The Car Repair Shop That’s Changing Lives: Higher Power Garage

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. You’re about to hear from Mike Gideon. Mike was just a gearhead who loved working on cars and restoring classics. Don’t think he thought he’d retire on, but God had other plans. Here’s Mike with the story of how Higher Power Garage, is a nonprofit car repair shop, came.

To be.

In a mechanic most of my life, started doing as a child. A young man, I always had an interesting cars. Went to work in service stations rush out of high school. Did that for a few years, and then I left and went to a corporate job running a chain of Quick Lips, and in that chain of Quick Life, so I was also responsible for helping to develop new business. So I did a lot of that, working with people to design buildings and inventory and train their staff. And I did that for about five years. Did call warshes for a while. It was unfortunately about a seventy-eighty hour week most weeks, and after about five years of that, I decided it was time to do my own thing. I’d always had a desire to own a repair shop. So in nineteen ninety-five, I started getting instired on it. We started off small. I started by myself as the only technician; hired a friend of mine a year later. But was doing really well in business and had gotten quite large, had six bays, six technicians working full time. And then late 2000s or mid-2000s, the economy kind of changed, and our business plan had to change with it. We ended up going down to two technicians that for several years and just kind of hung on. But it kind of changed my perspective in that it wasn’t about “bigger is better”; it’s about building relationships. Over the years, that paid off as we just stayed steady. Business came back, and about seven years ago we had some major changes in our lives. The church that we had been attending for twenty-three years, we really just felt God was leading us to leave there, so we left. And, to be honest, the next four years were really really hard, kind of in the desert, so to speak. It really didn’t feel like God was very close. We really struggling, and where we were at, we knew God had us where he wanted us to be, because every time we tried to leave, something would happen that we would just end up staying there. And this went on for a while, and I was really really questioning God, “Why did you call me to leave there?” And, you know, I just feel so far away. So, through that time, though, I was really seeking God as to direction, because I didn’t feel like had purpose. I was out one day, and I just went on a hike on some place where I grew up. There’s some trails. I was out there just kind of one Sunday afternoon, kind of walking around and come across the quote. And the quote was, “We shouldn’t fear failure, but we should fear succeeding as something that didn’t matter.” Really, I really felt like that was God telling me that my focus was off, that I needed to be more focused on making a difference than I did on being successful. You know, I believe God wants us to have nice things and live good lives. That I think He also wants us to be generous and care for our brothers and sisters. So, in that timeframe, we got connected with an organization here in town. Water Gardens started a project called Neighbor Connect to working with them, and one of the things that we found is as they referred people to our shop that were in need. Got to visiting with them, and I found out that a lot of times what they were dealing with, you know, sometimes it was addiction, or it was choices, poor choices, things like that, but there was so many times it was things beyond the control. Being in an accident and being injured to the point they can’t work any longer, or a spouse that’s sick, or a child that’s sick so they have to leave their job to care for. And there were just so many different situations. And as we started really getting to know people, there was one couple in particular, a younger couple, and we got to know them, and we worked on their vehicle and helped them. She was trying to get a job and needed a car, and her brakes were out, and so we fixed the brakes on her car. But, in visiting with them, I asked them if they went to church anywhere. They did, so I invited them to church. Well, they started coming to our church, and over the next few months we just got to see God just make big changes in their lives and really really had an impact on me. We started really looking how we can make a bigger difference. You know, our shop were busy, and we were trying to do this as a sideline through our business, and it was really becoming a challenge, and I really felt like God was really calling me to do a nonprofit. We do a class at our church. It’s about finding our God-given purpose in life, and it’s called “His Own.” It’s based on a book by Craig Groeschel, and we were doing that class. And one of the questions that’s asked is, “If God would bless you in anything you would do, what would you attempt?” And I answered that question: “I would do a nonprofit to help people.” About two weeks after answering that question, God really just started dealing with me. One weekend in particular, I just felt so burdened to do this. So I came in that Monday morning, and I was talking to my service writer and the ladies that worked for me, and we were having coffee that morning. And I just told him, I said, “You know, I really feel like that I have a building that’s empty, and I think God’s called me to start a nonprofit repair shop.” One of the ladies that worked for me, she just kind of spoke up and said, “You know, what if you do this? I really want to be a part of it.” And so we started kind of talking about what it would look like and how it would work, and I started talking to anybody that would listen, and I got some really sideways looks. “You’re going to do a free repair shop? Well, who doesn’t want free repair, you know?” And we just kind of just kept going.

And you’ve been listening to Mike Gideon and share his story, and my goodness, we’ve all been in that wilderness wondering what purpose God has for us. And then he gets that question in the Bible study: “If God would bless you.”

“In anything you do, what would be your attempt?”

He was looking for his purpose, and so often, well, that’s what so many of us are doing in our lives, looking for purpose and meaning, and very often God having a central role in that play. When we come back, more of Mike Gideon’s story, Higher Power Garage’s story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we returned to Our American Stories and to Mike Gideon sharing his story of how his nonprofit car repair.

Shop came to be.

As we heard from Mike when we left off, there were some skeptics about how he might make it happen. Let’s pick back up with the rest of the story.

A few years ago, I had met a gentleman from Conroe, Texas, that runs a nonprofit there called God’s Garage. I had kind of kept in touch with him over the years, so when we decided to do this, I wanted to go down and just kind of see how their operation worked. And so I went to Texas and spent a couple of days with him, and they were just excellent in helping us what worked, what didn’t work, what we need, how we need to do it, some really great insight. But while we were down there to shut down for COVID hit, so we decided to cut our trip short and come on back home. So we got back and it was like, “You know, I don’t know, do we continue this?” “You know, this doesn’t look good. They’re talking about businesses closing and not being able to go out, and I really don’t know if we can do this or not.” And my spirit just kept telling me that we just needed to keep pushing forward. So in March of 2020, we were in the process of trying to start a nonprofit right in the middle of a government shutdown, and they told us on our 501(c)(3) status that we could be as much as two years getting that status, and actually we got that in mid-July. We would call for the city to get our city license, and they said, “Well, you’ve got to have an inspection, but we’re not doing in-person inspections.” And a couple of days later, got from the city showed up to do an inspection on our billing. And it was just things like that. At time after time, our county government was telling us to get our license. They were shut down most of the time. They didn’t have any online facilities to be able to get our license online, but we got ahold of somebody and he went through. So it was just things like that. That just kind of told us that we were on the right track. And I’m still amazed because we actually opened on June 1st, 2020, as Higher Power Garage. I have a real hard time talking about this without getting emotional them because one of the things that I’ve heard is, “You want to know what God’s called you to do? Find what bricks your heart.” Let me tell you about Sam. Sam is a great example of what we do. Sam is a veteran, and Sam struggled with addiction and homelessness for a lot of years. A few years ago, he was able to get with a ba in get housing and started to get some benefits, and he started saving his money. And after a couple of years of saving his money, Sam was able to buy a car. And the next day after he bought the car, the brakes started grinding, and Sam was referred to Higher Power Garage. He came in, and I mean, his anxiety level was at ten. He was so worried about what was going to happen next, that he had wasted his money. He had enough money to pay sales tax and buy tags; he didn’t have enough money for any repairs. And so we were able to fix his car and put brakes on it. For him, that wasn’t a big deal. But, in the process of the interview, we found out that the reason why Sam wanted a car, he wanted to go back to work. That he didn’t want to be in the situation he was in, and he was willing to get back out into the workforce and do that. So we have a partnership with ARP, which will work with seniors to train them job skills. Were able to point Sam into that resource, and Sam got a job to train with the local organization here. After a month, he was hired on full time with that organization. So we were able to help him not only with his car need, but we were also able to help him with his physical need his financial needs. But, in the process of that, too, we found out that Sam was really wanting to find a church, and he didn’t really know where to go, and so we invited him to church, and he started coming on a regular basis, and he started attending some of the classes that we have their own discipleship and purpose, and he really started to engage. And after a couple of months, we had a baptism. Sam got baptized, and that’s the reason we’re here. If we only do that for Sam, everything we’ve done here has been success. But the thing is, God has used us over and over again to do that and to see lives changed and people’s lives impacted. And, you know, we’ve we feel like that I don’t really believe in God too much, but after experiencing the love of Christ, change their mind. We have built some wonderful relationships. We’ve had people come back to the shop to volunteer, and we just keep every day we come in, we get to do this.

This is.

Not work; this is an opportunity. We’re not just fixing cars. In fact, if you notice in our logo, there’s a line through the word “garage,” and the reason it’s there is because it’s not about the garage. That’s what we do, but our purpose is far more than that. We’re here to help people to fix their lives, to improve their lives. So one of the things we really felt strongly about is education. Almost none of our clients we were seeing or budgeting, so we started a budgeting class just to teach them the basics to do that. Most of the cars that we were working on were neglected. We found that some of our families were second- and third-generation single-parent families. Bothers have been out of the home. Kids weren’t taught to check the oil or rotate the tires, or when to check the oil, when to change the oil, or what the lights on the dash mean. A car is the second biggest investment we make in our lives, next to our house, so it’s important that they know how to maintain that. So we have a Motto Maintenance class where we teach them the basics of why and how to maintain their vehicle. We want to be a hand up, not a handout; so we empower our clients to pay for the parts, and we supply the labor at no charge. We sell the parts basically at what they would pay if they went into O’Reilly’s. In bottom, we’re really not making any money there. We just want our clients to feel like they have an investment, as some skin in the game. Then we have a low-cost vehicle program we work with we’re primarily single-parent families to help them with transportation. We have cars donated to our shop, and then we go through them, do the maintenance and do the repairs that are necessary on them, and then we sell them to our clients for $500. That way, they have an investment in the car, and so we’re really happy to be able to do that. And over the last two and a half years, we’ve been able to provide about thirty-six cars to families that didn’t have transportation. You know, we’ve been blessed. At the end of this year, we showed where we had done 715 repairs in the two and a half years. That’s just for two people. We thought that was a pretty amazing number. And then we’ve provided over $100,000 worth of free labor. That’s 715 times we sat down with the person one on one, and we were able to talk to them and find out their story, and we were able to listen to them, and we were able to just point them towards resources to help them further improve their lives. But the most important thing we got to do is we got to talk to them about their walk with God, the relationship with God, and we got to pray with them. You know, we’ve we feel like that’s the whole reason why we’re here. If we really want to share God’s love, you can’t do it any better than just sitting down with somebody and listening to them and then not just giving any advice or telling them, you know, “Well, if you hadn’t done this, or if you do this,” but, you know, just tell them. You know, we’ll help you, we’ll walk with you, we’ll do what we can do. In most cases, it’s about hope, you know. We see that so many times as our clients will come in here, and I hear over and over and over again, and it’s just bad stuff just always happens to me. It’s just like I’m hitting the one wall after another. My luck is so bad. I just never get over this or get ahead. And our purpose here, our goal here is to break that, to show them that there is hope, and through the love of Christ and through the support of our community, were able to impact people’s lives every day. And that’s exactly what we’re praying to do, is to break cycles and to encourage people to move forward to be more.

And what a beautiful, beautiful story.

A special thanks to Katrina Hine for sourcing the story, thanks to Madison Derricott for the production and the sound design, and thanks to Mike Gideon for sharing the story and that story about what he did for Sam. Oh my goodness, he didn’t just fix the car. He was trying to fix a life and trying to love a stranger. 715 repairs, thirty-six cars donated and given away, well, $500, so there’s some skin in the game. And then all because God called on Mike to do something different with his life and to serve Him differently. The story of Higher Power Garage and how God calls on ordinary Americans to do the most extraordinary and beautiful things.

This is Our American Stories.