Meet the 2025 Life Change Program Graduates: Patti Bunch

Patti Bunch had to re-learn how to go to the grocery store without doing drugs.

 She had to re-learn how to do everything.

 When Patti entered the women’s Life Change Program at the Eugene Mission, she had a heavy past, deep scars and a push-it-all-down mindset. She was just going to move on, but she quickly learned that isn’t how the Life Change Program works.

 “Slowly, class after class, meeting after meeting, I learned how to process my emotions and deal with life,” she says. “I’ve even allowed myself to tear up a bit.”

 Patti had a lot to process. By the time she was 8 years old, she was being regularly abused by her stepfather. She was eventually removed from her home and her stepfather went to jail. Throughout all of this, her family never talked about what happened and never offered a way to grieve or process her trauma.

 By 16, she had tried alcohol and meth and met a man she would marry, but the relationship turned violent and she eventually had to call 911 to help her escape his rage.

 Throughout all of Patti’s chaos, addiction and destruction, her daughter Sammy never gave up on her and prayed for her mother’s freedom. After Patti’s second release from prison, Sammy and a parole officer arranged for Patti to come to the Eugene Mission – it was Sammy’s last hope to save her mom.

 Through her time in the program, Patti’s heart has slowly and steadily opened, like a flower unfolding as it receives light, water and patient nurturing. Patti now has a relationship with Jesus and laughs that she’ll even pray out loud now. Early last fall, as her daughter and granddaughter looked on, she  was baptized in the ocean near the town where she grew up and where the abuse began.

 “Life Change really does mean life change,” Patti says. “You can change your habits, change your desires for those habits and it instills ‘living’ in you. It helps you restore your relationships with your family and it all happens because it’s a faith-based program.”

 Help us celebrate Patti and the other graduates of the Life Change Program! Come and show your support for a group of 11 men and women who have worked through incredible adversity to come to a place of healing, authentic change and new life.

 You are invited to her graduation ceremony!

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March 7

6 p.m.

City First Church

830 Madison Street, Eugene