphoria it brought. When offered a job at Belmont Pines, she moved back to Warren and did stop doing drugs for a time and concentrated her recreational time on working out and physical fitness. Another relationship during this time period ended up hurting her badly and in 1992 she went back to Pittsburgh and worked at the Independent Courts of Oakland, an assisted living facility for senior citizens in the downtown area. At the same time she worked as a teacher of physical education for the Community College of Allegheny County. During this three-year time period she was only using drugs minimally. All this time Trish still was very active in her Catholic faith but always felt that same void and dark side that she had felt since she was a youngster. She started dating a man while in Pittsburgh who was from the Youngstown area and it turned out to be a disastrous relationship. Even though he had mental issues, was an alcoholic and drug addict, and was very abusive to her and even broke bones, she felt compelled to help him and that she could make the relationship work. At this time her own drug addictions had gotten completely out of hand and she was hooked on crack cocaine. One of her boyfriend’s favorite ways to get high would be to make a “wooley”; take a cigar blunt and fill it with pot and sprinkle crack cocaine on it and smoke it. Trish became pregnant and was enraged when she thought he was cheating on her and confronted him in the projects. They proceeded to get into a fight and he kicked her in the stomach. He did nothing to help her and another man who was an ex-football player helped to get her to the hospital. She had a miscarriage and lost the baby. Her crack addiction became worse and worse. She eventually lost her job because she was getting high at work, and blew all her money on the drugs. She worked close to a dozen or so odd jobs just to try and get money to support her habit, and got into substantial debt. Everything she owned and had worked hard for was gone and she was destitute. Then she got back together with her boyfriend who started the huge downfall, and they became sort of a “Bonny and Clyde” type couple, doing whatever it took to get money for their drug habit. After doing some jail time for writing bad checks, Trish’s family insisted that she get some real help. She spent a couple weeks at Gateway Rehabilitation but it did no good at all and she hit the road on them after cashing a two thousand dollar check there for a settlement she got over a previous accident she’d had. Listening to what happened to Trish reminds one of the horrible hardening power of sin and the trap that we can all easily fall into at any time. No person really takes the first step to doing wrong without there being a sort of warning sound in our heart that we are committing sins. The problem is that once we keep repeating the same mistakes and sins over and over we often cease to care, and things that we were reluctant to do and we know are wrong become horrible habits we cannot control. Only the power of the Holy Spirit and our great redeemer Jesus Christ can help us to come to our senses if we will only let them do the work.
Things went from bad to worse and Trish was now living in Youngstown with a drug dealer she had met from her past in the projects where she purchased her drugs. One night when he had fallen asleep, she stole a large amount of drugs and his gun from him. She got high and also sold some of the drugs, and when he found out what happened she told him she called the police to keep him from killing her. She was now petrified that he was going to kill her and she was so frightened and messed up that she got down on her knees and begged God to help her. Since there was already a warrant out for her arrest, the Youngstown Police finally tracked her down and arrested her. She was pregnant again and had another miscarriage at this time also. She was sent to Donofrio Rehabilitation in Youngstown and spent the first thirty days in the Pregnant Women’s Center. She knew she had reached the end of the line in many ways and was trying to surrender to the help, but at the same time since she was very educated, had a lot of pride, and figured she was smarter than the people who were treating her, so she was a difficult person to help. While Trish was in rehabilitation, she went to a place called the Needles Eye Christian Counseling Center and the Director was a woman named Irma Davis. She was a powerful, spirit-filled woman who helped Trish to realize what that void and dark area of her life had been for all those years. What had been missing from her life and been the main source of all her problems was the lack of the Holy Spirit, our comforter and mighty helper. Irma made Trish understand what real Christianity is. She immediately saw something from Irma and some others at the center that she wanted. On December 31st, 1997, Trish Mikulan surrendered her life completely to the Lord and received Salvation at the Needles Eye Christian Counseling Center. It was the turning point of her life. Trish saw miracles happen there, and she began to understand what real faith, prayer, reading the Word of God, fasting, and having a real experience with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ can do for an individual. She still visits the Needles Eye and Irma, and seriously considers Irma Davis to be the Mother Teresa of the Mahoning Valley. It is a very holy place and can set people on fire for God. She explained it is a sacred place that produces fruit for God, and Irma knows how to teach a person to fight the battle against the kingdom of earth and the spiritual forces of evil.
Now that she had become a born again Christian, Trish had many issues to address and knew that the only way was to go to the Lord with her problems and let Him help her resolve them. After being kicked out of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting for talking about Christ and His Salvation she could not understand it. She became extremely upset and went to Irma Davis in tears about it. Irma immediately started praising the Lord and saying, “We got a Reverend on our hands, honey get out of the rooms, and get fulltime into the church.” Trish spent more time in prayer with the Lord and realized that it was her calling to be a minister for God.
She spent some time with a Christian counselor at New Life Assembly of God in Poland and also got involved in a study on co-dependency and met two great spiritual mentors who were a huge help. She had a date with a man she had met twenty years earlier, and he took her to the Toronto Airport Blessing revival. While she was there the Holy Spirit instructed her that “can you not see I gave you new life, I want you at New Life.” The next week she attended church at the New Life Assembly of God and boldly told the congregation she was instructed by God to be there for now. She spent the next two years attending services at New Life and by the power of the Holy Spirit her entire family was born again and saved!
Trish kept knocking on God’s door with prayer and the Lord kept instructing her that “whatsoever you believe, believe it with all your heart and it shall be added unto you.” She discussed the situation with Irma Davis and was instructed to send out a fleece/petition to God, and to just let God bring the answer to you. After applying for and receiving a student loan and also getting some financial help from her grandfather she started bible school at SAGU College in Waxahachia, Texas, and got a masters degree in practical theology in two years. She explained that although the first semester was tough, she ended up doing real well. The Holy Spirit was a huge help. Finding work in her field while she was going to school was tough because of her past record, even though she’d been re-certified, she was denied employment after applying to around thirty different places. Finally she got work for Reverend David Stone at a neighborhood ministry to help children in the same projects where she had lost a baby and was a drug addict. It is amazing how the Holy Spirit works in our lives and will teach us, and we become well aware that many of the events that happen are much more than coincidental. She then got a part-time job in her field of mental health at Jamestown Hospital in New Castle for a year. A full time job at Cafaro Hospital in Youngstown followed that, and she still lived in Youngstown. Her spare time was spent doing community service work at the Mahoning Valley Rescue Mission, New Life Maternity Home, and she started a Christian aerobics class for the Catholic church.
Around the year 2000 Trish was instructed by the Holy Spirit to move back to Warren with her parents and it sort of rekindled her relationship with them. Not long thereafter Trumbull Memorial Hospital called and offered her the position to be the program director of the psychiatric unit. She took the job and still has it at the present time. Her life of faith was going well also at the First Assembly of God church on Parkman Road. She was learning more and more about the power of the Holy Spirit and seeking God’s face. More community service work was also a big part of her life at the Warren Family Mission and New Life Maternity Home. As time went on she felt compelled and called by God to be an Assembly of God minister. After a great amount of prayer, interviewing, testing, and more prayer, she got her ministerial license. Reverend Albanese at the church was a huge help to her and really believed in her, and she is very thankful to him.
After receiving her ministerial license she had to make a decision where to minister. She wanted to either work full time at the Warren Family Mission, start a teen challenge program in Ravenna, or go to New Beginning Assembly of God in Youngstown to start and operate a recovery center. She ended up at New Beginnings Assembly of God working for Pastor Fortini as a volunteer pastor. She has learned much from Pastor Fortini about being a spirit warrior and how to battle our enemy, Satan. She has seen some miraculous power shown by the Holy Spirit at New Life and learned what is involved in starting up a recovery center. She and her husband, Mark, were married at New Life. She has known him since they were young and loves him very much, and believes he is what she has needed all along. He is very humble, not a big talker, and is a very helpful and supportive individual. She has learned that the more love she shows her husband, the more love the Lord shows her.
Trish has been involved with the Warren Family Mission ever since Reverend Chris Gilger had his beginnings back at the Warren City Rescue Mission on Route 169. She has known Reverend Gilger and Pastor Weaver for many years and feels a great companionship with them. Since this past September she has been the Director of Women’s Services there and the mission has approximately 12 women staying there at present. Trish has been doing her best to try and obtain grants for the mission. It takes a very special kind of person to work at a mission with the broken people who are either homeless, have mental health issues, or are trying to conquer addiction problems that have placed them in ruins. The term “Spirit Warrior” keeps coming to mind and Trish works with broken people at all of her jobs. Reverend Trish Mikulan is a very busy person but it seems that is what suits her. Besides her position at Trumbull Memorial Hospital and also the work at the Mission, she teaches classes for mental health and does seminars, and also has a ton of speaking engagements. Trish is definitely driven!
She truly believes in what they are doing at The Warren Family Mission, and they are having more success with the clients than ever. The Mission is trying to be true to their mission statement, and that is a tall order in this economically depressed area. They do their best not to turn anyone away, and the amount of individuals and families in this area who are desperate for help keeps increasing. Reverend Trish is doing all she can to help, and honestly knows that doing God’s will for her is her mission in life. If we expect great things from God and attempt great things for God, eventually great things will happen.
More than Conquerors
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.Romans 8 Verses 28-39
